Happy Hour – Oliver Jeffers

Oliver Jeffers is an NYC based visual artist whose primary medium is illustration, collage and sculpture. He is author to many successful picture books, and his work is well received both physically and over his various social media accounts, such as his Instagram.

The above image, titled Happy Hour, was published on July 25th, 2019.  I am a big fan of this painting. I like the mood, the shading and style of the picture., However,  I think the use of lighting and how it operates within the world of the image is really detailed, with lots to describe.

The painting is set during what I would consider dusk. There is a slight glow dimming behind the mounds of dirt and grass of the landscape. The lighting is soft, with no hard shadows anywhere. This could either be the sun, or light sources from the place that has the happy hour.

The overall place is quite dark. This might be because the whole place is shadowed by the light source, meaning that the lighting is quite hard. However, I believe this is just because the light is not hitting the surface at all.

The text of the happy hour sign is lit by neon lights, giving off a slight glow in the dark sky. These lights do not affect much if any of the environment around it, besides the lit letters themselves. The structure the neon letter are held up by do not receive any residual glow from the letters.

Nightcrawler (Gilroy, D. 2014) is one of my favourite films of all time. I am the biggest Jake Gyllenhaal fan, so I am slightly biased, but I love the way this film manipulates tension, making you fear the psychological power the main character of Lou has. I love every aspect of this film, and the lighting is no exception. In the short scene below, I will describe the lighting to the best of my abilities, and try my hardest not to analyse it!

Besides loving this scene for the raw emotion, power and fear Gyllenhaal instils in this scene, once returning to it with more technical and theoretical knowledge, there is a lot going on here lighting wise (check this sentence).

From the first few frames, the highting is reasonably soft, with some soft shadows coming down from Gyllenhaal’s brows and chin, shadowing his eyes and neck. The lighting is reasonably detailed on his face, with his cheekbones and facial features being quite distinct in the frame. The light itself its probably at about 60% capacity, being slightly dim overall

The lighting seems to be overhead, with the reflection from his forehead indicating so. There is the perception of outside light, which is soft, coming through the window and curtains, seen behind him in the mirror. I doubt this is having much of a practical effect on how the scene is lit. Furthermore, there is a TV behind him, which is the blue light just behind his right ear. Again, probably more for mise en scene and context than anything else.

In this split-second scene, just before the mirror is shattered, we see a light coming from inside the cabinet. It is lit from the top, and most likely an LED or something that was built into the cabinet when it was put into the set. Its inclusion is to give real context to the cabinet.

In the last few seconds of the scene, out view of Gyllenhaal’s character changes slightly, as we see more of his shirt. The white surface of his shirt and the mirror reflects and bounces light off each other, filling the scene with a little harder light,  not too much. This is seen through the darker shadows on his shirt collar and buttons.