Lighting deconstruction: Scream

Scream was released in 2006 and is a slasher horror directed by Wes Craven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKukhIw5eY

 

Lighting is important in making a film more effective and suited to its genre. In the opening scene of Scream, the lighting starts off bright in a large house. This gives the sense of safety and warmth so that the events that are to come are emphasised as more sinister and establish the genre.

 

As the scene continues and the character talks of the phone, we hear the killer say the first thing that is sinister and begins the anticipation for something scary - he asks for her name and when she asks why, he says 'so I know who I'm looking at'. Suddenly she turns the light on outside to see if she can see him, then turns it off and locks the door. While going around the house and locking everything quickly, she turns off lights so that the hue is no longer warm and comforting, but grey and cold. These colours intensify the sudden creepiness of the killer, who we can't see anyway, and take away the safeness to show the vulnerability of the character.

By the end of the scene, more lights are off and it is even darker, turning blue. Again this highlights the vulnerability and creates suspense because darkness is a main convention of the horror genre, building it up for many scares.

This ultimately shows how effective lighting is in making a film suited to its genre, because we are able to pick up the hints towards what might happen to the characters by the atmosphere and mood changing. We can take this into account when editing so darker colouring is used.

Lighting Experiments

Lighting is a huge part for making any production in media, and can affect the way something is viewed, and can have meanings behind how the lighting is done. For instance, lighting can be used to make someone look differently, like Demi Lovato, once photographed from the side with a bright flash made her into an internet meme that was called "Poot." and was mocked because of the way the light changed her face. I have used the realistic figure of Henry Caville's Superman to show how a face can look differently, with the same expression. The first picture makes him look as he is suppposed to, an ideal of Hope. He is seen as a symbol to strive towards, and looks up to be the Man of Tomorrow. The light is not artificial, meaning it is not the sun's light, but without seeing the lighting in frame it can look like it is the sun, and Superman looks like he is there to protect humanity and life itself. 

The next picture is a change of lighting, and makes Superman look like a killer, this is what I mean by how lighting changes the scene, and with this same expression and simple change of lighting, Superman looks like a murderer and someone who has the intentions of a mad man due to his face having light shined on it from his chin and up. His expression is evil, and looks like someone who is not willing to save humanity, and this is how lighting can be manipulated and experimented on to change the emotion of a scene. 

The next two pictures are of a statue of Batman holding up Joker by his purple blazer, and getting ready to drop him. The lighting is huge for this character, as he is dark and brooding, and as he says many times "I am the night." So it is obvious that his lighting must be in the dark, and not artificial, using light from bulbs and torches as well as the moonlight, and in the interrogation scene for The Dark Knight, the lighting used is small at the beginning and we are not even aware of Batman's presence until the lights come on. 

The picture on the left shows how lighting can ruin a scene. The tense moment before Batman beats the high hell out of the Joker is ruined by the brightness of the scene, and the picture on the right shows how lighting can make a scene more dramatic and effective, with light being lost and closed off in this scene as it looks like the presence of the caped crusader causes fear to replace light with darkness.

Gone (2012) Lighting deconstruction

Lighting in Gone (2012):

In this scene I thought there was careful consideration of lighting uses to create an effect. As the scene is dark, it sets up the genre of thriller and as an audience, the use of the darkness, symbolizes something bad is going to happen.

The light here is shone onto the wall from the left of the character, creating shadows on the wall. There is also shots where the protagonist's shadow is reflected onto the wall behind her. Is a sinister and scary effect as the audience wonder what is creating the shadows on the wall, making it suspenseful as we wonder if someone is going to appear

As she goes into the house, thee is a high angled shot looking down at her opening the door. We can see the extreme contrast of light here as when she opens the door there is the natural day light compared to the dark eeriness of the house, further suggesting the house is dangerous and abandoned.

Lighting is also used to draw the audience's attention to something. In this screenshot the light coming through the window creates a box lighting effect on the floor, making our eyes go to it, symbolizing that whatever is there is important and we should focus on it.


