“As much as light brings both the projected image and the subject of the projection into existence, it also indicates to the spectator where to look, who to look at and how to feel”. Light is arguably the most essential part of any film, effectively acting as the medium in which filmmakers create their art. But it is more than just a practical necessity, it is an artistic tool that can be used to shape an image. Light can be an incredibly versatile tool, and can be manipulated in many different ways in order to shape the image it creates. Aspects of lighting such as colour, brightness and contrast can all have a dramatic effect on the way the image looks. This section will look at several components of lighting individually, and how they can each be used to create an image that portrays a deep sense of emotion.
The most important part of any story is the characters, and it is important to develop an appropriate relationship between the characters and the audience. This sets out the audiences expectations of the character and gives the audience an opinion on the characters identity. The way a character is lit can tell the audience a lot about about them so it is important that this is considered carefully to avoid sending the wrong message about the character. The main protagonist is the most important character in the story, and they should be lit in a way that identifies this. A person’s face can be lit in hundreds of different ways, but the most basic and well used lighting setup for faces is the three point lighting setup. This lights the subject with a key light, the brightest light which is the main source of illumination and lights the front of the face from one side. A second light, the fill light is used to light the opposite side of the face, filling in shadows created by the key. The fill light is usually dimmer than the key light, which creates contrast on the face which both makes the lighting accurate to reality, as well as giving control over the contrast across the face which can have a dramatic effect on the characters identity.
The third light in the three point setup is the backlight, which is pointed at the subject from behind. This adds depth to the lighting, pushing the character away from the background and towards the audience . The backlight creates a glow around the subject which isolates them from the rest of the frame, allowing the audience to subconsciously read the lighting on the character and the background separately. The way this light separates the character from the background appears to push the character forward, closer to the audience. This makes the audience feel closer to the character and to think more deeply about the characters identity.
While this basic lighting setup usually looks very plain and simple, changing, adding or removing lights can drastically affect the story told through the lighting. A common addition to this setup is an eye light, a small light placed at about the actors eye level. This light reflects off the actors eyes, making them look brighter and adding a small reflection in the pupil. This causes the audience to make eye contact with the actor on screen, allowing the audience to read the emotion in the characters eyes.
A more definitive way of representing a characters emotion is to use and exploit cultural symbolism within lighting. Film noir often does this, using the classic venetian blind lighting style to create bars of light across the frame. In conjunction with film noirs common focus on crime, these bars of light can be seen to represent prison bars, portraying the character they fall across as being trapped in some way. The Dark Corner (Henry Hathaway, 1946) focuses on the story of Bradford Galt, a private investigator who has recently served a jail sentence. The ventian blind lighting in his office is used in this way to represent his time spent in jail and portrays the emotion in his character, who feels trapped in his situation. The use of shadows itself also carries some cultural symbolism, the human shadow is traditionally viewed as a representation of the darker side to an individual’s persona, as well as also being viewed as a representation of the human soul after death. Shadows in film are often associated with fear and danger, such as in Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) in which Count Orlok’s shadow is greatly exaggerated and emphasised as he walks up the stairs during the ending of the film, and it is the shadow of his hand that we see as he claims his victim.
German expressionism and film noir are both known for their use of chiaroscuro and Rembrandt lighting, using contrast within the image to create emotional contrast between the light and the dark. With the way that shadows are symbolised in film, and with a general sense of ‘a fear of the dark’, combined with the angelic, heavenly association with brightness, this technique can create polar opposite senses of emotion within one frame, demonstrating a difference between two characters, or highlighting an emotional struggle within the mind of one character. These genres use of this lighting style has continued to influence modern films, such as in Twelve Years A Slave (Steve Mcqueen, 2013) where both these techniques are used consistently throughout the film. A great example of this is during the scene in the cell at the beginning of the film when Solomon wakes up to find he has been kidnapped. High contrast lighting is used here, creating a background of nothing but darkness, and casting Solomon in bright light. This represents the confusion in Solomon as to why he is locked up and in chains. This lighting leaves Solomon literally in the dark, parallel to his emotional state of confusion, left in the dark as to what has happened to him. The light on Solomon is focused mainly on his body, leaving his face mostly unlit representing how he is being stripped of his identity. This concept is used further when the two jailers enter the scene. When Solomon is on the ground being beaten, he is still in the dark while the man beating him is in the light. This continues to further represent the removal of his past identity; after he is beaten he falls down and we finally see his face cast in light, screaming in pain as if to show that this is his new identity. The overall lighting in this scene portrays his abrupt transformation of character and reinforces this scene as the inciting incident that begins Solomon’s story.
A major aspect of lighting that can control the emotion in a scene is the colour of the light. While colour can have a dramatic effect on a film’s emotion, it is also one of the most ambiguous and subjective elements within cinematography. Different colours are often interpreted as having their own meaning behind them, and that specific colours can be used to represent certain emotions. Red is often interpreted as representing either love or anger, green is usually associated with envy or jealousy and blue often represents sadness as well as purity. The different emotions these colours represent often appear to contradict each other, which is what makes defining the meaning of colour a difficult subject. When used in film, the narrative of the film can help in providing context into how each colour is intended to be used in supporting the narrative.
