Words used are words meant. Part-1

When reading about filming techniques. I enjoy the following -

*Chiaroscuro - In art is an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted.

Further specialised uses include chiaroscuro woodcut , for coloured woodcuts printed with different blocks, each using a different coloured ink; and chiaroscuro drawing for drawings on coloured paper with drawing in a dark medium and white highlighting. Similar effects in the lighting of cinema and photography are also chiaroscuro.

Giovanni Baglione.

Sacred and Profane Love. 1602–1603, showing dramatic compositional chiaroscuro.

*Origin in the chiaroscuro drawing

Chiaroscuro originated during the Renaissance as drawing on coloured paper, where the artist worked from the paper's base tone towards light using white gouache, and towards dark using ink, bodycolour or watercolour. These in turn drew on traditions in illuminated manuscripts, going back to late Roman Imperial manuscripts on purple-dyed vellum. Chiaroscuro woodcuts began as imitations of this technique. When discussing Italian art, the term is sometimes used to mean painted images in monochrome or two colours, more generally known in English by the French equivalent, grisaille. The term early broadened in meaning to cover all strong contrasts in illumination between light and dark areas in art, which is now the primary meaning.

*Cinema and Photography:

Chiaroscuro used in cinematography to indicate extreme low-key lighting to create distinct areas of light and darkness in films, especially in black and white films. Classic examples are The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) and the black and white scenes in Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979).

In photography, chiaroscuro is often effected with the use of "Rembrant lighting". In more highly-developed photographic processes, this technique may also be termed "ambient/natural lighting", although when done so for the effect, the look is artificial and not generally documentary in nature. W.Eugene Smith, Josef Koudelka, Garry Winogrand, Lothar, Annie Leibovitz, Floria Sigismondi and Ralph Gibson may be considered some of the modern masters of chiaroscuro in documentary photography.

Perhaps the most direct personification of the intent of chiaroscuro in filmmaking, though, would be Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, in which some scenes were shot using a modified Mitchell BNC camera and a Zeiss lens manufactured for the rigors of space photography, with a maximum aperture of f/.7. When informed that no lens currently had a wide enough aperture to shoot a costume drama set in grand palaces using only candlelight, Kubrick bought and retrofitted a special lens for these purposes. The naturally unaugmented lighting situations in the film exemplified low-key, natural lighting in film work at its most extreme outside of the Eastern European/Soviet filmmaking tradition (itself exemplified by the harsh low-key lighting style employed by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein).

Still from Stanley Kubrick's Barry London.

Some of which was shot just by candlelight.

*(Information from Wikipedia)