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The Colours of Woody Allen's Paris and Rome


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Change of subject.

 

Here is what I was going to ask. Now I'm even more intrigued after Satsuki's expert analysis of the Place Pigalle scene.

 

I was wondering how were these scenes lit. That chandelier turned off in that scene in the hotel lobby intrigues me. The glow in these Midnight in Paris scenes is magical.

 

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The scene at the apartment and the shadows on Alec Baldwin's face reminded me of something. This might sound silly, but could that chair he's sitting on act as negative fill? I thought the same about the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and Owen Wilson scene, where I thought her hair caused the light to be a bit suffused on his face.

 

Perhaps David – if I'm not nudging – could share his experience on Akeelah and the Bee, a film whose poster scene reminds me of the scene in the theatre in Rome Darius Khondji lit.

 

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As for the scenes with the lighting at the Roman ruins, I was wondering if somebody could tell me what are some typical ways of simulating lighting and fire in films? I know nothing about flicker lights. How likely is it that the scene at the ruins uses the tried and tested method of HMI lights and tungsten white balance to make it all blue?

 

As for this, I must say that this colour-corrected lighting reminds me a lot of that scene David talked about where Vittorio Storaro faked low afternoon Sun with powerful lights. I didn't like that look more than I did, but I think that that had to do a lot more with that background of trees, but I love this scene, and I must say Storaro came so close. It is almost identical. Yet this is real afternoon Sun falling onto a terrace of a flat and people on it above the Piazza di Spagna.

 

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P. S. Those Dinos – were probably a prop:

 

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Most of us would rather shoot in real late afternoon sun backlighting everything near and far beautifully, but sometimes we have to fake it, especially if it is a 5-page scene with dozens of characters and the director tells us he wants to cover everything and we have only one day to shoot it in, so you start the scene just after sunrise and you finish after it gets too dark to shoot. In that scenario, which happens all the time, you can't even have consistent ugly noon light if that's what you wanted! With a bigger schedule and/or a director who can shoot a scene in only a few angles and few takes (like Woody Allen does) then shooting a big scene in a narrow window of natural light becomes more possible. But for most of us, that's not what happens.

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But if the sun is really low, a front light can be attractive for a face (look at how many fashion models on a beach are shot that way). Besides, sometimes the scene involves people watching the setting sun, in which case it wouldn't make much sense to backlight them...

 

All of this misses my original point, which is just that sometimes you have to try to fake the setting sun with lighting because you have too long as scene with too many set-ups to complete the work within the narrow time window of the setting sun (or any sun position.)

 

And when lighting for a sunny effect, it is easier to do it as a backlight -- for one thing, it is more convincing. It's hard to use a frontal artificial light and have it feel exactly like the sun in color and texture, whereas with a backlight creating just a hot edge or halo, the color and sharpness of the light is less obvious.

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Backlit always looks better it's just a fact look around when you are just walking up a street .Backlit gives more depth for one .

 

Oh, I strongly disagree. I see so many horrid backlit shots everywhere.

 

I guess I have a "problem" with it because it is so ubiquitous, it is almost a cliche. Everyone is doing it. I have this, probably wrong idea, that no one is really trying to shoot a beautiful front-lit scene. Everyone is chasing after the halo glow in the hair.

 

One completely insignificant matter or of very little significance is how sometimes it ruins the very hair it tries to prettify. You can see the damage of the hairs.

 

I got your point perfectly the first time, David. You were clear, and it made sense, of course.

 

Here is a screencap (or perhaps a still?) from O tempo e o vento, a Brazilian film that was made into a TV miniseries, which was photographed by Affonso Beato. It could be a more beautiful shot, for sure, but I just love the creaminess and the colour of the light. I couldn't find another shot to illustrate my point better.

 

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I must seek out those models on the beach. :blink: It's not something I associate with late-afternoon photography, but I believe it, and it makes total sense.

