The Shining

THE SHINING

The key to a great movie is using cinematography to control the mood and tone of a piece in order to affect the viewers' feelings. In Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", the cinematographer manipulated the lighting to create a certain mood and cast of light onto the scenes. Since lighting is the key to cinematography, it can have a major impact on a films narrative. During the scene of The Shining, entitled "Great Party, Isn't It?" the cinematographer used light to put emphasis on what was happening.

The scene starts out indoors under fluorescent lighting. Normally when filming under fluorescent light the shot is given a green tint and the colors do not produce correctly. Although, in the movie, there is no green tint, and the colors seem to be correct. To create that effect a correction gel was used. A Correction gel is a thin piece of polyester that has been dyed a specific color. When filming under fluorescent light correction gels can eliminate certain tints. Although the color correction gel for fluorescent light looks magenta it doesn't actually add magenta to the light it simply removes the green.

During the next part of this scene, one of the main characters walks around a corner and the lighting takes on a dramatic change. A strong red tone is added to the shot. In the movie the color red is a significant color. It normally hints to the audience that something of importance is about to happen. A good way to portray this in a scene is to use a color-effects gel. These gels are used to color the light intentionally.

This part of the scene also has a few shots that show a good sense of depth in the hallway. By using a hard light to illuminate the scene there is a contrast of shadows. The shadows are what create the sense of depth. The key lights in the scene are coming from over-head, which is what produces the shadows.

In the next part of the movie, one of the characters is outside at night being chased by another character in a snow-covered maze. The color temperature in this scene is different from all the interior shots. A color-effects gel, like the on used in the previous scene was also used in this shot. The entire outside shot was given a very blue tint. The color blue is a good way to indicate that it is night time. Blue is used to give the allusion of the moonlight striking the snow.

The dense shadows that were created in this scene also give the feeling of depth. When