Low light situation

[josangel]

Hello I'm new here, and here goes:

 

I am shooting a short film, my first, that takes place in room with not much light in this room. That is the effect that I'm trying to achieve has to do with a person alone in a room during the day with the shades drawn, then someone opens the door to the ouside and the bright light pours in.

 

I would like show the point of view of the person sitting in the room, so that the audience can see things clearly, though in a dimly lit room.

 

I am thinking of using Kodak 7266 film stock.

 

Thanks

Jose

[Michael Nash]

To create a feeling of darkness on film it's all about having a lot of dark areas in the frame; not necessarily having everything underexposed. You usually want to have something in the frame that's at key level (or even above) in order for the image to retain some "snap."

 

Try to motivate some light from somewhere: maybe softlight coming through translucent shades, or hard shafts of light coming through the cracks of the blinds/curtains. Use this light source to edge-light your subjects, and let the opposite or fill side go dark. You can provide some ambient light that's still underexposed to reveal detail in the shadowed areas.

 

Including the shaded window in frame as the brightest subject will help sell the idea of darkness, by virtue of contrast (don't overexpose the shade; maybe spot metered at about 1-2 stops over). When you turn around and look at the opposite side of the room, you'll still want to include some areas that are at key level and let others fall away. This is where hard cracks of light through the shades can be useful. There's a great scene in Hannibal where Anthony Hopkins approaches the Inspector, and there's this vertical crack of light through the curtain splitting right down the center of his face.

 

You can establish small practical sources like a desklamp if you need to motivate some edge lighting from another direction, or to spice up a corner that otherwise goes too dark. Keep these sources on dimmers so you can keep the exposure low.

 

You can add dimension and depth to the frame by having silhouetted objects layered over slightly filled areas. In general try to keep a decent amount of contrast in every frame, by establishing a logical highlight from somewhere and a logical shadow or silhouette from somewhere. Again, it's all about the balance or ratio of light and dark in the frame, not the overall expsosure. Look at Deckard's apartment interiors in Blade Runner . The wide shots especially are textbook examples of how to make something look dark by use of highlight, edgelight, silhouettes and layers of light and dark. In that movie they used atmosphere (smoke) and shafts of light to make it a little more stylish, but you can create the same feel without smoke or moving sources.

 

There's a scene similar to what you describe at the beginning of End of Days (a great-looking B movie ;) ). Shwartzeneggar is about to commit suicide with a pistol to his mouth in a darkened apartment, when his partner interupts him and opens the shades, blasting him with light. It's got a great murky feel to it with layers of light and dark to create depth, and the blast of light feels natural yet jarring.