Film Noir - Lighting

Film Noir

This image uses a range of lighting techniques to connote the story line and connote the characters personality. As you can see the use of high key lighting on the girl shows her facial expressions, her costume, her props, her posture, and her make-up. Her facial expressions illustrate that shes a dodgy character. She looks very serious as shes giving direct contact to the camera. Her costume is smart, as if shes wearing school uniform, this can connote that shes actually a school girl who's of to a mission or she has been given this clothing from her 'boss'. She is also wearing shoes with heels making her look taller, giving her the most power as she stands out. The props used are guns connoting that this film is a action film, and it also looks like a thriller as the shadow of a person is shown behind the main protagonist. The guns connote what type of character she is, it shows shes violent, its also stereotypical as its unusual to see girls with guns, however in those times is was normal. Her posture shows her power as shes standing with her chest pushed forward. Shes crossed her leg bringing in her feminine side, shes making herself look glamorous. Her makeup indicates that her character is very 'modern' shes wearing lipstick, and dark eye makeup to connote that shes a serious character, and that shes very fashionable, The high key lighting is also used on the smoke to create a 'smoky' scene to create tension and suspense. There's also two spotlights coming from the back but you cannot see the object, it looks like a car. The low key lighting is used on the other character, as you cannot see him but you can see a 'dramatic' shadow of him, and also the contrast between light and dark.

The concept of lighting for film noir is deep and complicated topic but a great subject for modern filmmakers. Film noir was created by filmmakers who were bound by their budgets and their technology. But they weren’t limited in their talents – that makes this an excellent starting point for studying lighting.

The common thread of film noir lighting is low key lighting – a style called Chiaroscuro in the art world. Chiaroscuro emphasized shadows and harsh lighting to create a sense of depth and volume in paintings. Cinematographers working in the classical film noir era sought to do the same thing – trying to overcome the bland flatness that bright black and white film could have if there’s not much contrast.

In Film Noir, the most prominent lights are going to be strong keys and back light. Fill light is not as dominant as we want to exaggerate the contrast and get that low key look.

Film Noir generally uses “hard lights” – the hardness or softness of a light is the type of shadows it creates. Hard lights leave sharp edged shadows – this is created by a single point source of light where the light rays are running more or less from a single point in space. Think of a bare halogen bulb. Soft lights leave fuzzy shadows and are created by a larger area of light where the light rays is being scattered in different directions the illumination is coming from many points. Think of this like a frosted bulb or Compact fluorescent