Lighting and camera angles

 I cant even begin to explain how important your lights and your camera angles are in your scene, alot of the characters mood in the scene relies heavily on said things. Now im sure everyone can guess the colors of mood that portray certain things. For instance red light may give a more evil dark mood, while blue gives a sad depressing mood but blues can also give off the illusion of mysterie, as well as green. Oranges will give out a more welcoming warm feeling, as if everything is calm and relaxing, yellows give out an upbeet feel, as if everything is happy. Remember dark colors give off a more negative feeling, but thats ok if your character is evil or if your are making a movie with a murder, dark colors are deffinalty the way to go dont think that just because the feeling is nagative, the movie wont be good, that is what audiences love, the contrast of light and dark, good and evil. Bright colors will give off a positive feeling, but be careful, they may give off some positive feelings, but there is such thing as to much positive good feelings in the movie.

Take both of these pictures for example what is the highlight, thats right, the orange, even though there is blue both on top and underneath the photo, the orange is still the main color, and if you notice, the blue is actually helping your eyes go strait to the orange, because both colors are the same on both ends of the picture, so your eyes want to be more entertained so they default to the house. It is also human nature to like warm refreshing inviting things anyway, so the orange will make them feel at ease. Just imagin if the picture was feeled with all blue, would you find that very appealing, no, because it gives off a cold fridged feeling which also brings sadness.

Now to elaberate on camera angels, very very very important stuff going on with camera angles, they can give you all characters moods at once, they can give you one characters mood, whichever you like, you just need to find what is best for your scene.

 Take these two scenes from catch me if you can for example, the one on the left shows you Leonardo and Tom talking(this is called a wide shot), but take into account where the camera is located, pretty much level with the desk underneath both there heads, why do they do this in film, well, they want the audience to feel as if they were apart of the scene, as if they are in the huddle so to speek, they want you to be able to know secrets that are being told. Then lets look at the one on the right, it is a close up of leonardo's head(this is called a close up). It usually will mean that something intense is happening, or that something intense is about to happen.

I love catch me if you can, it has so many camera different camera angles that show intensity, overpowering and calm moods, the lighting in a lot of the scenes in this movie are absolutly fanomanal as well.

Here is a challenge, go and rent Catch Me if You Can and see how many different moods you can get just from the lighting and camera angles in the scenes.

And remeber to always make sure you are setting the right mood for the scene, or your movie will look like crud.