The Polar Express – Mise en Scene – Lighting

This weeks blog we are to look at the impact of lighting choices on the creation of meaning in a film. I am going to look at the film The Polar Express.

Identify the type of lighting used in the film (traditional three-point, high-key, or low-key) and assess the impact of the lighting used to establish the theme.

 

• What are the benefits of the style of lighting used?  This movie was a little different in that is was one of the first movies that used combine performance and technology, and what they called “performance capture”. In this movie they used a lot of low-key lighting at that it was mostly portraying night time and the North Pole. Using a lot of the lighting from the trees and Christmas lights. The scenes from the North Pole did a lot of this for the effect of Christmas town. They did use some high-key lighting as well during the train ride with the children. Being that its done on the computer they can add any lighting of effects that they was to do. Working in a 3 dimensional world they can have the camera’s where ever they want or need them to be. Using the virtual camera’s and lighting is much like the real thing but for computers. I think that this all did work together to make the film life like.
• How did this technique contribute to the theme?  I think that this technique did contribute to the film and making it magical like Christmas is for us as children. We all wait up for Santa hoping to catch just a gimps of the this mystical person that we hear stories about. As for adults we all watched this movies wondering how did they do that and is that Tom Hanks? How many times is he in this movie? Being that this movies theme is about believing, it did bring back the magic of Christmas and the lighting did a lot for that. Even though they were working from a computer and maybe a warehouse they still pulled off this magical place at the North Pole. The train ride and all the character’s were all very life like and draw you into the story.

• How was the lighting techniques suited to the genre of the film? I felt that it worked very well with the genre of Fantasy and Animation. It was a combination of both and I felt that it did very well. I also found it very interesting how they used technology and computers for this movie.
• Compare how the scene would play if different choices had been made?  I don’t think is would work because the way that Tom Hanks was able to do all together different characters through out the movie was great. You couldn’t tell in the way you do in other movies and with animation it was very different they we had seen before.