Lighting -
- High key lighting - everything looks bright with little to no shadow at all. High key lighting has little dramatic effect, and is often used in a scene with no tension or to attract positive connotations to a character or situation.
- Low key lighting - often used in tense or negative scenes. It comprises of a lighting pattern that has both light and dark areas in the frame.
Costume - The purpose of costume is to dress an actor according to their character. Eg Lawyers will wear suits and nurses wear uniforms.
Clothing is also used to establish someone's hierarchic level or attach a stereotype to them Eg Kings and Queens wear crowns.
Costume is also used to emphasise a personality trait. For instance a woman wearing leopard print may be characterised as a predator.
Location -
- Soap Operas like Coronation Street are based in communities.
- Young Adult tv shows are mainly based in schools or domesticated settings.
Body Language -
- Appearance - how the character appears in the role - large, small, the right size. Costume and makeup can help an actor become a character.
Staging position -
- Full front (facing the camera) : the position with the most intimacy. The character is looking in the direction of the audience.
- Quarter Turn: the favoured position of most filmmakers. This position offers a high degree of intimacy but with less emotional involvement than the full front position.
- Profile (looking of the camera left or right): More remote than the three quarter turn, the character in profile seems unaware that they are being observed, lost in their own thought.
- Back to camera: The most anonymous of all positions. The position is often used to suggest a characters alienation from the world. When a character has his or hers back to the audience, we can only guess what is taking place internally, conveying a sense of concealment or mystery.
Character proxemics
- Intimate distances - Skin contact to about eighteen inches away. This is the distance of physical involvement - of love, comfort, and tenderness between individuals.
- Personal Distances - the personal distance ranges roughly from eighteen inches away to about four feet away. These distances tend to be reserved for friends and acquaintances. Personal distances preserve the privacy between individuals, yet these ranges don't necessarily suggest exclusion, as intimate distances often do.
- Social Distances - from about four to twelve feet. These distances are usually reserved for impersonal business and casual social gatherings. Its a friendly range in most cases, yet somewhat more formal than a personal distance.
- Public Distances - the public distance extends from twelve feet to about twenty five feet or more. This range needs to be formal rather than detached.
Character Placement
- The nearer the top of the frame can suggest ideas dealing with power, authority and aspiration.
- The ideas near the bottom of the frame tend to suggest meanings opposite from the top: subservience, vulnerability and powerlessness.
- The left and right edges of the frame lead to suggest insignificance because these are the areas farthest removed from the centre of the scene.
