Lighting is a large part of Film Noir, as technology available at the time (1940-1959) prohibited depth in camerawork. To solve this and add depth, the lighting technique 'Chiaroscuro' was developed, Which used dominating 'Key' and 'Fill' lighting to create depth in shots through contrasting shadows against dominant lights. The 'Key' light is the main light set up for the scene, in Film Noir, this light would be harsh to emphasise the harder shadows on the face.
The 'Back' light is used in film noir to highlight the edge of the character and distinguish them from the backround
Other Lighting techniques were developed at the time to give further detail around the face and to distinguish traits of the characters. One specific peice of technology used in Film Noir is cucoloris or cookie, placed between the light and the subject to cast a patterned shadow and suggest certain characters inside it to be suspicious or un trustworthy, a variation of this, callled a gobo was placed between the lense and light of a fixture to create a crisper, more noticable shadow.
Other such techniques were also used to create tension in a scene, for example, flags and eye-lights were used to highlight areas of the eyes and brow to emphasise the suspicious nature of a character. Lighting was also very different in film noir when establishing fem-fatales in the genre as more dominant softer fill lighting and eye lighting was used to glamify female characters as shown through the character of Phyllis Diettrichson, played by Barbara Stanwyck in 'Double indemnity' (1944),
No comments:
Post a Comment