Planning Lighting and Colour - Miss Miller

The lighting and colour within a music video is essential because it can really create a particular vibe or atmosphere demonstrated in a scene. For example, low-key lighting puts a more negative mood on a scene which could change the way the audience interpret it and the representation of the artist. In contrast  to this, high-key lighting can reflect more positive and happy images, emphasising a specific emotion that may be displayed in the scene. The same is applied when making reference to colour. More vibrant and resplendent colours portrayed in the scenes give off a more positive atmosphere rather than darker colours. Particular colours can also display connotations which helps give the artist an accurate representation for example, black connoting depression. Having a variety of different lighting and colour can help distinguish between scenes, for example, some scenes may have a different atmosphere to others, which can be emphasised due to the lighting and colour. Having a variety of different types of lighting and colour also prevents the audience from feeling disengaged as it creates interest within the video. 

One of the colour aspects of the video is demonstrated most prominently through the black and white filter that will be used during the performance style scenes. The reason for using the black and white effect in these particular scenes is that it reflects the negativity of the artist's emotions at this point. We intend to display how she isn't happy with her life because of the people she has lost due to fame and the lacking of normality that she now has present in her life. The use of black and white here being so monotone in colour, suggests that she is lacking the positivity in her life which also mirrors her mindset being negative in the way she believes she will never be able to go back to the way it was before she became famous. This sombre tone is reflected in soul genre music videos as it relates to the negative personal experience in which they are singing about. Using a black and white filter is also used to help portray past in soul genre music videos and so is conventionally used in our video, however in a reversed effect. We are using the black and white filter on the present day shots instead of the past, as we want to illustrate how the artist isn't happy now but was in the past and so by using colour to help display this, we thought it would be successful in a way that the audience could easily identify this. This helps to represent the artist as being sad, depressed and overall negative about the current life she leads. Using a filter helps to do this as it is generally used to impact a whole scene, so instead of just making a particular section in the shot black and white, the extent of the use of filter mirrors the extent of how sad she is represented as being. The black is consistent through it also being the colour of the costumes worn by the artist in these black and white filter scenes. This emphasises the theme of negativity and depression with the impact on the artist which is conventional to the soul genre as making the artist wear black makes it more personal and as if it has had this effect on the artist specifically. It also shows how the negativity is sourcing from herself, but influencing what is around her (her wearing black acts as the source for the black and white filter - therefore, her negative look on her life has stemmed from her own thinking). This here represents the artist as being quite negative overall, with a lacking of hope and content feeling within themselves. 

A further colour aspect that will be featured within the music video is red - which has a high frequency of connotations. The red will be featured as the colour of the lipstick that the artist will be wearing during the performance scenes. The red connotes the love and passion of the topic that the artist is singing about. Because the red is illustrated through the colour of the lipstick, it reflects how fresh and personal it is as it literally shows the content of what is being sung that is being surrounded by love and passion. Red connotations could also be seen as reflecting anger or danger which mirrors the artist's emotions that she is angry that she cannot go back to the way it was before she became famous. As well as this, red lipstick is typically quite a classic makeup attire to represent the glamorous nature of the artist, therefore, demonstrating her fame and talent beneath the naturalistic way in which she is seen more of as in the narrative style scenes. This is conventional to the soul genre because most soul genre songs are linked to passion and personal experience that is portrayed to the audience as best as possible. The red reinforces this idea and will be displayed in a bold way in contrast to the monotone colours reflected from the black and white. It helps represent the artist as being open with their emotions and very expressive with their music as they find this is the best way in order to carry a message and feelings across. 

Other than colour, we have considered the variety of lighting that will be used within our music video. One of these types of lighting will be high-key lighting where the artist is with her friends during the narrative scenes. This will reflect the positivity of their presence and the happiness that she felt at this point in her life. The positive atmosphere created from this also further symbolises the innocence of her life. This emphasises how the artist had no worries or cares at this point in her life and she was clearly happy and content. In addition to this, high-key lighting exposes you and so, it is as if the artist doesn't feel the need to hide away, cover up or feel insecure about anything, which is in contrast to the performance style scenes where she hides herself through excessive use of makeup and by wearing black. This particular use of exposure through high-key lighting is not particularly conventional as soul genre music videos tend to use more low-key lighting in order to stress the negativity and rawness of the topic the artist is singing about. However, because exposure of emotions is reflected in a different way, through the music, this is conventional here. This helps to represent the artist in a way in which the audience can connect with the artist as they are able to clearly identify the contrast between the attitude and the way in which the artist feels in the narrative scenes as opposed to the performance scenes. 


