Lighting And Film Noir

To enable me to contribute towards the filming of the opening title sequence I researched different types of lighting used in the filming process on a professional level. When I analysed pieces of film noir I realised that lighting is very important in the highlight genre. It often acts as a device used to create mystery and exaggerate enigma.

High Key Lighting

this type of lighting involves the process of trying to reduce the lighting ratio in the scene. It was originaly used to fix early technical problems as early film cameras did not deal with high contrast very well. The amount of light is quite large and the subject is very visible. Scenes using this type of light tend to have minimal shadows and dark areas. This type of lighting may be useful in our opening title sequence as it could highlight a particular prop or object in the room. However if it is used to much it could effect the tone and atmosphere of the piece as it remove enigma.

Low Key Lighting

This type is particularly relevant as it is very common in noir films. This is mainly due to the use of shadows. As you can see in the picture above the subject in low key lighting is a lot more mysterious and the scene  can be taken more seriously. Furthermore in high-key lighting the subject appears to be    a lot more innocent. Low key lighting generally involves only one key light and no others which minimises the amount of contrast between the background and the subject. I personally think that this type would be the most suitable for our title sequence as it provides enough light yet it shrouds the subject enough to maintain mystery.

Types of lights

Open Faced Tungsten: Larger versions of standard household lighting which uses a filament of tungsten wire.  Within this sub category there are two types; Studio and baby.

The open faced Tungsten studio lights can be virtually any size where as the baby edition is a lot smaller therefore a considerably more portable. If we use this type of lighting the studio version would be much better as we will be working within only one location therefore the portability is not relevent.

LED: The head of the light consists of many diodes which produces studio quality light. These particular lights have become very popular in the film industry as they are very efficient and keep costs low. Furthermore they do not become hot easily so this allows long periods of filming without causing damage to equipment and potential bodily harm. This type of lighting would be suitable for our opening title sequence however they produce a very white light which would be suitable as high key however if low key is used it may look bad due to the colour of the light.

Fresnels: A type of lens which is commonly placed over other lighting equipment to focus the light into a controllable beam. In the filming bussiness this technique is used to create spotlight effects. Before LED heads were used they were placed over tungsten lights.

HMI: This type of lighting, even though expensive, is a very efficient and powerful way of producing light for film. Generating approximately three or four times the level of lux than Tungsten Lights. Furthermore they, like the LEDs they do not produce large amounts of heat making them a very good option when filming for large periods of time while minimizing accident.

Conclusion:

Due to the minimal budget our production team has it does narrow the choices considerably however the school does own a series of Tungsten lights with fitted Fresnels which will allow us to customize the beam and essentially the effect on the scene