Nora Martinez’s HUM210 Blog

Three Point Lighting

The technical description of three point lighting I found in an online geocities glossary that draws from Bordwell/Thompson’s Film Art or Monaco’s How to Read a Film:
three-point lighting

a common arrangement using three directions of light on a scene: from behind the subject(backlighting), from one bright source(key light), and from a less bright source balancing the key light (fill light).

On a separate page I found how the lighting is use to enhance the 3D characteristics of and object, it fools the mind into believing that it is receiving light form a standard light source. The effect helps to draw attention and point and is a popular starting point while filming.

Lighting

I found a site where Director Vilmos Zsigmond shares insights in to lighting and comments on Hollywood’s lack of proper use of lighting to create the proper mood. He seems sad that lighting is so over looked as an important part of film making. This is attributed the time and care associated with proper lighting, all of which would diminish the bottom dollar by require that more time be spent considering the lighting factors. He also bring up the point that what life looks like and what it looks like when filmed can be very different. If we look at documentaries that usually use relatively little additional lighting  for effect, we can then see how much care is taken or should be taken to present film that looks like real life.
 

Shot/camera movement,

In Blake Harris’s The True Art of Screen Writing he describes the use of the different camera angles to represent the scenes displayed:

-The pan shot swings that camera horizontally

-The tilt Shot tilts the camera up or down while staying in one place.     
-The tracking shot moves the camera usually next to a moving subject, many times on tracks
-Crane Shot  uses a crane or other above ground platform like a helicopter to film from either directly above or very high angle. 
-The steady cam is a shot filmed with a camera held by the cameraman using some kind of stabilization device.

Works Cited
Glossary of Film Terms. “Glossary”. Geocities.com. 1/27/01. The 7^th Art, art of cinema classic & foreign 3/11/06. http://www.geocities.com/the7thart/film-terms.html#t>.
Harris , Blake. The True Art of Screen Writing.1999. Fortune City. 3/11/06. http://victorian.fortunecity.com/cloisters/46/ch8.htm>.
Silberg,  Jon. “Master of Light”. American Cinematography  .October (2004) Page 2 . 3/11/06. http://www.theasc.com/magazine/oct04/vilmos/page1.html>.