Table of Contents
Types of Light
Divided by Light Direction
Side Light
When Ma Xiaojun opened the door lock of Milan’s house for the first time, the sunlight in the house shone on his face. What the camera photographed was obviously the side light lighting effect. The picture changed from the dim in the corridor of the residential building with no rising sun to the sunlight filled with most of the picture, which seemed to indicate an upcoming major change, This time, a series of events happened after the ghost opened a secret lock, which also brought great influence to Ma Xiaojun’s life in his youth.
Slant light: refers to the light projection direction and the camera direction at a horizontal angle of 45 ° The light of the sun. The surface texture and outline can enrich the dark level of the picture and play a good role in modeling.
After his father left, Ma Xiaojun was bored to peep at the girls dancing in the army compound. His naughty companion smashed the window he peeped at with a stone, and immediately turned to look in the direction of the stone. At this time, a slanting light just outlined Ma Xiaojun’s face in his childhood. His round, plump, bright eyes were staring at the back, like a disturbed monkey, That kind of naughty child image suddenly highlights.
Divided by Light Intensity
- Strong light: make the subject bright and clear, clear outline, soft and fresh. Milan, the heroine in the play, often uses the strong effect of overexposure to create her purity and softness.
- Weak light: make the subject dark and fuzzy, the outline and details are not obvious. Every time there are scenes of Ma Xiaojun and his mother in the film, the producer always uses low light, creating a somewhat discordant atmosphere with a slight generation gap.
The Role of Lighting in Movies
- Exposure function: lighting makes the film get accurate exposure, so that the film can get normal film density after development.
- Modeling function: according to the requirements of photography art creation, the lighting makes the picture in the second space appropriately present the artistic effects of the texture, three-dimensional sense and space sense of the subject.
- Composition function: the lighting effect can highlight the main body, and balance the composition of the picture, so that the composition has a formal aesthetic feeling
- The role of drama: In the film “sunny days”, lighting is far from completing the first three tasks mentioned above. Here, as one of the audio-visual language of film and television, “light” has become an important means to create dramatic effects, which is vividly displayed.
1)The characterization of light. Milan, the heroine of the film, is very particular about the light treatment. Milan is a mysterious figure who has never been seen in the film at the beginning. It exists in the photo, hazy and beautiful. She often uses backlight and overexposure to make her look bright and beautiful.
2) The rendering of light to atmosphere. Light plays an important role in the creation of environment and atmosphere. The bright sunshine is joyful and light, and the bright moonlight is quiet and peaceful. In sunny days, the flowing light overlaps and the floating light flows quietly, rendering a lot of beautiful artistic conception and extending a poetic picture.
3) The construction of the theme of the film. In the cultural revolution period, under the political repression, ideological confinement, darkness and haze, life was full of this kind of fighting. The director showed the rebellious, crazy, impulsive and confused youth of that era with the dark yellow tone.
Lighting Treatment of Film
In “Sunny days”, light is regarded as the core and subject of narration. The core of “Sunny Day” is a kind of idealistic, high spirited and magnificent passion. The treatment of light in “Sunny Day” is just like the catharsis and eruption of passion. The whole film is shrouded in a golden, warm, brilliant and brilliant light, reflecting a special era, expressing the passion in my heart and the theme of the work. The use of light in “Sunny Days” is so accurate, incisive and exciting. There are three kinds of light distribution in the film.
Outdoor lighting:
In order to better express the theme of the film, outdoor lighting is mostly taken in “Sunny Days”, in sunny and “transparent” conditions, such as walking on the roof.
Indoor lighting
Indoor lighting is mainly high wattage spotlight lighting, creating and rendering a warm and golden lighting effect. For example, the bedroom of Milan where Ma Xiaojun saw the picture of “the man in the picture”, the water room where Milan washed her hair, the classroom where little girls danced, the Moscow Restaurant, etc.
Through the analysis of the film, we can simply sum up several functions:
① A sense of form. The high wattage spotlight lighting makes the shooting environment spatial and hierarchical. It makes the body and face of the character have a clear contrast between yin and Yang, and has a strong modeling effect.
② Beautify the characters. The high wattage spotlight lighting greatly beautifies the character (Milan) to be praised in the film, and vividly shows Ma Xiaojun’s strong poetic and beautiful love. For example, goodbye to the paragraph “man in the picture”. Close up Ma Xiaojun’s hand gently strokes a long hair. The golden sun was shining on the hair of the man in the picture. With the sunshine shining on his hair, he expressed the romance, beauty and poetry of love in Ma Xiaojun’s heart.
Subjectivity. High wattage spotlight lighting makes people and environment more subjective.
Juvenile perspective. The high wattage spotlight lighting makes the shooting environment spatial and hierarchical. It makes the body and face of the character have a clear contrast between yin and Yang, and has a strong modeling effect. The contrast between yin and Yang is strong, and the modeling effect is distinct, which is exactly the young ma Xiaojun’s view of the world and things. This is the film “Sunny Day” of the lighting treatment of the unusual outstanding point.
For example, in the first paragraph of “the man in the picture”, the lighting makes the room of “the man in the picture” clear. At the beginning of the passage, Ma Xiaojun stood in the shadow with a telescope in his hand. Later, Ma Xiaojun saw the “man in the picture” on the wall through the telescope. Ma Xiaojun step forward, Ma Xiaojun from the shadow to the bright sun. With the dark and bright changes of light, this paper describes the great excitement in young ma Xiaojun’s heart and the awakening of his sacred and great love.
Overexposure
There are also some special lighting treatments in “Sunny Days”. In some paragraphs of the film, the producer intentionally overexposed the film. Such as for Milan hair behind the paragraph, in Milan’s room shooting Milan. Close up Milan is wearing a white coat and a long black braid hanging over Milan’s chest. On the one hand, we use special film with strong grain contrast for high-profile photography.
At the same time, the intense light distribution makes the subject overexposed. High profile photography and overexposure make Milan’s black hair and white clothes more prominent and strong, and further increase Milan’s aesthetic feeling and unreal feeling like the people in the painting.
In short, through overexposure to express the beauty of the subject, the madness of love with Ma Xiaojun and his special mentality.
“Sunny Days” is like a restless youth light and shadow diary. It outlines the silhouette of time with bright color and yellow halo. It sets the belief of youth with brilliant light and poetic picture. Director Jiang Wen uses his artistic hand to engrave a beautiful time album and play a concerto of light and shadow.