Film & TV Language: Lighting

One aspect of mise-en-scène that is particularly important in film and TV is Lighting.

Lighting notes


Traditional studio lighting usually comes from three sources:

• The key light is the brightest and most influential.
• The back light helps to counteract the effects of the key light making the subject appear more ‘rounded’.
• The filler light helps to soften any shadows created by the other lights.  There may be more then one filler light.

The key light can be directed from a variety of angles to create different effects.

Underlighting comes from below the subject leading to a distorted effect.  This is often used in horror or science-fiction films.

Top lighting comes from above and can be used to accentuate the features of a character.  It is often used to make film stars look more glamorous.


Back lighting is when the source comes from behind the object to create a silhouette.    

High-Key and Low-Key Lighting

Low-key lighting is created by using only the key and back lights.  This effect produces strong contrasts of light and dark and creates dramatic shadows.  The effect is known as chiaroscuro, which comes from the Italian words for light (chiaro) and dark (oscuro).


High-key lighting means that more filler lights are used.  The effect appears more realistic and might depict either a sunny day or a more dimly lit scene.  The major difference is that, although shadows are still created, the contrast between light and dark is much less pronounced.  

Lighting blog tasks

You'll need to use the Film Language Powerpoint to work through the Lighting tasks. These will require two separate blog posts:

1) Create a blogpost called 'Lighting: still image analysis'

Look at the still images on slides 19-23 of the Film Language Powerpoint. Copy the images into your blog and answer the following questions for each image:

1. Identify examples of high and low-key lighting.
2. Say which depict top, back or under lighting.
3. What effects are created by the lighting in each image?     

2) Create a new blogpost called 'Film noir research'. 

Research film noir - focusing on the genre’s distinctive lighting style. Make notes on the genre and particularly the use of lighting - bullet points are fine. Finally, find a YouTube clip that fits the film noir genre and embed it alongside your research (this can be classic noir from the 1950s or something more recent - neo-noir). How does the clip fit the noir genre?

Anything you don't complete in the lesson will be homework, due next week.