noir horizontal blinds lighting

2062ad

2062ad

Active member
I've always been a fan of film noir, so now of course I like experimenting with and shooting stuff that at least fringes the look and feel. in a recent set up I was trying to light through horizontal blinds to cast the same shadows onto the shot. I wasn't able to get a good defined set of lines. Any tricks to help me achieve this? Thanks
 
TiE_Shepherd said:
What kind of light were you using?
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well, you hit on something there I'm sure. I was in a hurry and didn't switch the kinds of lights. The rest of the look was in the direction I was trying to go anyway so I moved on.
hangs head and says, "I was using one of those home depot work lights with an incandescent bulb"

That said, or admitted, I should say. ;) What should I use?
 
The further away you get the blinds from the light, the sharper the shadows will become. Further away = more parallel light = harder shadows.

You'll want to be using a fresnel or an open-face light. Something with a bulb. Fluos aren't going to do it for you.
 
David Jimerson said:
The further away you get the blinds from the light, the sharper the shadows will become. Further away = more parallel light = harder shadows.

You'll want to be using a fresnel or an open-face light. Something with a bulb. Fluos aren't going to do it for you.
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well that ads anothere aspect as well, I was trying to use a small 24" wide blind and if I backed the light up too much I got spill onto the set that I didn't want. ironically I have recently scavenged a large 8' w x 6' H horizontal blind that should allow me to back up further yet without that unwanted spill. I'll switch lights too.
 
Use barn doors to control the spill. Or get some black wrap if there are no barn doors. You could also use some black foamcore as flags on the sides/top/bottom. Black wrap and foamcore are cheap.
 
Remember lighting isnt about throwing in more lights, its about taking away - shaping the light. So by backing up to get sharp shadows, make sure the light is totally gone elsewhere using methods David advised. I like to use cloth over a cutter that drops to the floor for example to kill everything that could fall that way.
 
One thing I like to do is take an empty gel frame and use strips of gaff across it and put that up on a c stand then shoot a fresnal through that. I would assume it's much easier to deal with than actual blinds which are pretty floppy. Also you can angle this sucker or customize how thick or thin the blinds are. Play with the distance just like everyone mentioned and tinker with the focus. Good luck!
 
Deniz Coker said:
One thing I like to do is take an empty gel frame and use strips of gaff across it and put that up on a c stand then shoot a fresnal through that. I would assume it's much easier to deal with than actual blinds which are pretty floppy. Also you can angle this sucker or customize how thick or thin the blinds are. Play with the distance just like everyone mentioned and tinker with the focus. Good luck!
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Ah, someone beat me to it, skoal.

BTW, blinds are awfully cliched. How about using light just on the characters and the rest in darkness? There's lots of deep focus in those noir classics too.
 
slondon said:
Ah, someone beat me to it, skoal.

BTW, blinds are awfully cliched. How about using light just on the characters and the rest in darkness? There's lots of deep focus in those noir classics too.
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eh, cheesy, cliche? that's ok with me! I'm doing my best to put together even a campy horror of sorts cause i figured THAT would just HAVE to be fun :) I'm really just getting serious about filming. I have some stories I'd like to tell on film, and I figure I'm having fun learning the basics I'll expand from there; so why not incorporate them into a story along the way.:violin:;)

you guys have been great with this thread. Thank you, and to those that follow as well!
 
2062ad said:
eh, cheesy, cliche? that's ok with me! I'm doing my best to put together even a campy horror of sorts cause i figured THAT would just HAVE to be fun :) I'm really just getting serious about filming. I have some stories I'd like to tell on film, and I figure I'm having fun learning the basics I'll expand from there; so why not incorporate them into a story along the way.:violin:;)

you guys have been great with this thread. Thank you, and to those that follow as well!
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Oh, I'm with ya, not a snob. If you notice, I've done it too and will again. Cliches are useful in film lighting. Moonlight is blue, TVs flicker like mad, yards, streets and forests are lit up with big HMIs at night, haze is there and lit from behind, girls get hair lights, guys get kickers, eyes have catchlights -- hey, it all works ;)
 
David Jimerson said:
Horror is hard. Doesn't mean it won't be fun, but it's hard, hard, hard. And messy.
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yeah, this is something I have found out. I just finished shooting my 1st one about 3 weeks ago. By the time i'm finished editing it will end up being somewhere about 30 mins. of course "finished shooting" is certainly a relative term as well, I suspect that there will be quite a number of pick-ups, additional footage and re-shoots. But, such is the nature of the beast and by the time I'm done with it then the second one, which I hope to start shooting in early 2011, will be a better film for having gone thru this 1st one. guerrilla education lol
 
David Jimerson said:
Funny you should mention all that . . .
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:D

Somebody ought to compile a list of all the useful visual cliches.

In a related vein my absolute favorite statement about lighting having to be motivated is from somebody's signature on a forum. I quote it to cinematographers all the time and it always gets a laugh:
Actor: "where would that light be coming from?"
DP: "same place as the music" -Andrew Lesnie-​
 
Well . . .

Not to get too much into the spammage (really, not to), if you watch the films at the link in my sig for the Lighting DVD, we do much of that . . . and then we explain exactly why (it's for very practical reasons) on the DVD.

Generally speaking, it does stuff for ya.
 
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