The Shining
Written by Stephen King and directed by Stanley Kubrick, The Shining is a psychological horror that lived up to all the popular hype around it. It was released on the 23rd of May in 1980 which made $20 million within the first three years. It follows the story of Jack, Wendy and their son Danny's move to an isolated hotel in the middle of a snowy mountain range. With the location being this, it lays the perfect foundations for a typical horror convention. After watching this film it made me feel awkward and nervy with Jack's twisted mind polluting my mind.
In the scene where Wendy believes Jack is the one who has made the marks on Danny's neck, she backs away slowly up a staircase clenching a baseball in her hand. Jack is tormenting Wendy by saying gruesome things like he will bash her brain in while she cry's with tears of desperation running down her face. The lighting in this scene is very interesting and I have my own set of beliefs about. The main lighting is coming from the window, as Jack comes up the stairs, the lighting makes one half of his light and the other dark. This symbolises two halves to Jack, the good and the bad. As he edges closer to Wendy, the lighting changes until there is no high key lighting on his face. This shows his evil transformation and also shows that all the good has gone and the bad has taken over him. At the top of the staircase high key lighting is presented which suggests that Wendy is on the stairway to heaven. When people have near death experiences they see a bright light at the end of a tunnel. This reminded me of a that and made me think that Wendy is in a near death experience of herself. The high key lighting gives us a little bit of warmth in this dark scene of Jack going mad and makes us realise Wendy is trying to find safety.
When she finally gets to the top of the stairs that is the moment she strikes out at Jack with the bat. This justified my understanding of the light being the protection in what Wendy relied on. With Jack and Wendy slowly going up the staircase, the high key lighting slowly fades away on Jack's face making his face turn red from the colour of his surroundings. This made me feel threatened because the red reminded me of danger and made him look demonic. Once Wendy strikes him, he dramatically collapses and falls down the stairs back into the high key lighting making him bright indicating he is harmless and unable to attack while knocked out. It was peaceful a ending to that scene while Wendy makes her escape from Jack. Although, I didn't still feel safe on my own behalf or Wendy's because he could wake up at anytime.
Another scene that displays interesting camera lighting is the scene where Jack is in the bar having a conversation with the bartender, Lloyd. Jack is facing Lloyd in a close-up shot with his hands on his eyes with a low key lighting in the background. I think this is trying to show that Jack doesn't want to ascend into the darkness which is indicating he doesn't want to turn bad but his mental health is too bad just to turn away from it. Low key lighting is a common horror convention and I think this is why it was put in this scene. The lighting gave me a sense of mystery, it was hard for me to understand Jack and I think this is why it was done to confuse the audience and emphasise that Jack is no longer normal. The sources of light in this shot are from the bar, behind Lloyd and candles behind Jack. The high key lighting stands out especially behind Lloyd, making every camera shot facing him seem as if he is non-existent. I felt from this that Lloyd was just a figment of Jack's imagination and that Lloyd didn't exist. The lighting on the bar lights up Jack's face from a low angle which is a classic convention of horror therefore gave Jack a creepy look about himself. The way the lighting had been placed below him made me feel as if he was a greater power or that's what he thought of himself, as if he thought he was superior. Lighting is balanced is this scene, there is a good mixture of low key lighting and high key lighting. It is a big room which is lit up with very few candles making only certain parts high key lighting. With mixed lighting gave me mixed emotions of Jack, what was happening and my security when watching the film.
Overall, I think Kubrick did a fantastic job with the lighting in this film. It definitely is a big element in this film and it makes it feel as if its part of the story. The use of low key and high key lighting throughout this film shows Kubrick has a brilliant eye for detail. High key lighting in other horror films generally means security and that it is building up for low key scenes, and that is where most scares/ false scares tend to be. However in The Shining, we do not feel secure even in the high key lighting scenes. The purpose of this horror film from my perspective is to play with your mind rather than scaring you. I think it does great in fulfilling this purpose and the lighting is amazing in doing this. For me, in certain scenes lighting is not important and I think Kubrick has done this on purpose because he doesn't want you to focus on the lighting but in other scenes you can tell he does want you to focus on the lighting. For example, the scene where Wendy is trapped in the bathroom while Jack is trying to kill her. The lighting in the bathroom didn't add any emotion or feelings to me, it was more Wendy's emotions and camera work. I think Kubrick made The Shining to perfection with making the lighting a sufficient factor in some scenes and not others.

Cold Mountain - The Deaths of Pangle and Stobrod...

Cold Mountain - The Deaths of Pangle and Stobrod...

Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain, a motion picture set in the time of the American Civil War, focuses on how harsh life was in such an environment as a mountain range.  The American Civil War was fought between the years 1861 – 1865 was fixated on abolishing slavery and left 600,000 soldiers dead after gruesome combat. Directed by Anthony Minghella and featuring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, it reached $173,013,509 in box office profiting near on $95 million. The narrative of the movie concentrates on the love of two of the protagonists, and shows their constant separation throughout the film. It is a typical Romeo/Juliet style film with the two lovers united towards the end.

This section of the film is heavily dependent on light to emphasiseand create the mood wanted by the director. He specifically uses the contrast in light for this. The soft, dim glow reflected in the characters faces by the campfire is representative of warmth and safety, whereas the cold, blue-tinted light which is present in the ‘drop-off’ behind them shows the genuine situation which they are in. When one of the characters turns away from the light, his face suddenly darkens, suggesting his sinister, threatening personality. This technique gives us, the viewer, a warning as to what is going to happen and because of this, makes us feel anxious and tense.

As said before, the light in this extract reflects the mood existent at the time of the narrative. We humans have a preconception about light. We perceive day to be safe, harmless and welcoming which is juxtaposed by night being dark, mysterious and ominous and because of this naïve reality, the director uses it to his advantage. He plays on our mind by using our prejudice so as not to waste valuable screen time explaining the mood via dialogue. This mere fact is staged so clearly in the clip. The death of the two musicians coincidentally occurs at night, while the man who is running towards safety is shown in broad daylight. The director could have included both anecdotes at night, which may have had just one effect on us as a group, fear, for both the musicians and lone man. Instead he used high key lighting for the scene of the witness seeking refuge to emphasise the safe, secure mood which daylight brings. We, as a group, did  fall into this well-designed yet so simple trap created by Anthony Minghella. 

During the start of this sequence the camera pans rightward to reveal the location of where the man is heading and what is in his surroundings, thus an establishing shot is created. Its’ composition is so well designed that both horizontal and vertical thirds are very noticeable consequently producing an image which is equally informative but also attractive. After the cut, the camera tilts from the ground to the person overlooking the landscape which again is informative and appealing. To us, we were more focused on the scenery and more taken by the picture than actually processing the information that we were given.

The footprints were captured to emphasise the distance of the journey that the man endured and by tilting the camera upwards rather than down towards the floor, it also portrays his progression. Just before the final edit, it shows the situation of the two women and then suddenly cuts straight to the same man featured at the start of the clip, on yet another trek. Parallel editing of this sort is used to show the distance between the two protagonists and is extremely effective when used in an almost invisible cut.