A further type of lighting in which will be used in our music video is backlighting. We will use this during the stage performance scenes within our video in different ways. One of the ways is to simply put the light behind the artist leaving the artist outlined like in the picture to the left. As well as this, we were thinking of using the backlighting behind a screen so a more crisp silhouette of the artist is achieved. Depending on how the lighting looks, we will decide what we will actually use when it comes to filming due to the fact that we want it to look as professional as possible but the limitation of filming in school could result in the lighting not being as impacting as we'd hoped. However, we hope to use it in a successful way as it literally emphasises the presence of the artist and the power they have over the stage - especially being the only individual on it. In a more deeper connotation, it could show how no matter where the artist is, how ever positive the atmosphere is, she will always see the negative. The light acts as being symbolic for positivity and so, the way in which the artist blocks this out reflects the way in which her sadness and depression will overpower the positivity through the way in which she doesn't allow to retrieve the hope in which she is seeking. This use of backlighting is conventional to the genre of soul as it shows the artist in a way where she is expressing herself as feeling overall negative which is based on a personal experience. Additionally, the way in which you are not able to identify the artist from this light makes it conventional because it reflects insecurity and is as if they are hiding the facial expressions at this point, however, body language is emphasised. This helps to represent the artist as being insecure but resilient to feeling positive about her life now, rather than when she was younger when she was more open to positivity and welcomed the positive atmosphere that surrounded her. With this lighting, the darkness is resulted in the artist and the area surrounding the light, therefore demonstrating that around the artist is negativity as well, which is conventional as it shows to have had influence on the artist.


Our final use of lighting in which we have chosen to include within our music video is low-key lighting. This will be used throughout the video where the scenes are not trying to reflect positivity. The scenes that do reflect positivity are the scenes where the artist is with her friends and so, the low-key lighting will not be evident in these particular scenes. The low-key lighting aids to hide the identity of the artist and therefore, reflecting insecurity and a restriction on their appearance which is conventional to the soul genre as most soul genre artists tend to like to hide their identity. The contrast between the performance scenes with the low-key lighting and the more narrative scenes with the high-key lighting also demonstrates the artist's dependancy on the people around her. When she is with her friends she is portrayed as being happy, whereas, when she is alone in the low-key light, this emphasises the lack of people in which surround her. This represent her as being unstable individually and that people that surround her make her stronger. Adding to this, the lyrics of the song actually reinforce this idea as they remark 'the people I've met are the wonders of my world' which illustrates the extent of how much she admires the people from her hometown - in our video, her friends. This is conventional to the genre of soul as the artist is often represented as feeling alone or having a lack of trust for people around them. The way in which the lighting when complimented with the lyrics of the song emphasises this, makes the audience feel more sympathetic towards the artist. Having low-key lighting further demonstrates a more abundant nature of lacking light and therefore, a number of other connotations. For example, it also could symbolise a lacking of hope and life altogether, representing the artist in a way in which they feel trapped. The lack of light could present a lacking of sense of direction, representing the artist as lost in their emotions to the extent that they no longer know what to do to back away from the negativity in which they feel. This represents them as being miss-guided and unsure of what to do to improve their quality of life and to go back to how happy they were before. Therefore, the lighting will automatically help the audience's understanding of the emotions portrayed by the artist and further ensure that a relationship is created. This way, the audience feel sympathetic but also empathetic towards the artist as the lighting reinforces the drastic nature of their emotions. 

The target audience can build a relationship with the artist through the lighting and colours that we have selected for numerous reasons, the most prominent being how it emphasises the emotion the artist is intending to portray. The lack of lighting helps to reinforce the way that the artist feels negative and depressed about the current life in which she leads, demonstrating a clear contrast between how positive she felt when she was younger before fame. By having low-key lighting and monotone colouring in the performance scenes and high-key lighting in the narrative scenes, the audience are able to recognise the clear contrast between the emotions displayed by the artist at the different points displayed. This allows the audience to feel sympathetic towards the artist as they are enabled to see into the way in which they express themselves differently. The variety of lighting and colour displayed in our video will also help the audience build a relationship with the artist because interest will be ensured. With this, it enhances the audience's engagement in the music video and so they pay more attention to the artist and how in which they act within. This particular focus on the artist makes them analyse more intricately what they do and so are more likely to retrieve different emotions and feelings from them. This planning has helped me ensure that we will create a successful music video in regards to lighting and colour because it enables us to prepare what lighting we need to create and he limitations of the lighting we want to create. By knowing these aspects before filming, it ensures that we don't waste any valuable time that could be spent doing something else that is productive. For example, we know that the backlighting may be difficult to achieve to a standard in which we are aiming for due to our particular limitations. However, by planning this we have been able to test out the lighting beforehand to ensure that it will be appropriate for our filming. The planning for lighting and colour has also helped with creating a successful video as it has reassured us that the audience will understand the specific emotions in which the artist will be expressing.