LIGHT SOURCE: IN THE MOOD? CREATING MOOD WITH LIGHT

One scene, many moods. Let the lighting do the work. The next time go to a movie or rent a video, pay close attention to the way the director uses lighting to help create the mood in a scene. lighting designers work very closely with directors to build a lighting scheme that adds to the drama of a scene and intensifies the emotions we often just attribute to the actors or the action. Lighting can make a scene feel happy, sad, mysterious or even dangerous.

This  we will talk about the various ways lighting is achieve, different emotional feels. 

• Light Quality

To master the art of altering mood with lighting you have to remember a few basic principles. The hardness or softness of light effects mood dramatically. The more diffused the light is, the softer and smoother it will look.  looking at a shadow cast by the sun, On a bright sunny day, the shadow is dark and the edges are very sharp because the sun is a strong, intense light. that is called hard lighting. On an overcast day, the shadows have very little definition and are soft at the edges. This is because a huge diffusion layer of clouds covers the sun. which is refered to as soft lighting.

How to control the hardness or softness of the light. light intensity is dependent upon its distance from the subject. If you double the distance of a light from the talent, you are decreasing its intensity by one fourth. If you halve the distance between the light and the talent, you quadruple the intensity of light. 

•  Controlling Mood

The quality of the overall lighting scheme and its effect on mood is often dependent on the relationship between the key and fill lights. If they are about the same intensity, the scene will be perceived as bright and happy. As the fill becomes less and less intense, the scene becomes more dramatic. The back light also plays a role. The more intense the back light, the more dramatic the effect.