The lighting used in this scene was done in a creative way in order to cause a spooky and mysterious atmosphere to draw the audience in. We could use this lighting model later on when filming our own opening scene.

Lighting check

Our second day of filming requires us to go to the field. This means we have no control over the lighting on the day, so I've decided to go to the field at different times of the day to see when the light changes and see when is best for us to film.
 

With the general weather, there are no times during the day where it looks different as the sky is always clouded over apart from when it starts to get darker at around 3.30pm.

These pictures were taken an hour apart, one at 2:30pm and the second at 3:30pm:

I think that the best time to film is from 3pm onwards as it will gradually get darker while filming so will look darker and more effective for the film.
 

However, this also means we will have to establish the shots first and film them in the exact order, as if we miss a shot and film it after the rest are done, the continuity of the lighting will be poor.

Practical: Lighting

Lighting:

I decided to do a practical to test Lighting, and how the different positions of it can have an effect. 

I started off with 'normal' lighting, where it was natural light using the sun. The light was shining through the window onto my model. This made the shot look dark on the model's form.

I then turned the model around so they were facing the light. This made them look bright on the shot and clear.




Later on when it was dark so I didn't have any natural light coming through the curtains, I used un-natural light with a torch shining onto the model. This was difficult as I only had a torch that had the same light intensity, so I couldn't alter that.

This shot is one with the light turned on, with no torch. As you can see it is clear and bright giving it the image of being filmed in the day time.

I then tried shooting one where it was completely dark and found it hard to make out the image in the image, however there is still a silhouette but is hard to distinguish. This would make it hard to understand what it happening in the scene, although this could still be effective in some cases.

I wanted to create a 'night-time' look that showed it to be dark but still make it clear to see what is happening clearly in the shot. In this image here, I used a torch positioned behind the camera and shined it on the model.

This shot was where I placed the torch closer and at a low angled shot looking at the model. This created a shadow effect behind the model and made her stand out on the shot against the dark background.

I also wanted to experiment with different light positions. I decided to place the camera behind the model to see what effect it would have. As shown on the image, it created a silhouette shot, which I thought would be effective in a horror film as it leaves suspense as to what the 'silhouette' is


Here are a few more examples of lighting positions:

(torch placed on the left side of the model)

(torch placed on the right side of the model)

This would be useful in our own film opening/opening credits as it can be used to show time of day, and can create a horror effect (light behind the model to create a silhouette) which shows suspense. 

I decided to use this knowledge of lighting to create a 'horror' scene with flashing lights and using different positions of lighting to show me walking down a set of stairs.

Gone (2012) deconstruction

Gone (2012) Deconstruction

Gone is an American Summit Entertainment movie, directed by Heitor Dhalia in 2012. It is of the thriller, drama and mystery genre and is about a girl who is overcoming a kidnapping attempt, uncovering the mystery behind it.

 

There is a scene in the movie where she is exploring her 'kidnappers' house. It is a dark, run down apartment which looks as if it has been emptied without much care. The setting is used as we know, as an audience it is a dangerous place the protagonist shouldn't enter. This further confims the genre of the movie as we discover the mystery in the apartment.

The colours pallet is black and green. This overall creates an eerie, supernatural feel to it and links to the protagonist's kidnapping as she has a trigger that gives her a flashback to her time when she was kidnapped in a forest.

 

It is slow paced editing, as the protagonist ventures into the house, pulling out a gun for protection. Done to build up suspense as we expect something to happen (ie. a jumpscare) as the character is guarded an prepared for an attack. 

 

In this scene there is no non-diegetic sound, making the house she is venturing in seem quite and exaggerates the diegetic sound of her footsteps, creating suspense.

There is also a flashback scene, to when she was kidnapped. It becomes fast paced as well as the character's heavy diegetic breathing, showing the protagonist's panic as she try to escape. This is a representation of women as we can see that it is a female victim. Which conforms to the common conventions of slasher-horrors as depicting women as the weaker characters.