Lighting
Lighting is very important in horror because it can determine the atmosphere and emotion it creates for the audience. For example, a group of teenagers in a park in high key lighting represents them as innocent children playing in a park, whereas low key lighting would change the way the audience perceives them and makes them come across as mischievous and dangerous. If this was a horror film, low key lighting would be the perfect lighting to use as it creates the right atmosphere intended to scare the audience and make them aware of unordinary and mysterious actions taking place. This could also be the case in a forest at night time. An individual character walking through a dark and isolated forest would create tension, whereas if it was day time and had the sun lighting the way for the character to see everything, it wouldn't have the same effect. Low key lighting immediately suggests danger, especially if the scene included snippets of lights, such as shadows that show the character is in danger and something is going to happen to them. Darkness gives the audience the fear of the unknown and makes them concerned for the worst that could happen. Another good way to use effective lighting in horror is in a dark and quiet street. The use of street lights shining down onto a character creates tension and makes them seem vulnerable. It can also, again, create shadows and make the character seem in even more danger and not alone on their walk. The idea of a single light can open up the possibility of many different things happening to the character and makes the audiences' imagination think of the worst possible outcome or consequences for the victim.
Throughout our opening title sequence we have a used range of lighting that only allows the audience to see part of the character or just about see them. There is then contrasts where the scenes are really light and uses daylight. We chose to do this because it makes the audience focus on certain things and become more aware of the dangerous aspects in the film. An example of this is the mirror scene where the killer is looking into the mirror. We used minimal light apart from some sunlight glaring through the window which reflected off the mirror. This makes the scene much more frightening as the main thing you can see if the face and possessed eyes of the killer. The small amount of light glaring off the mirror also brings to life the red blood dripping down the mirror. By emphasising the blood and the face of the killer, it scares the audience and makes them look out for them in the rest of the opening sequence. For the scene showing the killer in the distance, we used daylight to make it obvious the killer was an ordinary person in an ordinary location. This made it even less usual for the character to turn out to be a killer and so dangerous. The daylight and normal lighting eventually changed into all dark lighting which made the audience change their perspective of who is innocent and who is not and become much more worried of what could happen throughout the rest of the film. Therefore, the use of lighting, especially dark lighting and night time, is very effective and important in making our horror OTS live up to its slasher sub-genre and constantly scare the audience and make them think of what could happen next.
The below images are all examples of horror lighting that inspired us in our own OTS:
The below images are all examples of horror lighting that inspired us in our own OTS:
Single lights and dark lighting at night time (street light, ceiling light, lamp light)
Shadows (wall, street, forest)
Below are some screenshots from our trailer that include the lighting idea we researched and liked the most. It helped to contribute the mysterious and unknown atmosphere we were trying to create for the making of our trailer, such as the dark lighting outside the house but with lights on inside the house to provide some lighting that creates a sense of uneasiness and is if there is something or someone in the house along with the girls.