Post 12: Media Language Lighting 2 (Quality & Direction)

The quality and direction of light are also very important when filming. In order to understand and learn about how to use light in our own film, my group and I researched these two aspects and at the end carried out our own experiments with light.

Quality- when referring to lighting, quality means the intensity of the illumination that the audience are viewing. This can be described in to ways, hard and soft. Hard light creates large, bold shadows with obvious textures and edges. Soft lighting is indirect or diffused which blurs contours and textures and has a softer contrast between light and shade.

Direction- this refers to the direction in which the light travels from the point of origin and the effects it creates. Every light has a point where it is at its brightest and lowest. When it is at its brightest it creates a spot light and when it’s at its lowest it blends in. the direction of light can come from anywhere; left, right, high or low.

Madonna- Vogue Video

The Madonna vogue video is a great example of showing how the direction and quality of light affect the object or persons importance. There are many different techniques used throughout the video such as light shining in different directions with different qualities and three point lighting. The lighting is stylistic and replicates the strong contrasting light and dark shadows which we saw in film noir.

The screen shot of Madonna’s face shows that she is the most important person in the video with a plain background and her face being strongly illuminated in the classic film noir style.

This screen shot shows a girl in the middle of the screen picking things up from the stage. She is made the focus of this shot with the large back light behind her creating a shadow effect with the contrast of the bright light and the girl’s dark clothes.

In the last screen shot there is a man sat in a chair who is being illuminated from the bottom left hand corner which causes an attached shadow on his face from the position of his hand.