Research: Mise En Scene - Lighting and Colour - Mrs. Quinlan

What is lighting and colour? Why it is an important convention?

Lighting and colour are a part of media that creates a lot of meaning in a scene. Lighting helps to convey mood and atmosphere, e.g. a certain type of lighting may make audience feel as if the character is represented by the current lighting. Colour also creates meaning to the scene through connotations and interpretations.

Angles of lighting

Top lighting – This makes the character look innocent, glamorous and a clearly obvious protagonist, light comes from above.

Under lighting – This makes the character look scarier, have more fear, obvious antagonist, light comes below. An example of this is The Dark Knight Rises as the light appears below him making him look more superior.

Back Lighting – This is where the light source is behind. Whether little or no light is used, a silhouette is created. An example of this is scream as they use it to create a more effective scene.

Types of lighting

Low-key – The lighting is dark with small areas of light, which also creates shadows. This may be used in a scene set in a dark room.

High-Key – When the lighting appears more natural and realistic to our eyes. The lighting effect is lightened to create a more angelic view.

Conventional Lighting in thrillers

The common conventional lighting used in thrillers are normally high key and low key lighting. Sub-genres such as Sci-Fi, Romantic and Comedy thrillers use high key lighting in their films as it gives off that more calm and groovy feeling and doesn’t come off to the audience as just dark and gloomy. Other sub-genres such as Crime, Action and Spy use low-key lighting to give off that vibe that there is a superior character in the film or there are very dark moments and tense scenes within the film. Another conventional use of lighting is top lighting, this is very much used in thrillers to portray that the character is a very orthodox protagonist and victim, so is the main character, if not then they have a big part in the film.

Conventional Colour in thrillers

As colour creates meaning to the scene a film director must be wary of what they use to make that specific scene better than what it will be with normal colours. Let’s take a spy thriller, a conventional colour will be clean red and natural blue as red is a sign of anger and urge to do something whereas blue is walking down that royal path. Most spy thrillers have a secret HQ with all their gadgets and out of the sky technology so using blue would make sense as it is a clear indication that it is a spy-thriller. 

Red is also common in other thrillers because of the different emotions it covers with anger and rage being the most typical, a scene with lots of red makes it seem as if there will be danger and risen tensions. A colour like grey and black could be used a lot to make a scene or character look dark, unorthodox and very fixated on a set mission rather than laid back and calm.

Thriller opening analysis

From watching the opening of The Moon and The Gutter film you can see from when the man is walking that they use low-key lighting and dark colours such as grey and black to portray that he is a very dark and sinister character or something sinister and mysterious is about to occur. Also the use of under lighting makes the character look more scary and inferior as it is supposed to do. Back lighting is furthermore used to create a silhouette-ish feature to the opening and emphasize the tension in the scene. The red over the moon indicated the way her blood will be spilt over the floor by her killer and antagonist, this is used to great effect as it gives the audience a chance to know that the film is very dark and subtle.

Conclusion

From researching lighting and colour, I may now use under lighting to create that more gothic and eerie feeling to my opening scene which will tell the audience that there is a supernatural feeling to the opening than keep it mainstream and use conventional basic colours. I will use ideas and conventions of lighting and colour to influence my own product and piece of footage and directing.