Post 14: Research Short Films and their use of lighting

I decided to look at some films and carry out a textural analysis of them, the main reason behind this being I wanted to explore the use of lighting in each of the short films.

The first film I watched was:

Playground by Mark Kuczewski

The lighting in this short film is very interesting as it starts off with a small light directed at the bottom right hand side of the characters face, only revealing half of his face to the audience. It then goes to a close up of the man’s face, firstly his mouth and then his eye, again only with the light coming in from the right side leaving the other half of his face in the shadow. After the title appears, there are several shots showing different parts of the car. The lights under the roof of the tunnel that the car looks to be driving in reveal the different areas of the car and then hide them again.

After this darker period, the scene becomes lighter as the headlights of a car are clearly noticeable. Throughout the journey, we only see one side of the man's face and only one side of the women's face, this is possibly suggesting that they are both hiding something. Throughout the film the storyline line goes back to the man speaking, like he was at the beginning, in these shots only half the man’s face can be seen, this again adds to the fact that we as the audience believe he is a very mysterious man. However at the end of the film, he turns his head and a bit of blood on his forehead becomes noticeable. This adds to the mystery of where he actually is and whether or not the women was the one that done it to him.
Overall the lighting effects in this film are very good as they add to the atmosphere and suspense throughout, thus helping the audience to feel as though there is going to be a twist near the end of the film.

The second film I decided to watch was:

Flung by Fiona Walton

This film is shot in black and white. However it doesn’t use as many lighting effects as the previous film did. When the young boy has his hood up his face is darker due to the small shadow the hood is causing. This suggests that there is a darker, possibly meaner, side to the young boy which is revealed when he makes fun out of an old man. Both of the characters in this film have dark clothing on which could suggest that they are lonely characters. There is obviously some natural light used as the film is set outdoors, but the use of shadows on the characters throughout the short film can help to add tense and mysterious atmospheres.