This week we’re trying to get the classic Film Noir look using just one light and some
household objects.
Let’s start with lighting - a clear theme in Film Noir is the use of hard shadows.
I’m going for this fairly neutral look, which is very common in these films, just
a small nose shadow slightly to one side. Since the shadow is lower than their nose,
we know we’ll need our light to be up fairly high.
And because the shadow is smaller, we know that their light was more in front of the
actors, rather than to the side, where there would be a lot more shadow.
So based on that, I set up my light almost directly in front of my nose.
I’m using the LED100D Mkii+ that Pixapro sent me, since it has that single, small light
source that will be great for those crisp shadows.
Now I started out with the Pixapro light on full power, so for a decent exposure I had
to set the lens to f/6.4. Now we’re trying to convince the audience
that the light in this scene is coming from that lamp, so, I dimmed the Pixapro light
way down, and then widened my aperture to f/4.
Now we’ve got the same exposure overall, but we can actually see that light is coming
from the practical lamp, it’s motivated. But I think that whole desk is too bright
now, I feel like my eyes don’t know where to settle in the frame..
So let’s do some problem solving. We want less light on that desk, so we’ll pan our
main light to the right, so the beam is more focused on our character.
That sort of worked, but it’s introduced another problem, this reflection back here…
So let’s point our light back to the middle.
Another option is to physically block the light using black wrap.
So we’ll attach the foil and mould it until it’s blocking the desk, but this solution
has created another new problem… I think this frame just looks strange.
If this lamp is where the light is supposed to be coming from, then why is it so dark
right behind it? The light is no longer motivated, to me it
looks a lot more like a film set, than an immersive world that the audience is supposed
to believe in. So, I scrapped the blackwrap, and finally
realised, wouldn’t it be easier to just block the reflection directly?
Let’s pan the light away from the desk again, but this time we'll stick a paper towel in front
of the glass. Now we can freely point the light away from
the desk without any reflection problems.
So the point is, three different solutions I came up with just created more problems…
And that’s how it goes for me when I’m lighting, you change one thing and it ruins
something else completely. But, most of the time, we will find the real
solution eventually, it just takes longer than expected.
And, you know that’s true for most aspects of filmmaking.
Now, the Noir look is about a lot more than just lighting - let’s look at costume.
Admittedly I’m not going full on with the costume here, still wearing my jeans and a
t-shirt, but you get the idea. The typical protagonist in a classic Noir
would never be caught wearing a flowery shirt, he’s a hard-boiled working man.
The hat naturally pairs with our hard shadows, making for a cliche introduction to a stony
detective who’s mysterious and morally questionable.
Let's clear the desk since our detective probably wouldn’t have any of this stuff around,
and let's look up some reference photos, which are always a great starting point.
I couldn’t get hold of a typewriter without spending any money, so let's grab a magnifying
glass, plenty of folders, even photo albums to give the impression of a busy detective’s
documents. Finally, let’s switch out that lamp for
something that's office-like.
After doing this, of course the new lamp is even brighter, so once again we need to darken
that desk. Let’s try the black wrap again, completely
blocking out the table and most of the background. This time I think it actually worked, since
that lamp is bright enough that it gives us plenty of light to still look motivated.
So there we go, using just one light, and some things I found around the house, we have ourselves
a fairly simple film noir style set up of a detective.
My name’s Simon Cade, this has been DSLRguide and I’ll see you next week.