ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at lighting and other aspects of the visual image as key elements of storytelling. In visual storytelling, few elements are as effective and as powerful as light and color. They have the ability to reach viewers at a purely emotion gut level. One of the highlights of lighting as storytelling is the era of film noir: American films of the forties and fifties, primarily in the mystery, suspense, and detective genres, nearly all of them in black-and-white. In some films, things are simply what they are. In others, however, many images carry an implied meaning that can be a powerful storytelling tool. Filmmakers who take a dismissive attitude toward lighting are depriving themselves of one of the most important, subtle, and powerful tools of visual storytelling. Studying classical art is useful in that the painter must tell the whole story in a single frame.
