DIRECTION - EXPRESSIVE LIGHTING

The use of lights determine the emotion of the scene that the director wants to create, different uses of colours and shadows have different interpretations of what is happening or is about to happen.

Directors choose to use certain colours in there film purposefully all colours mean something on an emotional level and can help add new visual layers to the film.
Warm colours (such as red, yellow, or Orange) wake us up and get the audience moving  whilst cool colours (blue, green, white) have a calming effect on the audience.

The first picture below are examples of the two different lights.
Top - Warm light.
Bottom - Cool light.

It is important for a director to learn also aFbout the different cultures and traditions  the world. In Western culture, black is the colour of death (mourning). In Eastern culture, white is the colour for mourning.

Here are the most common colours used today and what they could mean.

1. RED - anger passion , rage, desire, excitement, energy, speed, strength, power, heat, love, aggression, danger, fire, blood, war, violence.

2. PINK - love, innocence, healthy, happy, content, romantic, charming, playfulness, soft, delicate, feminine.

3. YELLOW - wisdom, knowledge, relaxation, joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, dishonesty, betrayal, jealousy, covetousness, deceit, illness, hazard.

4. ORANGE - humour, energy, balance, warmth, enthusiasm, vibrant, expansive, flamboyant.

5. GREEN - healing, soothing, perseverance, tenacity, self-awareness, proud, unchanging nature, environment, healthy, good luck, renewal, youth, vigour, spring, generosity, fertility, jealousy, inexperience, envy.

6. BLUE - faith, spirituality, contentment, loyalty, fulfilment peace, tranquility, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, sky, water, cold, technology, depression.

7. PURPLE/VIOLET - erotic, royalty, nobility, spirituality, ceremony, mysterious, transformation, wisdom, enlightenment, cruelty , arrogance, mourning, power, sensitive, intimacy.

8. BROWN - materialistic, sensation, earth, home, outdoors, reliability, comfort, endurance, stability, simplicity.

9. BLACK - No, power, sexuality, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, mystery, fear, anonymity, unhappiness, depth, style, evil, sadness, remorse, anger.

10. WHITE - Yes, protection, love, reverence, purity, simplicity, cleanliness, peace, humility, precision, innocence, youth, birth, winter, snow, good, sterility, marriage (Western cultures), death (Eastern cultures), cold, clinical, sterile.

11. SILVER - riches, glamorous, distinguished, earthy, natural, sleek, elegant, high-tech.

12. GOLD - precious, riches, extravagance, warmth, wealth, prosperity, grandeur.

This chart will help me when I am analysing the script for my scene, it is a helpful tool.

In today lesson Fergus showed us some examples of lighting and positioning, one of the scene was from The Godfather, the example showed us that a light high above the main actor keeping his eyes in the shadows, this made us (the audience) find him mysterious and non- connected to him.

The still from the scene that we saw is below.

Sometimes the director may not have a certain budget for a huge lighting set up at all time (or not at all) so he /she chooses to use locations were natural light can be used.

We watched a clip from called 'the coin toss' from  No Country for old men,

Throughout the scene outside light was used, but as the scene progressed and tensions run higher, un-natural light was used to create darker shadows.

TASK

Our task was to get into groups of 4 and create some expressive lighting using the booklet that Fergus had handed out at the beginning of the class.
I teamed up with Taz, Gilliad and Will.

We picked our two images and how to set up the light.

In the bottom picture 4 lights are used, we only had 3 to work with, so we had to figure out a way to get a similier effect.

                                                                                     
                                                        First we set up the camera

Then we we organised the key light and the fill light 

The positioning of the light didn't work out as well as we wanted because we couldn't get the effect behind the subject (Taz), so we moved the lights nearer to the curtain and used the barn doors to focus in the angle that we needed.

Eventually we captured the image that we wanted and it was as close as we could get.

We did have the footage however I have asked to retrieve it from my class mates but they said they had an issue downloading it (I didn't have my hard drive on the day) I know in future not to forget my hard drive.

After lunch we did a scene from a script, I choice to do Scarface, I wanted to create the same effect that was seen in the God Father earlier, I used a high-light above Wills head and used black filter to focus in to the face creating hard shadows and depth.

But first I played about with  red/orange lighting (below), I thought this looked more theatrical then cinematic though.

This workshop has helped me understand the meaning behind the usage of lights and further research into what the colours mean within film making has widened by visual outlook towards the scene that I am re-creating.