Lighting - For Any Visual Artist - Horror Movie Lighting

An Introduction

One of the critical parts of any image is lighting. It creates mood and contributes to the narrative.

It is scary how often it is overlooked in creating images I find on the interwebs. Lighting often looks "Borealis" like in that it is just one lighting over the whole scene, no shadows, no highlights, just one tone. Bleurgh! I have often seen this also referred to as "Glam Mag" or "Lad Mag" lighting.

So I decided to do a few blogs about various lighting styles. I'm starting with one of my favourite movie genres, "Horror".

These images and lighting setups were done in Second Life using the Black Dragon viewer. They are achievable in Firestorm as well (I use Black Dragon as it is my workflow).  All images are taken in a large Box I create where everything is black, this allows me to control the environment.  But, you do you.

Editing is done in Lightroom, BUT the lighting was all done in Black Dragon.  

Uplighting (The Torch)

 

This style of lighting is used in numerous ways, most often to add a sense of eeriness to the narrator of a story (around the campfire telling ghost stories). It can also be used to great effect when focussing on someone during a suspenseful chase.

For this setup, I start by creating a small light that I place in front of the model pointing upwards (this is a projector on a cylinder). I then set the environment in Black Dragon to "Phototools - Lo Light".

Then, you can make adjustments in both the Environment Editor (I adjusted haze and gamma) and I adjusted the projector light in the build tools. You want to play till you get the balance right.

Backlighting

 

 

Backlighting is used to great effect in movies where someone approaches a building, and you want to create a sense of foreboding (think Exorcist, Halloween).

For this set-up, I placed a single projector light from my LumiPro (You could just use a Projector on a Prim) above the house, pointing back to me.  

Again, I set the environment in Black Dragon to "Phototools - Lo Light". You can adjust the haze and gamma to your liking.