Lighting

Chapter 10

Lighting

You often want lights in a story to come from a place that makes sense and fits with the reality of the world you are creating. Often you can also make artistic choices and it is good to understand what effect those choices have. In previous chapters you learned that things in the story can communicate subconsciously. It is not just the words in your script that tell the audience things, but also the sounds and images that communicate ideas or feelings without using words. The same is true of lighting. The direction and color of lights communicate certain feelings in the story. Also consider how many lights you want in a scene. Often the fewer lights you use the more mysterious the effect. In our modern world, electric lights are so bright that you see very few shadows in the room. But when you limit the lights you start to get a much more magical effect. We will start by looking at the effect of having only one light source.

	Light from Below When you put light below the subject it gives a mysterious and often dark feel.
Light from Above When you have a light coming from above it seems to come from heaven. It feels very angelic and peaceful.
	Light from Behind When someone is lit from behind it gives a very mysterious and unknown feeling. It is very difficult to see a subject clearly when they are backlit. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes you want the character to be obscured. It is a great way to introduce characters like ghosts or aliens. Keeping them obscure helps to keep them mysterious. It is often used for an encounter with a spiritual being like an angel or a demon as well. Often when a character is backlit you only see their darkened shape or silhouette.

Gels

If you want your lights to be colored you use gels. Gels are semi-translucent colored plastic papers. They come in many colors. When put one in front of a light, they turn the light into the same color as the gel. This can be useful if you want to create a mood or portray something like a reflection from a pool of water or a candle lit scene.

Shafts of Light Sometimes in films and movies you can see the light very clearly like a ray of light. These are called shafts of light. Light itself cannot be seen. What light does is to bounce off an object. To get a shaft of light you have to fill the air with something. Some things that work could include, water vapors or confetti. A very common way to get shafts of light is to use a fog machine.

Cookies When you want to create shadows that are specific shapes you can put a cutout in front of the light that is called a cookie. The idea is very simple. The shape of the cookie determines the shape of the shadows. You can also change the size and clarity of the shadow by changing the distances between the subject, the cookie and the light.