Lighting

I have offered to complete research on lighting when we were discussing research roles and assigning different roles. I chose to complete lighting as one of my research roles because I am interested about how they use lighting in horror films and in different scenes.

Types of Lighting
High Key Lighting: This type of lighting is very powerful and bright and also helps reduce the amount of contrast between light and dark, which therefore removes shadows. Also the emotional effect of high key lighting is that it suggests happinesses and postivity. This type of lighting is not a convention of horror genre as dark and sinister lighting is mostly used as it hides characters identities and creates mystery for the audience, but we probably would not use this type of lighting as we want to follow some conventions of the genre.
Low Key Lighting: This type of lighting works as the opposite of high key lighting and is very dark and tense, this lighting helps create shadows and creates a high contrast between light and dark whereas high key reduces contrast. Also the emotional effect of low key lighting is that it suggests fear and sadness. This lighting is very common in horror's as it adds to the tension and excitement of the unknown.
Backlighting: This type of lighting illuminates the character from the rear and creates a silhouette of characters or even objects which creates a feel of mystery and suspicion around a character. This is common as it hides the characters identity

Ways of Lighting a Horror Scene
An example of a great lighting technique in horror films is backlight a way this could be used in our film trailer is to have a dark room and to have a character who has mystery surrounding them to stand in a door way and have high key lighting come through the door to create a silhouette like effect, this creates an atmosphere of mystery and suspicion around this character but also women are normally the characters used for this lighting effect as the high key light defines the women's curves and body shape which sexualises the character and applies the male gaze theory.

Another great way of using lighting is that it can create sinister silhoeuttes of characters, however mainly antagonists are used as this hides their identity and creates fear for the audience as they are unaware of the identity of the character. Also when postioning the lighting behind where the character is standing the lower it is the longer the shadow is, but when the lighting is at its lowest the silhoette of the character appears large which gives the idea that the character who is standing in the light is powerful and dominant.

Conventions of Lighting
Lighting is an important part of horror films, this gives the effect that they is a presence of a unknown being in paranormal films and it can also hide characters identity which scares the audience as the character have a atmosphere of mystery around them. Also lighting can be used to create shadows on the walls and floor to show that danger is coming and that the person who's shadow is shown is dangerous and violent. The lighting can be used to represent a warning to the audience for example artificial lighting like a table lamp could flicker to scare the characters and act as a pre-warning that danger or something is going to happen also it lights the room up so everything is more visible.

What I have learnt from this?
From this research I have found that using low key lighting is a must as this is a very common convention in horror films and would fit into our narrative well as our horror sub-genre is psychological therefore it should impact the mind and get the audience thinking and low key lighting would help create shadows and hide characters identity which will make the audience focus more. Also backlighting would be a good lighting method to use as this can fit in with male gaze theory and also fit some stereotypes of horror genre as the female's silhouette could be clearly defined through backlighting to show the shape of the female's body. Lastly using artificial lighting can have multiple roles in the horror trailer, for example artificial lighting like table lamps and ceiling lights help light the room and increase visibility for the audience but this could also scare the audience as flickering lights give the audience a sense of reality and therefore this scares the viewers and prepares them for what may come next and also sound can help increase the tension of the situation therefore lighting and sound combined help create dramatic scenes which can help us create an effective trailer.