LIGHTINGIn

The Director David Fincher always used heavy, dark

lighting in his work. You can often tell if a film is a David

Fincher film if the lighting is dark, dramatic and casts long shadows.

Gone Girl - 2014 The Girl with the Dragon tattoo - 2011

Se7en - 1995

How has lighting been used in this film?What does it connote?

Keeping the last slide in mind is can been presumed that the lighting in this film is dark and gritty, causing long, dramatic shadows and making the audience feel the tension in the film.

And while this is true the lighting also reflects our main character’s (the narrator) slow descent into madness. Whenever the narrator is in the real world, his house, his job, the police station, the doctors anything that attaches him to our world there is a bright light present and the scene is clear to us, we see everything that is going on.

But whenever the narrator is in a situation, or a place, that will effect the narrators madness the lighting is darker and grittier. Huge of green can sometimes be seen over certain scenes with Tyler and the Narrator in them, showing the narrators jealousy for his alter ego Tyler but also that he is sick because he doesn’t know he and Tyler are the same person.

Another thing to notice is how dark the lighting is when the men are in fight club. Surely Fincher wanted us to the fighting clearly so we how these men are damaging each other. But this lighting shows how this way of solving his problems isn’t healthy for the narrator. It just sends him further into his subconous which is dark and dangerous and could hurt a lot of people.

How does the lighting help to deliver the overall message of the film?

The lighting shows the audience that film is a story of a man fighting his inner demons and problems including his own expectations of himself.

The lighting helps us to see this by showing the gritty and dark reality of the narrators life and how he created Tyler to tackle this problem. But also to symbolise the narrators descent into Tyler and fear he feels through that.