Researching Lighting

As we are planning to shoot our thriller in the studio, lighting is one of the key components we have to consider. There are many different styles and types of lighting we could attempt to recreate, as at the moment the only thing we have considered is rather harsh lighting on the subjects themselves.
Perhaps this could make our shoot more interesting.

The rather harsh lighting is the lighting that makes it easiest for us to film everything. The lighting is positioned above the subject, and from a distance where it wouldn't make the subject too bright.

One type of lighting I find very intruiging is a backlight, and perhaps using a very soft frontlight as well. The effect achieved with this kind of lighting is that a fraction of the face is in very dark shadow, only exentuating specific features. This could be very useful to us when shooting the scenes with the killer in them, as it would make it more intense - not properly revealing the killer, and having him act like a maniac at the same time makes the entire thing a little creepier and may give us that tense effect that we hope to achieve.
Using a backlight can also lead to the subject in the frame seemingly becoming more sharp, and look more defined. Also, it doesn't give off this muddy look.
Similarily to this, using a backlight can lead to silhouetting, where almost none of the features on the subject are revealed, and only the bare shape of it can be seen properly. Although it is pretty fascinating, I don't think that we would want to use silhouetting in our thriller.

Lighting is also very useful in terms of where you want the shadows to be on the subject. As an example, the hair may be positioned on one side of the face - if you wanted the shadow of the hair to fall over parts of the face, the light is positioned on the side that the hair is on. Ultimately, if you don't want the shadows to cover the face, the hair is positioned on the other side.

Also, positioning the light below the subject can lead to various shadows being portrayed which usually wouldn't be seen. As an example, the human face will have shadows underneath the eyes, the mouth, and the nose. This will make it look more eerie and could create tension as the killer would look more intimidating.