Lighting Change

Lighting change is an aspect of cinematography that needs planning. Lighting in its nature acts as a mood setter in a piece of film. Thus a lighting change can change the mood, and in some cases make the image more personal or even make the character look scary. If you stop and think about it, you will have a hard time picking a character your scared of that wasn't darkly lit. You will have a hard time finding a sinister character that is brightly lit for the whole film. Their is a reason horrors and thrillers are darkly lit, whilst comedys and family films are commanly lit with bright colours. Their are a few exceptions, but for the most part this lore has stuck. One example I can think of where a character is good natured, but has come across sinister due to a lighting change is 'Gandalf' from 'The Fellowship Of The Ring' (see link below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKaw5SjeHx0 - Gandalf Scares Bilbo

In this scene Bilbo is paranoid that Gandalf wants the one ring and Gandalf realises the ring is corrupting Bilbo, hence why he uses his magic to subdue the sudden aggression of Bilbo (see images).

Lighting begins to turn dark

Full darkness

Lighting brightens again

Lighting change to normal

As the images shown above display, the lighting becomes incredibly dark making Gandalf seem like an evil, sinister and powerful character. This is where Gandalf gives his first occurrence of being a strong wizard. However, by picture four his threat has diminished, and reduces back to the caring and good natured Gandalf that we grow to love throughout the film.This I believe is an obvious place to start in as it is one of the few times that the fantasy cross from a lighthearted film into a dark relm that the two sequels would be exploring more. Andrew Lesnie both adds seriousness to the scene and teases the viewer about the darkness that will come.

The lighting change we will use however is more subtle. Things like a fridge door opening which is our chosen method of lighting change. Their is also simply flicking a light switch on and off. One perfect example comes at the end of the horror movie 'Saw' (see image).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJyvVMgl-p0 - ending scene (see 2:32).

This scene shows the big reveal, and ending of the film saw. In this scene, the real killer is leaving the room and intends to leave Adam for dead. Thogh the lighting change does not add much to the actual story, it does change the film from bright to dark in a second. In a pervious scene, Laurence and Adam had hope of getting out of this situation. even during this ending scene their is still some hope as Adam try's to kill the real killer. However, as soon as he's about to leave and Adam has no means of stoping him, all hope is gone. So, this lighting change from brightly lit to almost total darkness, may symbolise the loss of hope (see image below).

Lights on

Lights out

Both the subtle and the dramatic changes of lighting help to emphasise the story of films, and the examples provided hopefully provide clarification of that.

As I stated, the lighting change in our project is mearly a subtle one, that also informs the piece of film where we see the fridge door open from the inside (see images).

Fridge close

Fridge open