Term: Lighting

Lighting is responsible for the quality of a film’s images and often a film’s dramatic effect. Early photoplays were usually filmed outside, with natural light, or in studios with glass roofs. Eventually, better lighting techniques made it possible for studio productions to have a more natural look.

German Expressionist filmmakers of the silent era started to experiment with light to create chiaroscuro lighting–the presence of extremely dark and light areas in an image.

Hollywood developed a distinct style in the first three decades of the sound era, marked by carefully balanced studio lights in a style known as three-point lighting (consisting of key light, fill light, and backlight). While this lighting style often seems artificial and unreal, it is very much like classical editing–that is, a pleasing composition that is meant to be unobtrusive. At the same time, the 1940s and ‘50s in Hollywood saw the rise of film noir. Taking many stylistic cues from German Expressionist filmmaking, the lighting in film noir often makes use of low-key lighting, bringing about a dramatic interplay of light and shadow.

Many of the first innovations with lighting occurred in black-and-white films. But there are notable examples of color films that made excellent use of lighting. This clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1957) demonstrates how compositional effects can be created using different colors.

During the 1950s, more sensitive color film stocks came into use, allowing filmmakers to integrate lighting into the mise-en-scène and achieve a more natural image. Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975) employs lighting in a far more naturalistic way than early color films did. This scene from the film is lit entirely by candlelight.

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