Lighting is a crucial part of any project. With the correct lighting your work can appear more professional but much more than this can communicate on a deeper level. Different lighting conditions can create further meaning in what is being presented on scene and can resemble parts of the films narrative through lighting. Making work much more atmospheric, adding stylistic qualities (certainly true in the context of 'Film Noir'), manipulate how the viewer experiences the content within the frame and the narrative presented.
Lighting is a vital aspect to all moving image work, which is why we are doing this project. For this project we are going to be looking at film noir style lighting as it is a very bold style of lighting and so would be a good style to experiment as we get used to using light. We will be experimenting with the placement of light in order to light certain areas as well as how the light we create makes a mood and playing with this effect. We will use shots we find from film noir scenes to set up our lighting and do so in the style of these shots.
Film Noir is a style or genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism and menace. The term was originally applied by a group of french critics (film noir means black film in french), to American thriller or detective films made in the time period of 1944-54 as they largely represented this style.
Film Noir was first inspired by german expressionist films such as 'The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari' 1920 by Dir. Robert Wiene:
The mise en scene in the set design exemplifies the madness of the sleepwalking main character, due to the costume and make up. However the shadows also creates an eery feel to the scene and so adding to the madness of the character as madness is usually seen as an uneasy even unsafe personality to be around or to have. these shadows resemble this uneasiness.
All the shadows in the set for Dr. Caligari were drawn on. The shadows added to the set, created a dark atmosphere and added to the overall feel of the film. The shadows were drawn on in awkward angles and were made to be unusually dark to create a high contrast creating an uneasy appearence to the film which itself told some of the narrative (about the characters etc). Film Noir later developed on this idea of using shadowing to create atmospheres by using actual lighting in their films and this idea of exaggerated contrast and deep dark shadows to create mood.
Another german expressionist film that inspired Film Noir techniques was Dir. F.W. Murnau's 'Nosferatu' 1922:
Film Noir films often showed repeated use of techniques and characteristics, such as:
• Similar structural, thematic and visual systems
• Gangster/Thriller genres
• Violence, crime, psychological emphasis
• One cohesive visual style
Film Noir films also often showed recognisable characters and plot lines repeated in the films:
• The Femme Fatale - starting off as the innocent victim and then later in the plot turns out to be the villain so to speak and manipulates the detective with her beauty
• Detective/ Private Eye - the strong heroic man who helps the female victim, who actually usually ends up getting used and manipulated by her to do what she wants (often to kill her husband)
• The Husband - The bad guy in the film who the detective is trying to catch, and often ends up actually being innocent and become the victim
Here we see a confusion of the classic protagonist/ antagonist story telling device with shifting ‘victim’ status as the narrative progresses and the lighting used in the film displays this shift with regards to how each of the characters are lit through out the film.
Examples of Film Noir lighting:
Scene from 'Out Of The Past' 1947 - This shot shows an example of the high contrast lighting used in Film Noir. The woman in the scene is brightly lit and the man is in shadow with a high contrast between the two, making it so that the man cannot be see at all and the woman is very clear. This also displays how the lighting in film noir displayed a narrative and hints to the audience through out. As the lighting inthis scene shows how the man in the shot is unaware 'in the dark' (literally) about events that are occuring in the film and the woman who is in the light is 'in the know (for example the woman is being manipulative)
Scene from 'The Man Who Wasn't There' 2001 - This shot shows an example of silhouette lighting where the light is shone from behind the actor so that only the out line of their body is visible. The effect of this is mystery and tension, especially in this scene where there is a woman in the bath in the background of the shot who is unaware of the mystery mans presence. This kind of lighting emphasises the 'lurking' silent presence of the man and suggests he is up to no good. The same effect and atmosphere would not be given if the man was visible.
Scene from 'Fallen Angle' 1945 - This image shows how the lighting is reflecting the nature of the character and how the viewer is suposed to feel about this character, as the shadow is large and shows a dominant stance, making them appear powerful and dangerous. Again the shadows creates a sense of mysery as the identity is hidden. This too makes the character appear more dangerous and evil as it removes the viewer from assosiating the character. The lack of identity also create tension (using a similar tequniche to that in nosferatu).
Scene from 'The Lady From Shanghai' 1948 -This picture shows an example of rim lighting, where the edges of a persons silhouette is lit and some of the face is therefore visible (or even more extreme rim lighting could display literally just a glow of light around a silhouette).
