Lighting in the film, 300: The Rise of an Empire
With 300: Rise of an Empire, the lighting used, is that of low-key lighting. Low-key lighting design looks dark overall by comparison. It is marked by extreme use of deep shadows, with very high contrast between the brightest parts of the scene and the darkest parts, which are obscured in shadows (Goodykoontz, B., & Jacobs, C. P. (2014). From the beginning of the movie, when it shows Xerxes beheading a fallen King Leonidas and his group of 300 Spartans. He then takes the head to Greece and shows them to show his power. It then shows how Xerxes came to power. The lighting is dark but enough to show the characters up close, and some of the movie is shot in 3D to give the audience full affect and almost like they are apart of the battles taking place. The many scenes shot in 3D are very detailed, from the removal of the head of the king, to the battle scenes that take place in which blood is shown splattering across the screen, to the cinders of fire shown falling like snow on a winter’s night.
Often there may be only a single source of light, coming from the back or the side of the main characters. Low-key lighting is often used for intense dramatic scenes, horror films, mystery thrillers, and the like. However, most scenes of most movies fall somewhere in between these extremes of high-key and low-key lighting (Goodykoontz, B., & Jacobs, C. P. (2014). The entire film comes across as it should as dark, eerie and limited color, which helped keep it dark, especially during the time of which this fantasy war action film was meant to portray, during the time of the Persian Empire and many lands were at war amongst each other. The Spartans were perceived as tough warriors and tough to defeat. Xerxes father King Darius 1 of Persia was a vicious leader and was brought down , killed by Themistocles of Athens with a bow and arrow, as Darius’s son, Xerxes just a young man looked on. The lighting in this film is incredible with limited back lighting. I guess you could say it has good production design, costumes, brilliantly choreographed battle sequences and stunning CGI. The benefits of the types of lighting used in this film is that it helped bring it to life, slow it down in some parts and help deliver the details in which the director, producer were trying to get across to the audience. The time frame during which these mythical battles took place were helped by the low key lighting and other parts like when they were out to sea, you could see in background maybe three point lighting to help show the sun out during a daytime battle, and the gods looking down smiling upon the Spartans, and Greeks, as they fought the Persians to the death.
References:
Goodykoontz, B., & Jacobs, C. P. (2014). Film: From watching to seeing (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. This text is a Constellation™ course digital materials (CDM) title.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V8K8LKsMnM .
The Lion King 