Lighting

There are two main types of lighting, Hard and Soft. How somebody uses these types of lighting can drastically change the overall mood of a scene and the shape of the subjects within that scene.

Hard lighting is from sources like the sun; hard lighting is usually from a single point light source, which means that all the light is striking the object at the same angle. Since all of the light is created from the same angle, it creates a 'definitive' or a 'hard edge' on the shadows.

Soft light creates a soft shadow on the objects in the scene. This is created by a much broader light source that is coming at multiple angles, it means it creates a soft roll-off of light.

This is how something looks in hard lighting:

Notice the hard, rigid edges of the cowboy's shadow. In contrast, this is how something looks in soft lighting:

In this picture, you can see that the shadow falls in a soft gradient around the edge of the cowboy. This type of soft lighting is commonly used in films like Birdman and The Revenant for example, this is because the lighting gives off a flattering and soft look for the actors.

For my short movie, I would personally like to use a much softer lighting as I believe that it sets the tone a lot better in contrast to the harder lighting. However, this will be difficult to achieve without the proper film-making tools like light sources and diffusion panels.