Research: Lighting - Ms Heath

Lighting - Helps to control the atmosphere and characters moods from one scene to another. lighting is sometimes used to draw the audiences attention to a object, persons emotion or gesture e.g. a bright light shining down on a gold lamp will mean the lamp is important in someway.

Under Lighting - Under-lighting is the main source of light in that scene that appears below the character, this tends add a disorientated effect on the character making him look in power.

Top Lighting - Top Lighting is the source of lighting that comes from above the character, Top Lighting is normally used to single out a facial feature of a character e.g. A pirates eye patch.

Back Lighting - The source of light in a back lighting shot is from behind the person, often having shadows in the shot. These shots often have a purpose of wanting the audience to focus on something. For example the sun set in the shot below.

Film Genres

Back Lighting - Thrillers, Horror

Under Lighting - Horror

Top Lighting - Sci-Fi, Romance, Comedy

Low key Lighting - The lighting in the scene or photograph is dark however, there might be some small areas of light, which can also creates shadows. Most low key lighting contains dark colour and are often used to convey different atmosphere and moods.

High Key Lighting - High key lighting is when the lighting appears realistic and natural to our eyes even though it is not. For example some romantic films may use high key lighting to create a sunny day scene.

Natural Lighting - Natural lighting is when no lighting at all has been added to a scene or picture, its something you'd expect to see with your own two eyes.

High Key lighting Genres

• Sci-Fi, Action
• Romance, Fantasy
• Comedy, Animation

Low Key Lighting Genres

• Thriller
• Horror
• Fantasy

The Moon and the Gutter Trailer.

This trailer used low key lighting as the the girl who was being stalked by a mystery man was walking down a road, we know this because when the girl began to run there was a street light in the scene and also when she was stabbed he was on a pavement at the side of the road. The main source of lighting from the trailer came from below the lady as you could not see her and the mystery mans face clearly. The tension in the trailer started to build when the cuts scenes started to increase of her walking faster while looking back at the mystery character who was not far behind.

The lighting made me feel sympathy for the character as she is walking down a dark, lonely street on her own being followed which eventually leads to her walking faster to the point where she starts running.