Why lighting is important...
'Lighting has come to be an important component of cinema's visual design. It is widely recognised that in film, as elsewhere, it can create a substantial emotional impact. A primordial response to darkness and light is a deep-seated element of human psychology that filmmakers have harnessed in order to influence the ways viewers respond to narrative development. On the one hand, deep shadows can make a character seem untrustworthy or conceal a host of horrors. On the other, bright, diffused lighting can provide comfort and reassurance or create the impression of an angelic countenance. Extremely bright light can cause discomfort, though, and can even be used as a weapon, as inRear Window(1954) andThe Big Combo(1955), where it dazzles the villains and halts their advance.' -www.filmreference.com
more Modern examples of lighting being used to set the mood or change the audience's perception of a character...
The Unfortunate Events of Lemony Snicket's (2004)
This use of low key lighting symbolises the danger that the children are in and represents the evil character's personality. The lighting makes the audience feel tense because it implies that something bad is going to happen soon. This makes the scene more gripping and entertaining. |
Marley and Me (2008)
This use of high key, warmer and more natural lighting holds no tension for the audience. This has been used to show that this is a happy scene in the film. High key lighting is used most of the time in this film because its genre is romance/comedy. This means there's no need for the film to scare the audience with darkness. |
our lighting...
Within our trailer we decided to use dark lighting depending on which character we used, we chose dark lighting when focusing on the villain this is because it represents them in a bad and dark atmosphere to show our audience that our film is dark and mysterious. Within our trailer we decided to use light lighting again depending on the character we used, we chose light lighting when focusing on the victims this is because it represents them as innocent and vulnerable, we did this to show our audience that even though most vulnerable people can still be in danger. We also chose to use dark and light lighting because we wanted to make sure that our trailer was affective and by using different lighting this was easy to create, this is because it creates an atmosphere that makes our trailer look professional, because real trailers use different lighting to create different affects.