Achieving subtle, soft lighting.

[cpc]

Just to get things straight...

"Pulling" film does NOT mean under-exposing the film, in fact it means the opposite. When you "pull" a film in processing, you are under-processing the film, which lowers the ISO of the film, so that to get a proper exposure with "pulled" film you have to OVER expose the film because the sensitivity of the film has dropped from the under-processing.

For example, a film that might have a normal ISO rating of 320, might have an ISO rating of only 160 when it is "pulled" one F-Stop in processing. The reason you "pull" a film is either trying to correct accidental over-exposure, or when you are intentionally trying to "flatten" the contrast of the film by over-exposing and under-processing it, which opens up the shadow areas and lowers the density ( brightness ) of the highlights.

While generally pull processing involves over-exposure, you can certainly pull (underdevelop) with normal exposure, or even with underexposure (although most thin negatives aren't exactly begging for underdevelopment). This is a common contrast control technique, esp. in b&w photography, but is also used with color film.
You would then either print up (normalize) by adjusting printer lights, or simply print normal going for a darker look.

 

[morgan_moore]

Got a huge room? More fabric and more lights.

It's not really "costly"

Er yep, more time is costly

Its also really hard to pull on a wide, getting into those corners

And more lights, as soon as you cant pull of the domestic circuit.. to me thats costly if you need a genny, and often security for it

Of course a few k of tungsten or HMI is not costly compared to a name actor, or a tecnochrane, or (and Ive seen this done) jacking up a first floor of a building with scaffold to accept the weight of a PeeWee which took days to rig.. or

 

[bwwd]

Gamma is wrong on your examples, its not full range from 0-255 but its 16-235, they should not look like that.They arent flat(maybe 2 examples are lighting wise) most pics have rembrandt lighting but theyre like behind some fog which is ugly and i dont like it, its problem with 16:235 range, should be full 0-255.
HEre is corrected but after operation like this codec is more and more visible, gamma was shifted in many of those screencaps.

 

[cpc]

Most players will display the legal range correctly spreading it over the full output range of the device. In fact, by standard for home video (blu-ray) the images should be with luma 16-235. But yes, a jpeg screenshot should be converted to 0-255 to be comparable.
On the other hand, some of these caps obviously have values below 16, so they are probably correctly captured by the capturing software.

 

[paulears]

I hate the word 'aesthetic' - because to mind it suggests beautiful, pleasing, and other positive words. I can't apply it to dull, flat, and old fashioned in any sense. Of course there's a need for a look for certain projects, but dirty, gritty, old etc all conjure up for me negative. The only time I see it look pleasing is in stuff like Blade Runner where the treatment really works by using dark to not mean dull. Isn't it difficult explaining this in words?