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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When the sun gets really, really low like at the beach, or an flat plane, it's hard to either work in front or back light -- in backlight, the sun will be flaring the lens, and in front light, the camera, mic boom, and crew can sometime throw a shadow over the actors.

 

But a backlit glow on hair is generally attractive (even if it drives the hair people nuts seeing all the flyaways and split-ends) plus it means that the face itself is in soft light, which can be more flattering -- not so much of an issue when it is really late in the day and the sun is more eye-level, but around mid afternoon when the sun is higher, it is usually more flattering to shoot in backlight.

 

Plus many actors have sensitive eyes. I did a movie in New Mexico where the actress could only be shot in backlight and I couldn't even bounce some fill back into her eyes, she squinted so badly.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

Hey, Satsuki! :D Long time no see! Thank you for the video and for still thinking about this thread.

 

Why isn’t warmth done more often?

 

I think David only mentioned Wes Anderson as another director whose films are timed towards warm.

 

I managed to find a backstage video of a scene that I think comes somewhere at the end of the film:

 

 

What’s that lighting fixture used in the scene?

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I think warm-looking movies generally tend to be romantic comedies or period dramas. Whereas most big budget movies these days are comic book action films, horror, or sci-fi adventure which all tend towards the cool cyan or desaturated look. The other trend is the faux-documentary look of high-key improv 'comedies' which rarely allow for the application of more stylized lighting and color treatment. Recent examples of warm-looking films would be 'Hail, Caesar!', 'Race', 'American Hustle' and '42'.

 

The lighting fixture in the video is never shown directly, but I'm going to guess based on the day exterior nature of the shot and the grippage around the unit that it's a large HMI par or fresnel.

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Lighting and grip is a big one. Big frames of silk overhead to diffuse harsh toppy sunlight; big frames of Ultrabounce, muslin, and silver/gold lamé near the actors to softly bounce light from one side; big frames of black on the other side to create negative fill; HMIs through smaller diffusion frames either direct or in large soft boxes like your posted pic above.

 

So, Satsuki, this has been intriguing me ever since you mentioned it here last year: could you perhaps name a scene which you know was shot where silver or gold lamé was used as bounce fabric? Or a film which used it throughout? Or a cinematographer fond of using it in his work?

 

You’ve also talked about lamé in this thread:

 

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=63982

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I've mostly seen them used on commercials, so I couldn't point you to a specific film or narrative film DP that uses them. But I don't usually work on features, so someone that does could probably tell you more.

 

I can tell you that in terms of general use, they are mostly used outdoors as a replacement for Ultrabounce. So I would look at relatively modern films that have a lot of exteriors with warm bounce lighting. The idea is to create color separation so that the foreground lit by the bounce is warmer than the background. Therefore, a film that is graded overall warmer like 'Midnight in Paris' probably wouldn't have used it.

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I haven't used gold lame or gold reflectors outdoors since to me, it's rather stylized to have golden shadows, I'm more likely to do the opposite and use Day Blue Muslin for a bounce fill. But for music videos and commercials, gold bounces are used more often than for features.

 

Now I could see using a large frame of gold lame for a fire sequence at night.

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The lighting fixture in the video is never shown directly, but I'm going to guess based on the day exterior nature of the shot and the grippage around the unit that it's a large HMI par or fresnel.

 

What do you cinematographers called that grippage around a fixture?

 

That light ended up giving this result:

 

Benigni.png

 

 

It's this faint white reflection on Roberto Benigni’s forehead. Do you know why that might have been needed?

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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It's kind of hard to see in the BTS video, but it looks like the setup is a large HMI bouncing into a 4x4' bounce board, with two 4x8' flags on the sides to keep it from spilling everywhere. It's basically Benigni's key light, without it he'd probably be as dark as the lady behind him.

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Got it. :)

 

Poor grip guy, carrying that thing around, and not slowly:

 

 

It’s funny how you find what you were looking for. Eventually. I’ve always wanted to know how this scene was lit. I imagined a lot of diffusion frames flying around.

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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