Mise en scene: Lighting and colour

Mise En Scene - Lighting and Colour

What is lightning and colour?


Lightning - Lightning creates an effect of the film, lightning can show how tense or not the scene will be or how 'friendly' the scene will be etc. Lightning also creates an effect on the environment (in films). An example of this is: A 'slash (horror)' type genre usually shows the scene in a dark place (turning the lights off to turn the scene dark), this scene usually show something horrid or violent. Another example is a movie called Grudge - there's a scene where the setting is in a dark house.


Colour - Colour holds a connotations that may give out meaning to a scene for example: The scene shows a women wearing a red dress in a dark setting, the red dress could mean that she's violet and evil because of its colour.

Here's an example of lightning: In this shot, it shows a bright light shining behind the man, you can't see the man appearance due to lighting. This creates an effect of hiding the character, making the character look mysterious - a lot of the films does this because they want to hide the character/doesn't want to show the audience to know who it is. This is called back-lighting.

 Angles of lightning - examples

High angle - it's a lightning that comes from above a person, it usually used to outline the upper areas of the figure and/or to separate it more clearly from the background. You can also call this a top lighting.




Low angle - it's a lightning that comes from a point below the figures, it's also known as under lightning. This creates an effect of making the character look evil or as if he/she is planning something evil.

Back lighting - it's a lightning that comes behind the actor/actress and creates an effect of making the character look mysterious.



Types of lightning - examples

Low key lightning - it's a lightning that creates a dark with small areas of light - it creates an effect of shadows, it is created by using the back lights . This is also known as chiaroscuro
.

High key lightning - this is created by using filler lights, this creates an effect of making the actor/actress looking more natural and realistic to the viewers eyes.


Natural - this is when the scene has no changes to lighting whatsoever so it's all real without any lighting - this is what I mean by natural.

Colour in scenes - examples

There are many colour used in film, here's some example:


Grey Filter - Grey filter is all black and white, this colour is usually used in thriller, horror, action and crime/detective films.

Red Filter - this colour covers the sky or the whole scene in red - this can be used in action, thriller and any films that has gore/blood.

Here's an example of lightning and colour.

This is a trailer of a film called Paranormal Activity 2. In this trailer I can see that most of the scene (from that trailer) setting has been taken inside a dark house and outside (also dark cause of nigh-time), this effect was created by using dark lightning.
It gives fear and tension to the audience because the audience knows that something 'bad' and 'horrid' is going to happen  - due to its setting.
During the trailer, there was a women wearing full plain black clothe (shirt and trouser) standing next the the door (next to the baby's crib) for about 1 second, the black clothe symbolizes darkness and death - the death actually happens near the end of the movie.