Lighting Techniques

Lighting Techniques

As part of our lighting technique I decided to look further into the sci-fi genre of lighting decided to take influence from Dr Who because of the mood of the lighting. Although this is a TV show it has a good quality lighting scheme that we hope to match in our sequence. I took the screen shots off the BBC iPlayer from two episodes (The first four screenshots being from 'Listen' and the last shot from the episode 'Kill the Moon') where the atmosphere becomes increasingly tense because we as an audience are foreign to the blue colours and darkness, therefore making us feel more uncomfortable. We get the feeling something bad is about to happen and that we cannot control it, however since we are connected to the protagonist we are encouraged to continue to watch the narrative. The blue can also intrigue an audience as well as help achieve a cinematic looking shot. Below I have analysed each shot separately to define what makes them useful for our shoot:

For this shot I feel that the use of the mist highlighting Oswald's position as she hides from a potential threat is a creative use of lighting. It gives the bed a dark mood to it and that she is visibly frightened by the experience she is going through. 

This shot is a good example of how we may light our protagonist when we are building up to suspense. We can hint at the events that are about to happen (Such as when the lights first turn off) and allow the audience to notice the change of mood without using dialogue, however it will not overshadow the narrative as our protagonist stumbles around for a natural light source.

This is my favourite shot of all. This was created by using a fog machine and a blue keylight from outside the location. The fog gives the scene a definite look and allows mystery to be allocated to the shot. This also gives Oswald a silhouette that highlights only her figure where we can only figure out she is staring at something that is not in our view. There is a great depth of field in this shot by the use of the bars and the ladder up to the bed which gives the shot an interesting look.

This shot uses the blue in a cooler effect as if the moment has intensified greatly or is calming the audience down. By doing this the director will lure the audience into a false sense of security even though we are still unhinged by the physical look of the shot. We become further aware of what Oswald is looking at and become intrigued as to what she is finding so interesting.

The reason I wanted to include this shot is the use of the torch in this shot. Even though we are not setting our sequence in space the use of the torches allow the blue to further shine through in the shot. This gives a supernatural element to it and allows a lens flare to be added when shone straight at the camera. For our sequence we plan to use a candle, on the other hand if we find the candle is not suitable enough of we want to intensify the mood. We can include this as a secondary prop or have the torch flicker on and off before our protagonist chooses the candle instead, referring back to the plot line that all electricity has gone down.