Lighting in Film Noir
Since we are on the topic of lighting I thought film noir would be a great example. Film noir started when filmmakers were bound by their budget and technology. Film noir scenes are heavily supported by the lighting. It uses mainly low-key lighting rather than three point lighting. Film noir uses a technique called chiaroscuro from the art world where it emphasise on the shadow and hard lighting to create depth and volume in the paintings. Filmmakers then tries to overcome the flatness they see in a black and white film by creating more contrast through hard lighting.
Film noir uses strong key light and back light to create the contrast such that it will exaggerate the low key look. Sometimes it uses the fill light to make the look seem more interesting. Hard lighting is usually used in film noir to create sharp shadows and soft lighting to create fuzzier shadows. To create a hard lighting, the light rays is pointing towards one direction while soft lighting is when the lights rays goes into different direction. The hard lighting that creates the sharp shadows of a silhouette running in an alley and venetian blinds are usually the essence of a film noir. Sharp shadows also represent strong characters. While soft lighting are usually to glamourize female characters.
An example of hard lighting is from the film called “Stranger on The Third Floor”. It uses strong key light against the character thus it forms a hard shadow on the wall. In these two pictures you can see that the light is coming from one direction as the shadows reflect mostly on the other side. This results in a contrasting depth of field. It shows how the character do not look flat. In the second picture you can clearly see how harsh the lighting is on the character. The lighting is so harsh that even though it defines and outline the character’s face it also blends and over exposed certain areas on the face.
link:www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0yZDvUzZAE
Another example, would be soft lighting that is usually used on female characters. The film called “Double Indemnity”. Throughout this clip I find that it uses soft lighting even on the male character. It can be seen in both the pictures below. However, the lighting on the male and female character differs. I feel that it uses a softer key light that is being placed behind the female character, up high and directing downwards. The lighting on the male character face is more lighted up on the left side than the right side and shadows can be seen on his shoulders. While the female character has like a halo effect on her. The light nicely falls on her hair and facial features. The shadows can be seen on her neck. The lighting effect on the female character gives a different feel, a dreamy look than the male character. As mentioned before, female characters do tend to get the softer lighting because of the personality of the character. Female characters in film noir are either loving or the total opposite, femme fatales. The dreamy lighting effect makes the audience confuse as it creates an illusion about who the character really is.
link:www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WRLqzGkzNw
I have always like film noir because of the way lighting is simply used to create so many kind of effect on the characters together with the different mood it gives. Film noir is one way to learn lighting because the contrast in the lighting and shadows can be differentiate easily. Also, you can explore using two lights or three point lighting to give a film noir look. This will be a fun way to learn lighting because not only that film noir looks cool but we can experiment and play around with how the lights and shadows appears in the scene.
References:
filmmakeriq. (2013). The Basics Of Lighting For Film Noir. Retrieved from
http://filmmakeriq.com/lessons/the-basics-of-lighting-for-film-noir/
nofilmschool. (2014). Learn The Rules of Film Noir & How to Light It? Retrieved from
http://nofilmschool.com/2014/06/rules-of-film-noir-how-to-light-it
filmsite. Film Noir Part 1. Retrieved from
http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
