Lighting Practice

I wanted to practice different ways of creating light and the effect that they had when thinking about how to show the killers mask. Although the appearance of the mask is known and recognisable to the audience, as are many within the slasher genre, for example the 'Scream' mask, it is still important to keep some mystery within the trailer. The fear of the unknown within horror is what is so effective for the audience.
I used four different light sources which were a lighter, match, flashlight and red flashlight to evaluate the effect of colour lighting also. I had the basement scene in mind, in which one of the teenage characters creates light through one of these methods and the outline of the killer can be seen behind her, disturbing the audience.

Red Flashlight: I feel that the use of a coloured flashlight such as this is not appropriate for the type of 'natural' light we wanted to create, making it seem unrealistic. I feel that it is not really appropriate for our chosen slasher genre, and would more likely suit a sci-fi genre trailer. Having said this, it could be used for the poster image or an image to be featured on the website as the shade of red that it creates would give a strong link to violence and gore, therefore to our slasher genre.

Normal Flash Light: This provided a strong light source, giving off a lot of light. This is not ideal, as we want to keep some of the killer covered with low key lighting. This could be done however by shining the light on one side, as shown below right, instead of straight on (below left) or held above (top) as it still leaves one side unlit. The various positioning of the flash light also creates good shadows and although this cannot be used for the basement scene as it will be too dark, we can look at perhaps incorporating the creation of shadows into another scene.

Match: The match provided decent light, enough to see the shape clearly but still keep a fair bit of the detail hidden, which was what we were aiming for. The problem was that it was hard to do without the match burning out too quickly, meaning that it may be difficult to film a scene using this as a light source as it will fade out too quickly.

Lighter: At first it seemed that the lighter did not give off nearly as much light as we needed (right.) Yet interestingly, when the match was held close to the object, it provided enough light for the object to be seen and identifiable without showing too much detail. This may be the best light choice if we find a way for the lighter to be seen on camera without looking out of place e.g teenage character using a lighter to find her way, as the lighter must be very close to the object in order for it to be effective at all.