LIGHTING

LIGHTING & COLOUR

Lighting helps to convey the mood or atmosphere of the scene wea are observing. It helps guide the audience's attention by brightly lighting an object whilst keeping the storyline. At the same time a director can therefore also use shadows to build up or emphasis a character, by concealing elements in thescene from the audience.

THREE MAIN SOURCES

1. The Key Light - as th ename suggests, is usually the brightest and the most influential.

2. The Back Light - helps counteract the effect of the key light, therefore making the character/object look more 'rounded'.

3. The Filler Light - helps to soften the harsh shadows that the use of key and back lights create, there can be more than one filler light.

ANGLES OF LIGHTING

a. Underlighting - is when the main source of light comes form below the subject, this temds to have a distorting effect on the character or object that is being lit and can often be used in horror films because of the effect it gives.

b. Toplighting - when the main source of lighting comes from above, therefore highlighting the features of a character- it can also be used to create a glamorous look in a star/character.

c. Backlighting - when the lighting source is behind the subject, if lttle light or no lighting at all is used then silhouettes are therefore formed/created.

HIGH-KEY & LOW-KEY LIGHTING

• Low-key lighting - is created by using the back lights and the key lights, this produces a sharp contrast of the light and dark areas on the screen, therefore forming the effect known as chiaroscuro.
  
• High-key lighting - more than one filler light is used. The term means lighting that appears normal and realistic to the eyes, shadows will appear in this type of lighting but the difference to look out for is the areas of dark and light which will not be so pronounced as in low-key lighting.