In this week’s discussion, I have chosen to examine the use of Lighting in the film Blue Velvet (1986). Blue Velvet’s writer and director David Lynch wanted Blue Velvet to embody a modern-day Film Noir; a genre of film that is a mystery movie with femme-females and the end result is to solve a crime (Goodykoontz & Jacob, 2014). Lighting and Color are crucial to Blue Velvet’s cinematography uniqueness. The light in Blue Velvet used to convey the phycological impact, and message of the film, in addition to portraying the theme of Film Noir. Blue Velvet’s Cinematographer: Frederick Elmes, used a variety (and combinations) of lighting techniques such as three-point lighting, and high-key lighting, some low-key lighting, along with the full-color hued light. What makes Blue Velvet stand above most films is in large due to the lighting used to display the emotion or reaction. Audiences are accustomed to taking cues from lighting to comprehend the emotion of a scene, but in Blue Velvet, we see lighting used as a juxtaposition (Bassett, 2011) to confuse the viewer on emotion. At the beginning Blue Velvet, we can see soft shadowy lighting primarily meant for positive events and emotions, placed on bizarre and monstrous scenes the physiologically through the audience off. Media scholar Nathaniel Basset states “It is this contrast between the beautiful depth in producing the visuals and the actual content of what they convey which disturbs the audience so much”. For Example;
This scene in Rossellini’s apartment with Hopper – the lighting is soft and shadowy, and alluring but the scene is violent and negative:
The duality of emotion is also present in this provocative masochistic sex scene with Jeffrey and Rossalini:
High-Key lighting is used often throughout the film. Often high-key lighting scenes are set in the daytime. The color is over saturated and bright making it almost too intense to look at:
Blue Velvet has a unique style of lighting which is indicative of the style of David Lynch. Although the lighting may not be conventional, it does adhere to the theme of Film Noir and encompasses the air of mystery. David Lynch utilizes mise en scène to the full extent to tell its story through the use of odd angles, and visual symbolism. Mise en scène is described by Goodykoontz and Jacob (2014), as the visual elements we see in a film that gives the viewer an understanding of what is occurring in the film. Throughout the film, there is a heavy emphasis on phycological symbolism that is indicative to David Lynch’s symbols he uses in all his films, along with the emotional impact created by leaving the audience’s psyche vulnerable with visual misinterpretations.
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