Juan Stevens – Untitled (2014?)

I feel like I need to say about this upfront that while I think it’s deeply flawed, I do also think it’s a splendid image.

The points of criticism I have are that with the frame of the window in the background and the positioning of the woman, the composition does not suggest extension beyond the frame edges–thus her feet are essentially amputated, relegating her to the position of a signifier for both physical desirability and carnal accessibility. (I also love that the sharpest point of focus is slightly behind her head.)

That being said it is countered somwhat by the backlighting which controls what is concealed vs revealed (identity vs graphic depiction of erogenous zones). That aspect of the image is impressively sensitive and astute.

From the standpoint of visual grammar, this is a mess. The strident blue cast is beyond over the top.

Although that cast does contribute an undeniable tonal immediacy to what is depicted, it’s overly stylized in a way that isn’t justified by the context suggested from the frame.

It’s clearly full day-light beyond the blinds–pro-tip: as much as you think those standard issue Venetian blinds in your suburban cul de sac community can be made to recall Sin City, you’re dead wrong.

But let’s stick with the idea of Sin City for a minute because there’s something worth teasing out there. Sin City hinges on a visual conceit–a world embodying the overly stylized tropes of film noir.

Hollywood studios and backlots allowed filmmakers access to almost unlimited lighting and control over that lighting. So in most B&W movies through the early 1950s, you can tell whether a scene is happening at night or in the daylight just by how it’s shot. It’s not always convincing but it is consistent.

But as people moved towards shooting on location, this shifted. You can’t haul unlimited equipment all over town, obvs.

When I used to teach a crash course in lighting for cinema to undergrads, the question I always got was how to shoot exterior night scenes. And that’s a good question that lacks an adequate answer.

I think when people ask that they mean: how do I shoot something so it looks like Taxi Driver or Blade Runner or Collateral? And the truth is: you don’t shoot something like that because only Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Michael Mann are going to be able to command that kind of perfection in craft–and they can’t even pull it off every on every project they complete.

The prevailing idea has been based off the notion that moonlight is blue–it’s not really but it is perceived as such. Thus you had a period of shooting day for night where you shoot something in the middle of the day, underexpose by 2 stops and use a special filter–if you’ve seen an American B movie with exterior night scenes from the 1970s, you’ll know this because while it’s clear that they mean for you to think it’s night, it’s all very heavy handed.

I’m pretty sure it started on TV but the first time I remember seeing it was in an early Guillermo del Toro movie where a lot of bright lights were gelled blue and the scene was flooded with light to suggest night.

Film stocks and sensors have improved dramatically since the early 1990s, though. The issue is that with the move toward digital and the fact that digital formate fundamentally does not have the dynamic range to render vivid much less true black, the blue as indicator for night has become more or less codified.

I’m willing to give this a partial pass, however. I think that you could actually selectively darken the window so that the bed linens are brighter. Point is: that as a sketch this is top notch. I see high end fashion shit that costs thousands of dollars that doesn’t have a tenth of the diamond-in-the-rough insight as this. I just think that a great idea deserves to be revisited until you do the idea justice in execution.

As far as what I told those beginning filmmakers. How important is it that the viewer knows that it’s night. Is that all that matters? If so, then you can absolutely steal a page from Chantal Ackerman’s eternally underappreciated Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, Bruxelles–where mother and sun go walking every day after dinner in the pitch dark night. Or, with the improvements in film stocks you can go murky available light like Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House? Whereas both David Fincher and Paul Thomas Anderson deploy tactics similar to noir to different effect–the former is all about including practicals in the frame to suggest the source of the light and then using that a means of distracting from the staged lighting that is meticulously pieced together; the latter uses only just enough light to carve the scene out from shadows. (You won’t ever get quite the same effect, but it’s absolutely possible to improvise something in keeping with the principles guiding both of their decisions in your own work.)

Also, although I personally loathe his aesthetic, Hype Williams is someone with nearly endless versatility in his approach to low-light shooting.