For my last reflective post for the studio, I wanted to do a short lighting analysis of one of my favorite childhood films in Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban, which ushered a darker and more mature tone for the franchise that is heavily shot at night. The analysis links in nicely with our study this week of lighting scenes at night using the ambiance of the setting and re-explores the rationale behind motivated lighting.

The scene starts with an establishing shot (above) looking down on the space that expresses the motivation for the lighting on Harry, coming predominantly from a florescent street light circled blue, that creates a top light glow around Harry’s hair that brings him out from the dark background (below). The playground scene behind him appears heavily filled yet not removed from naturalism as the cool hard lighting mimics the ambiance that could be believably be achieved by the moonlight. The moon is established as being the motivation for the fill by the expansive soft glow in the top right of the establishing frame circled in red.

The key light is also acknowledged by Harry when it starts flickering and extinguishes, adding to the believability that the street light could singularly be responsible for the lighting in this scene. When the street light goes out, it sucks the warmth out of the scene which is now proposed to be lit entirely by ambient moonlight which is cooler. It’s evident when comparing the above and below shots, that additional light is being pumped onto the left side of Harry’s face given away by the sudden brightness of the spotlight glowing on the footpath screen left (below). This is disguised by a cut between the street light and this shot which aids the subtlety of the light transition.

I really like the lighting qualities present in this scene. It clearly establishes naturalism through the lighting decisions that reflect the ambience of a dark street, and is highly motivated by the sources you would expect to expose such a location at night. Despite this, the lighting is highly dramatised through the use of juxtaposing colour temperature between the blue street ambience and the warm glow of a street lamp. When the street lamp is switched off, it leaves a cold and empty scene that not only foreshadows the danger that follows, but is highly functional on both a creative and technical level. It’s very cleverly constructed.

Tuesday’s class was a grounded one that encouraged me to think about the function of lighting beyond simply what it does for the mood or atmosphere of a scene. Whether consciously aware of it or not every film has a lighting ‘style’ that is indicative of the cinematographers ‘look’ they are going for with a given film. As Robin put it, it’s something that’s difficult to describe, but each film has its own look that’s achieved through lighting. Looking back at Chopper, the film I analysed last week, the lighting is incredibly distinctive through its use of colour temperature and exposure which sparked my initial interest in colour temperature to begin with. It was a look the cinematographer was very consciously aware of, going to the extent even of using different types of film purely for the sake of achieving the colour profile present during the scenes at Pentridge prison. This lighting style creates a general ambience that is reflected across the whole film. In the case of Chopper, the lighting aesthetic is deliberately ugly to emphasize the twisted and detached nature of Chopper’s reality. It’s a hyper-stylised look that has become a trademark of Geoffrey Hall’s (Chopper cinematographer) other work, which includes Red Dog. While not a particularly amazing cinematographer, his work demonstrates how every cinematographer has a style that is predominantly established through their lighting decisions.

Screengrabs from Geoffery Hall films:

Chopper (2000)

Red Dog (2011)

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2010)

The question has been raised throughout the course regarding what the function of lighting is, particularly in a drama film, and how it functions. In the case of Geoffery Hall’s work above, the lighting functions as a dominant display of ambience. It’s incredibly expressive and overwhelming, but in ways that are completely intentional not just as a narrative device, but as a preferred visual spectacle, regardless of how ugly the look is.

In Tuesday’s class, we had our group presentations and one of the requirements for assignment 4 was to analyse that of another group, in my discussion of this I made reference to how analysing the Australian film Chopper (refer to http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2019/09/22/film-light-reflection-on-other-presentation-wk9/). I decided an analysis as part of this reflection would beneficial to generating ideas as to how colour temperature can be used to create meaning in films, which is the purpose of our group’s upcoming second investigative piece.

The film is split into two acts, with the first half taking place inside Melbournes now closed Pentridge Prison, where it’s subject Mark Brandon Read spent most of his life inside. To recapture the sterile ambience of B block, Dominik shot on a different kind of film which had a natural alteration on the colour temperature, as well as extensive use of blue lighting and deliberately overexposed shots. This is complemented by the costume design which emphasises the blue temperature spectrum. All these elements come together to convey Reads loneliness and isolation, which Dominik describes as the most fascinating part of the film’s character analysis.

I think it would be a really awesome idea to make a scene based on the stylistic choices made through colour temperature in this film if we were to go down the path of making a new and more fleshed out scene. At this stage it appears we will be picking up where we left off with our first investigative piece, however, the mood created through colour temperature in Chopper is very much the purpose of what we aim to achieve next.

On a side note, I missed Thursday’s class because it wasn’t justifiable to commute while the Geelong train line was under repair. My apologies. I have continued to collaborate with my group regarding our second investigative piece.