Dark is the new Bokeh

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Seems the trend amongst shooters to heavily underexpose.

With images that dark, the highlight rolloff is much nicer, but the added benefit is hiding more details. Images look better when they are sureal and undefined: diffusion, shallow dof, soft light, leaving things in log etc

So many shooters are underexposing to standout. But it has become a bit of a thing, similar to ultra shallow dof. Just arbitrarily applied and looks “good”
 
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Sorry to answer a question with a question, but I'm curious what you think about the Wandering DP's setups and examples: http://wanderingdp.com/podcast/wandering-dp-podcast-episode-126-two-camera-cinematography/

I've learned a lot by following his podcasts, guest interviews, and breakdowns, but I am generally struck by how much more low key the lighting setups are compared to a lot of commercial work, so I do see the trend you are mentioning.

Without examining a specific example, my general two cents is that it's fine as long as it's not dark for the sake of dark and/or moody just to imitate a certain favorite look from a favorite scene when the end result in fact doesn't fit the content or message. Hard to generalize.

Do you have an example or two to reference?
 
ha...someone once asked me about lighting - which I know nothing about (or barely anything) - and I told them, "Make it dark...that's what Hollywood does".

Do you have any samples you like?
 
Coming from a "video" background(Betacam back in the 90's), my MO was to always err on the side of underexposure(and even to this day, that is still my instinct). But going to the aesthetic side, in general, I've not been a big fan of the flat, open, "see everything" look that has been so prevalent these last several years. I like shadows. I like dark. I like contrasty. Obviously you have to take into account mood, content, context, blah, blah, blah... But yes, dark can be good.
 
Dark indeed hides things, and thus light is used to show only want is needed for the story (hiding a cheap set / distracting background is also helpful). Watching older films you'll see they really went all out with controlled lighting. Part of it was because of the properties of film, but more so to finely control the look for the story. It takes a lot more time and effort to properly light a shot (with everything intentional / completely controlled). Shallow DOF/bokeh, lens flare, anamorphics, steadicams, gimbals have all gone through fad phases, and all contribute their part to telling (selling) the story if used with intention. Light was and still is the most important of these elements. It's useful to examine shots in black and white to really check the mood/emotion. Then adding back color to finalize the mood.
 
Examples? If you underexpose everything you just get muddy greys. Generally the idea is you want the range (of course there are exceptions)--highlights, midtones, shadows in each shot. Whether we're talking a high-key comedy/children's movie, or a contrasty moody horror movie.
 
I really dislike underxposed images for the sake of being underexposed. Mud, noise and flat images, what's to like about it?
 
James0b57 said:
Seems the trend amongst shooters to heavily underexpose.
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About two centuries of photography works against those trendy folks.

Unless you want to make something psychedelic or so it is really simple: get great light, good set design, good makeup, good lenses, a good camera and no "special" tinkering with settings, and expose right!

Leave the rest to post (but without snake oil LUTs)!
 
I'm all for it. For once the fashion is swinging my way. I liked dark before it was cool. For now I am a hipster.

My favorite style is what I would call: expensive commercials of the 80s, a style that combined dark and soft.




Often strongly backlit. I am guessing the influence is British directors like Ridley Scott, Alan Parker, and Adrian Lyne.
 
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combatentropy said:
I'm all for it. For once the fashion is swinging my way. I liked dark before it was cool. For now I am a hipster.

My favorite style is what I would call: expensive commercials of the 80s, a style that combined dark and soft.

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The uploader of this commercial obviously did a double limit on the levels. Where did you see any dark in that video?


I think that video looks awful by the way, it is probably an ill-processed VHS copy.
 
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Im guessing (just looking at the embed thumbnails) her hair and other darkest parts of image were originally black, face is way “underexposed” compared to typical levels. But you see there are still bright highlights all over that image—its not uniformly under. Same with the others (again only going by the screencaps here). Plenty of properly exposed and highlight areas of the frame, with a very low fill level, but I wouldnt call these images “underexposed”.
 
It seems that there might be some confusion about the definition and meanings of various terminology here. Chiaroscuro goes back to the early Italian Renaissance painters and simply means dark and light and has nothing to with underexposure, it describes images that use that lighting technique to make the image more three dimensional. None of the images in the videos above seem to be underexposed to me? When I think underexposed I think of underexposed skin tones, too much shadowy murk and lots of noise, usually with poorly rendered colors too. Moody, high contrast lighting isn't underexposed.
 
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I did a self portrait recently with "dark lighting," rembrant, or whatever you want to call it. Shot with Arri Amira sideways, lit with one household lamp and a Litepanels Caliber as an eye light. I was surprised with the look you can get with just a household lamp. I setup a Litepanels Gemini as a key, but ended up not using it as I liked the lamp look better.



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And a shot from a recent short film I did.

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Loving this thread so far. Please post more examples.
(nothing here looks particularly dark to me - it just has shadows, as most stuff should have)
(Eric's portrait does remind me a lot of the film noir look, but now in color)
 
IronFilm said:
haha, funny you shot it sideways!

But why... ?
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You get more resolution that way based on wanting a portrait style (as opposed to "landscape") shot, just as many photographs are shot sideways with photo cameras. A 60D is my best photo camera, so I figured I'd get better results with the Arri and for online delivery didn't see a benefit to more resolution.
 
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