Colour is defined using three of its properties, hue, brightness and saturation. The hue refers to the general position of the colour on the colour wheel, of which there are eight recognised hues. In order of the colour wheel these are red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet and magenta. Each of these hues cover a wide range of the colour wheel, containing many different variations of that colour. As each colour name can describe many different colours, it is not possible to describe a colour by its hue, and therefore it colour name alone. It is however the most recognised way of describing a colour and works as a good starting point in defining a colour and it’s emotional impact.
Brightness refers to the hue in relation to a grayscale. The most neutral brightness of a colour is when it lies in the middle of the grayscale, becoming darker as it approaches the black end of the grayscale, and brighter as it approaches the white end of the grayscale. Removing the saturation of a colour will reveal its level of brightness, taking away the hue and leaving grayscale image. The brightest parts of a colour image will become white, while the darkest parts will become black.
Framing and composition
“The very act of framing by itself can begin to create a work of art. The frame does more than isolate a picture; it pushes it together and gives it a unity it would not otherwise have. By isolating parts of a landscape and transferring it from its natural setting to another setting – a house or a museum – a painter presents this section of reality under new conditions of vision which bring out artistic values that its natural surroundings would hide or neutralize.”
Framing a shot in film is very much like framing a painting; it presents the image to the viewer in a way that identifies the contents of the frame as the intentional artistic view of its creator. Artists don’t paint more than what they intend to show, every part of the painting is planned to be there, contained within its frame. The framing of a shot is what communicates to the viewer that what is shown in the frame is what’s important, that it is the most relevant action within the story at this point and that everything seen within the frame works together to convey this story. The camera’s perspective, while mostly accurate, is in fact a distorted view of reality. The lens of a camera can’t see the world in the same way as our eyes do, particularly relevant here is the fact that there is no discernable edge to our natural vision, whereas the camera always has a very defined straight edge to what it can see. This edge, just like a painting, means that the cinematographer must be careful in choosing where this edge lies in order for the audience to begin to interpret the way in which the cinematography portrays the narrative.
A major element to be considered for every shot is the shot size, with concern as to how much of the scene’s background can be seen behind each subject in every shot. Wide shots provide an overall sense of the action in a scene whereas closeups provide a more detailed view of a particular part of a scene. Emotion in a scene comes from the emotions of the characters, and the emotions the audience feels depends on which character the camera chooses to focus on. The actors in the film portray the characters emotions through their actions and expressions; shooting a closeup of a characters face allows the audience to focus entirely on the characters emotional expression. People will naturally sympathise with the characters, and the closer they get to the character, the more they are able to sympathise with them and understand their emotions. In Chan Wook’s Oldboy (2003) the closeup on Dae-su Oh during the scene where he is kept locked up allows the audience to really see the full extent to which his entrapment has affected him. His hair is messy, his beard is ragged, his eyes look tired. Despite this he is smiling. It is clear through this image that he has gone completely mad having been kept in this room for fifteen years, and through the use of the closeup the audience can really focus on the madness in his eyes, and the state in which he presents himself. Closeups encourage the audience to make eye contact with the character, and it is through this eye contact that their emotions can be read.
On the opposite end of the shot size spectrum is the wide shot. Where a closeup can convey the specific emotions of one character, the wide shot is useful in showing the emotional relationship between multiple characters in a scene. Wide shots present the whole scene to the audience, allowing them to see the full extent of the action and background. The emotional relationship of each of the characters can be represented by their distance from each other, which is easiest to read in a wide shot. Characters placed far apart from each other may seem emotionally distant, whereas two characters that are physically close to each other can be seen to be emotionally close. Going back to the points in the introduction, this is of course entirely subjective and is only really determined by the objective narrative. When introducing new characters, this rule applies more objectively, however when the characters have already been established with the audience this technique can be used almost in reverse, using the relationship between characters juxtaposed with their portrayed distance.
As well as conveying character relationships to the audience, wide shots can be used to help portray a sense a scale, presenting the vastness of a landscape, or the rush of a crowd. They can be used to create a sense of scale, another artistic exploit in the camera’s ability to distort reality. Wide shots make a character physically smaller in the frame, and while we do know their true scale, because of the framing choice we see the character in relation to the entire framed image. Making a character look small in the frame can portray many different emotions depending on context. It could make a character look vulnerable, or as if they are lost in their world. It typically shows a character at their lowest point, another common use is during a character’s death, particularly in war films such as in All Quiet on The Western Front (1979, Delbert Mann), during the scene in the crater where character Paul Baumer (Richard Thomas) is comforting the dying Frenchman. During this scene the shot cuts between the mid shots of the two individual characters, and the wide shot showing the two of them with the battlefield behind. The wide shot shows the two men in comparison to the battlefield, and in conjunction with the well thought out soundscape, there is a real sense of them both being trapped in the war, the Frenchman dying within this vast space and highlighting the insignificance of his death in comparison to the scale of the war. This portrayal of emotion matches the themes shown through the narrative of the scene and helps gives the film it’s anti war message.
