Datasheet

c h a p t e r 1: UNDERSTANDING LIGHTING, COLOR, AND COMPOSITION ■

In Day Off the Dead, a combination of naturalistic and 2-point lighting was

used. For exteriors, one to four lights were placed to emulate a bright, sunlit day (see

the top of Figure 1.41). For the interiors, rarely more than two lights were used; in

each case, there was always a strong key. Many of the shadows were created during

the composite, which allowed the shadow shapes to go off in unrealistic and inap-

propriate directions (see the bottom of Figure 1.41). This lent a dreamlike feel to the

piece. Depth of ﬁelds were added for many shots in postproduction.

Figure 1.41 Day O the Dead, 2003. A QuickTime movie excerpt is included on the CD as

dotd.mov.

Weapons of Mass Destruction employed high-key lighting with supersaturated

colors. The ﬁlm was constructed as a series of short vignettes, many of which served

as bizarre commercials from the future. In one shot (see Figure 1.42), a worm was lit

with a strong key from the front. The ambience and incandescence of the character’s

material prevented the need for any additional lights. The background, which started

as a 3D piece, was eventually converted to a digital matte painting.

Little Dead Girl made use of stylistic lighting. In many cases, the light hitting

the characters had little to do with the environment. In the two shots featured in Fig-

ure 1.43, the Little Dead Girl, the Lab Frog, and the Eyeball Child were given their

own sets of key lights, ﬁll lights, and rim lights. The goal of the lighting was simply to

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