My Proposal

For my specialist subject, I want to discuss lighting in film and why it is important.
Lighting is something that I am interested in and feel like I can talk a lot about it,
including how it can completely change a scene and mood. For the examples, I want
to touch on how it is used in horror, like American Horror Story, The Conjuring and
Suspiria. For my interview, I hope to interview Paul to ask questions on the topic of
lighting in films throughout time especially in the horror genre. I also want to touch
on the technique with red and blue lighting. This technique includes switching
between red and blue filters to show different things in the same scene. Overall, I will
be producing a documentary which will be informative and even share some facts
about the psychological side of lighting in horror films.

The idea of doing lighting in horror came from looking at pictures of film sets where
they don’t have a lot of lighting, making the scene seem unnatural and unclear of
what’s going on. Whilst, looking at pictures where there is artificial lighting involved,
really showed the importance of bringing a scene together and creating a focus all
with lights. Horror came into this because it is quite a popular thing in this type of
genre and often used to create a sense of mystery and suspense.

For the production side of my documentary, I want to use Premier Pro to put it all
together and certain clips from YouTube, to present what I want to talk about. One
thing I will need to think about is how I am going to record the voiceover. I could
potentially use my phone voice recording, although this wouldn’t achieve a clear
sound and there could be complications along the way. My only concern with this
project is laying everything out in time and syncing the voice up to the video. But if I
plan out when everything comes in, I think this could go well and get the right
information across.

I would like to present these facts and opinions in a documentary style way. In the
introduction, I will be introducing the subject which is ‘how is lighting used in horror’.
I will start by touching on certain modern horror films and then do a brief
explanation as to why these create suspense and the psychological side of lighting.

I will then go into a brief history of how lighting was used in horror films back in
1930s and where it all started. From there I can go into horror films from 1970s and
2000s as they are quite different. From this I can then talk about how the technology
has improved in these films and show comparisons from the start to modern day. I
will talk about how the lighting tech has improved and how we’ve gotten from films
like Suspiria to The Conjuring. I will also look at key people in the lighting industry
especially people whose genre was horror. For example, I will research about Karl
Struss and Stanley Kubrick as these people directed big horror films and had an
impact in the industry.
Some techniques that are associated with horror that I want to talk about in my
documentary are silhouettes, these are shadows almost, that create a suspense
atmosphere and a fear of the unknown. Another one that is similar to the silhouette
technique is underexposure, this is occurs when the film base is exposed to light but
doesn’t form an image. This is quite popular in horror films for creating a colour
palette and creating a dark vibe to it.

For my own attempt I will be filming something normal in bright lights and then turn
the lights off and just have a torch on to show how much the lighting can influence a
scene.

For the interview part of my documentary, I will be interviewing my film teacher

Paul. I also will be asking the following questions:
Which director do you think has had the most impact on horror films?
Which horror film do you think has the best use of lighting in?
What is your favourite lighting technique used in horror films?
Do you agree that lighting is one of the most important things when shooting a film?
-If so, why?