Importance Of Lighting

Significance Lighting is important as it sets a particular mood.

Bright, colorful lighting often brings with it cheerfulness in films. Actors seem happier. Dark colors suggest sinister characteristics in actors and set the mood for dark plots which really help portray the genre with ease. In general, the director works with both camera operators and the lighting crew to ensure that imagery flows coherently.

The background light is used to bright all the background area. Many follow the Three-point lighting or Four-point lighting setup. Within the Four-point lighting, the background light is placed last directly behind the subject. By doing this, filmmakers can add a sense of depth with low intensity from the light. More than one light can be use if a particular subject needs focus. In order to provide the separation between the subject and the background, the light will usually have a colour filter.

Background Lighting

Cameo Lighting This is where a spotlight is used to accentuates a

single person or subject in a scene. It can be used to create an angelic shot with darkness in the background. This style is often portrayed by using barn-doored spotlights which helps focus on the subject and not the environment. Problems can occur with this style as it leads to colour distortions and noise in darkest areas.

High Key Lighting Height-Key lighting is a style usually used for film,

television or photography which reduces the lighting ratio in the scene. This was firstly done to deal with the high contrast ratios but is now in recent productions used to create an upbeat mood. The terminology comes from the key light (main light). The advantages are that this lighting allows the production to be completed in any time and not restricted to daylight hours.

TechniquesSoft front light / hot backlight:A popular technique in film lighting is to use a soft (diffuse) light source

from the front and a stronger, more directional light from the back, so that your subject has a hot edge. The soft frontal light is known as the fill light; the strong light at the back is known, unsurprisingly, as the backlight.

Mixing color temperatures:Using lights of different color temperatures can be used to

great effect. This simply means using lights of different color in the same shot. This was used to great effect by James Cameron in the steel mill scene of “Terminator 2” using blue and orange light