2. 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.
3. Background Lighting
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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Techniques
Soft 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
