Ok, so you're Greg Toland and Orson Welles
on the set of Citizen Kane.
You've got your characters and blocking set,
your lens is mounted and the
angle is just right.
Now what?
Well, hopefully you've shed a little light on your scene.
Now, this isn't a discount to the
effectiveness of good color scheming,
but at least in respect to creating
visual depth in a scene, most
if not all cinematographers would
agree that their weapon of choice
is light.
The science also says that the
human eye is more sensitive to variances in light
or "luminance"
than it is to changes in color
or "chroma."
Let's boil it down.
If we treat lighting like a game,
the objective here is separation.
Separation between your subject
or subjects,
the foreground and the background.
So maybe you light the background with more
intensity than the foreground.
Or maybe the reverse.
What about some combination of the two?
What about the same intensity? What's being lit now?
The separation also takes place
on the subject.
Creating variance in luminance can be as
simple as casting a shadow.
The "chiaroscuro," or
treatment of light and shade
changes based on the placement of your light.
And, when used in combination with the
objective of separating foreground from background,
this can yield some interesting,
maybe even dramatic, results.
Here's an exercise:
go back and watch Citizen Kane.
With every shot that catches your eye, pause it
and take a look around.
Where's this light coming from?
How intensely is it falling here?
And from there, you can start asking yourself,
why?
Why light it this way?
What does it say about the character, about
the story?
Light is a tool.
Just like your tripod,
just like your camera,
just like your lens.
But if watching Gregg Toland
and Orson Welles work on
Citizen Kane has taught us anything,
it's that maybe the lack of
light is a tool just as powerful
as its presence.
