Low Light Scenes in Motion Pictures and Still Photography

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liverpool_f_

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Hi everyone,

I am fascinated by low light street photography which is rather challenging on film. I love in motion pictures (shot on film,) how the moody night time city scenes look or how the dim indoor scenes have such rich blacks but also vibrant night time colours. An example of this would be almost every shot from the original Terminator, but there are a million films that pull this off. I know nothing about the technicialities of making a motion pictures on film except the real basics. They are shot on film like my still photography and given that they are typically 24 frames per second, they cannot have long exposure time. The longest possible would be around 1/30th of a second which is short enough for my hand held still shots to be blur free.

I have researched and found that the terminator was shot on a Kodak motion picture stock rated at 250 iso, tungsten balanced. In otherwords, not a high iso film.

Are there techniques that I can take from this parallel discipline or is the simple secret that the end product looks dark, but actually it was shot on a set/backlot and actually there was tons of light at the time? Is it just that through the magic of making movies they have recreated a dark scene in the final film by filming on what was a very bright envirnoment and then simply controlling the post production to make it look the same as what I recognise night time to look like in reality.

Not really sure how to research this topic other than asking folks who may already have a proper insight into what is a very exclusive industry.
 
If you're after research, Rob Ellis has some great videos on cinematic lighting. https://www.youtube.com/c/RobEllisCinematographer

There was also a documentary on the cinematography for the film 1919 in which Roger Deakins went through a lot of the principles. Can't remember where I saw it though sadly...
 
liverpool_f_ said:
They are shot on film like my still photography and given that they are typically 24 frames per second, they cannot have long exposure time. The longest possible would be around 1/30th of a second which is short enough for my hand held still shots to be blur free.
Click to expand...
Unlike still photography where we are accustomed to changing the shutter speed often, most films do not deviate from 1/48sec with 180° shutter at 24fps. Due to this, there is plenty of blur with motion-picture footage when there is movement on screen and this ostensibly contributes to the film look. Now that I think about it though, my cine camera has a 140° shutter, so my shutter speed at 24fps is actually about 1/60 (see a shutter speed calculator like here). My cine lenses are typically all faster than my still-photography lenses (e.g., f/1.2), so this helps a little.

liverpool_f_ said:
Are there techniques that I can take from this parallel discipline or is the simple secret that the end product looks dark, but actually it was shot on a set/backlot and actually there was tons of light at the time? Is it just that through the magic of making movies they have recreated a dark scene in the final film by filming on what was a very bright envirnoment and then simply controlling the post production to make it look the same as what I recognise night time to look like in reality.
Click to expand...

As mentioned, there are some techniques to make day appear as night (these always make me think of the desert night scenes in Lawrence of Arabia), but I don't think that is what they were doing in Terminator, Blade Runner, etc. Some key things that I see in films like those would relate to the lighting (e.g., lighting ratios, positioning, direction, etc.) along with colour grading (e.g., which is distinct from colour correction; many films nowadays tend to move shadows toward teal and highlights toward orange for this) and atmospheric effects (e.g., fog, smoke, etc.) These things do not ordinarily happen by accident and require some planning.

I have tried experimenting with some of these things a little bit and below are some stills from cine footage I shot around Christmas last year in evening or night conditions where I had key light, fill light, backlight and threw some colour light in the background (I often use teal to contrast with the skin tones, but a few of my earlier ones used red). These were shot with Kodak 500T, Kodak 200T, and Kodak 250D in 16mm. I'm only scratching the surface of what you could do here with light and trying to get more cinematic looks.

Are my rudimentary/experimental attempts at lighting touching on the sort of look you are interested in? To get even more of the night look with the blacks you've mentioned, I think you'd need to plan for more contrasty lighting ratios (i.e., control how much light is falling in certain areas of the scene compared to others). My key and fill are probably too closely matched (i.e., similar amounts of light), but the background and backlighting seem similar to this still from Terminator maybe (e.g., see the teal and the light in background reflected off wall)?

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skysh4rk said:
Unlike still photography where we are accustomed to changing the shutter speed often, most films do not deviate from 1/48sec with 180° shutter at 24fps. Due to this, there is plenty of blur with motion-picture footage when there is movement on screen and this ostensibly contributes to the film look. Now that I think about it though, my cine camera has a 140° shutter, so my shutter speed at 24fps is actually about 1/60 (see a shutter speed calculator like here). My cine lenses are typically all faster than my still-photography lenses (e.g., f/1.2), so this helps a little.



As mentioned, there are some techniques to make day appear as night (these always make me think of the desert night scenes in Lawrence of Arabia), but I don't think that is what they were doing in Terminator, Blade Runner, etc. Some key things that I see in films like those would relate to the lighting (e.g., lighting ratios, positioning, direction, etc.) along with colour grading (e.g., which is distinct from colour correction; many films nowadays tend to move shadows toward teal and highlights toward orange for this) and atmospheric effects (e.g., fog, smoke, etc.) These things do not ordinarily happen by accident and require some planning.

I have tried experimenting with some of these things a little bit and below are some stills from cine footage I shot around Christmas last year in evening or night conditions where I had key light, fill light, backlight and threw some colour light in the background (I often use teal to contrast with the skin tones, but a few of my earlier ones used red). These were shot with Kodak 500T, Kodak 200T, and Kodak 250D in 16mm. I'm only scratching the surface of what you could do here with light and trying to get more cinematic looks.

Are my rudimentary/experimental attempts at lighting touching on the sort of look you are interested in? To get even more of the night look with the blacks you've mentioned, I think you'd need to plan for more contrasty lighting ratios (i.e., control how much light is falling in certain areas of the scene compared to others). My key and fill are probably too closely matched (i.e., similar amounts of light), but the background and backlighting seem similar to this still from Terminator maybe (e.g., see the teal and the light in background reflected off wall)?

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Click to expand...

I love these images. They have an aesthetic quality to them that I really like. Some very meaty information as well in your post.

Lighting is something that I have very limited knowledge of. My photography is usually limited to the light that is available to me
 
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