This video shows a short scene from 'The Man Who Wasnt There' displaying a moving example of film noir lighting:
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Low Key Lighting:
• Attempts to create a chiaroscuro effect (chiaroscuro is the extreme contrast between light and shade).
• Needs only one key light (traditional photography usually uses three-point
lighting – a key light, a fill light, and a back light for even illumination)
• Accentuates the contours of an object by throwing areas into shade (a fill
light or reflector may illuminate the shadow areas to control contrast)
• The term "low key" is used in cinematography to refer to any scene with a high lighting ratio, especially if there is a predominance of shadowy areas it tends to heighten the sense of alienation felt by the viewer
• Commonly used in Film Noir and Horror genres to create large areas of dark shadowing and add atmosphere and mood to scenes.
Neo Noir:
Neo noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilise elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style and other visual forms that were absent in the film noir films of the 1040' and 1950's.
One example of Neo Noir style film is 'The Matrix' by Andy Wachowski 1999:
This shot from the film is a very balanced simple composition with the glass on the table central and the two chairs either side. in this scene morpheus is telling Neo he has to make a choice between carrying on with his normal life or knowing the truth and leading a different life. The high contrast of shadows in this shot suggest the weight of the decision Neo has to make and the light falling on morpheus symbolising that he is in the light and knows the truth (is living the truth) Neo is not so well lit and is therefore in the dark slightly, however he is leaning towards morpheus ad the light around morpheus, displays how he wants to know.
Our Film Noir Recreations:
Image we chose:
we decided to choose this shot due to the fact that there were not many props involved and appeared to be only one light present in the shoot to create this image and so would be a fairly simple shot to start with.
Our Recreated version of the shot:
The shot was not as simple as we had first anticipated it would be as it was difficult to get the actors nose and mouth lit (like in the image we chose to work from) and not the actors full face or crumples of the shirt he was wearing lit as well. To create this shot we had a spotlight angles from directly about the actors hand and kept the diameter of light beam that shone down small so as not to light the whole table. then to light the actors face he leaned slightly into the light and we held a dark board slightly over his head to create shadow that covered his eyes and his shirt.
Behind the scenes when we were experimenting with lighting positions:
The overall result of this shoot was a good copy image of the image we chose to recreate. When on the shoot it was difficult to compare the image we chose to work from and what was happening in 3d with the actor and props. On top of this we were working in a dark room (due to the lighting) and so this made it difficult to get everything visually exact to the image. If we were to re do this image again after seeing these result i realise that the actors hand should have been positioned in a way so that his arm was not visible and that the light beam was more to the right. however as we were just doing this project to get used to using lighting this is not a problem and the images look very similar. I am very pleased with our results.
Image we chose:
We chose this shot as a slightly more tricky shot to test ourselves with. The angles in which the lighting is positioned at in order create shadow on the actors shoulder but not back, part of his face and above shining down over his gun and onto his hand meant that we would have to use more than one light source and would have to think more about positioning of light to light these areas on our actor.
Our recreated version of the shot:
We had a light positioned behind and in front of the actor to create the ri light effect around his face and the gun. We also had a light above him to create the light on the top of the hat an to cast shadow onto his shoulder like in the original image we were working from. We did try and add some smoke to the background however we were using a 0 nicotine e cigarette vaporiser to create the smoke and it was perhaps not as thick as the smoke in the original image because of this, it was also rather difficult to control the direction of where the smoke moved to and this mean that the smoke in our image was more wide spread across the frae than in the original where the smoke is all in one main area in the frame.
Behind the scenes testing the lighting:
Image we chose:
We chose this shot to have a go at creating strong cast shadows. A typical technique often used in film noir films. The effect of this type of shadow is an emphasis of character. Th tall bold dark shadow behind the man in the image exaggerates a dominant character and aspects of power. The lighting in this shot is very strongly lit in order to create such a bold defined shadow. The further away the light from the subject matter, the larger the shadow. This shows how we will have to play around and try out different angles and lengths from the subject matter for lighting placement to try and recreate this image.
Our recreated version of the shot:
We tried to get the shadow of the actor in a similar position as possible to the image we were working from and so we positioned the light in this shot to the right of the actor slightly and fairly far away from her to create a large shadow that fell slightly infront of her on the wall she stood infront.
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