Dimly Lit Entertainment

I’ve mentioned this before, but one of my biggest frustrations with film buffs is them acting like modern cinema is dead. Not only does the whining sound pretentious, but it’s not rooted in fact. “Cinema is dead”? No, it’s not! And you’re reinforcing how little you understand about it!

I mention this because of yet another punching bag: movie lighting. Specifically, shadows and lack thereof. Apparently, modern moviemaking lacks the cinematic flair of the past, with shadows for dramatic effect being non-existent. This sounds great in theory, but it doesn’t hold weight. If we’re being honest, I’m not even sure what qualifies as “good lighting” anyway.

Perhaps the best way to explain this is to use classic films for reference. Older movies had a different look than modern ones. This largely comes down to development. Film reels are time consuming and difficult to use properly, and they’re fragile. Plus, like all analogue technology, they have to be treated and developed manually, meaning there’s plenty of room for errors or mistakes. I don’t begrudge older film techniques, they were innovative for their time, but there’s a reason celluloid went out of style.

One of the consequences of manual production of film was lighting. Without going into too much detail, film strips had to be stored carefully in dimly-lit environments, and the lighting often reflected that. Add in that people would get oils from their hands on the strips, or that cigarette ash would spill from smoking, and that unintended grime would make its way onto the celluloid. This isn’t accounting for projectors stretching the reels, contributing to picture quality fading over time. Old-school film reels had a certain process that made lighting look the way it did.

This stands in contrast to digital filmmaking, which lacks the grime celluloid was infamous for. Digital isn’t only easier to work with, it’s also more “artificial”. That’s not to say celluloid lighting can’t be replicated, Knives Out pulled it off, but it’s harder to achieve because computers lack the imperfections of real people. So while the barrier for entry is lower now, the claims of something being “lost” are obvious to those who’ve studied the medium. This includes lighting.

I’m no filmmaker. My area of expertise is writing. But while I can’t tell the difference between 35mm film and digital film, I know that the change in lighting was inevitable. And I don’t begrudge the loss. Because while I admire the craft that went into manual filmmaking, especially as someone who learned XHTML during my ScrewAttack days, there’s a reason it died out. Manual filmmaking’s tedious, and with computers making it easier and safer to do visual effects work, the lighting had to change to accommodate that. Also, it’s not like the filters used in modern moviemaking existed with analogue films, right?

So yeah, claims of cinematic lighting being “non-existent” nowadays are farfetched. I also think they’re misleading, and insulting. Lighting’s an important part of a scene’s composition. It tells the audience what to focus on, it lets them know what matters in a scene and it helps the performers be noticed. It can also determine the time of day, the setting where a scene takes place and what the audience should feel. Lighting can even enhance genres, with horror and romance being lit differently. None of that’s disappeared with digital filmmaking, it’s merely adapted.

And this is why I’m confused: modern lighting pales to older lighting? Guess what? Not only did the past not have such sophisticated technology, it also didn’t have to contend with the same limitations. A movie like Avatar couldn’t have been made when James Cameron first conceived it because there were too many limitations, so he had to wait. Conversely, the original Star Wars Trilogy could easily be recreated nowadays, but they’d lack their old school feel. Every decade of filmmaking has pros and cons, and lighting reflects that.

Additionally, movies aren’t meant to be lit like reality. They’re stories that exaggerate reality, and you’re supposed to suspend your disbelief. Even with older movies, where you have to suspend your disbelief even further, I’ve never once thought something I was watching was 100% real. I might have been moved by what I was seeing, but I always registered it as fake. So why does it matter if “movies are no longer lit like movies”, whatever that means?

This whole argument is predicated on nonsense. That isn’t to say that there aren’t legitimate issues with how many movies are lit nowadays. Plenty of modern experiences are hard to see because the lighting’s bad, I’ll admit that. But that’s not a byproduct of bad lighting all around, it’s a byproduct of bad filmmaking! And bad filmmaking’s always existed!

I wish people would take off their nostalgia goggles and recognize this. Perhaps something was “lost” in the transition to digital. I grew up in the 90s and 2000s, I’m well-aware of that transitionary period. But that doesn’t mean cinematic lighting doesn’t still exist. Because what constitutes as “cinematic lighting”, other than drawing attention to what’s on the screen? I wish people had the self-awareness to answer that question.

This is also an unfair dig at streaming services. There’s plenty I don’t like about streaming, and I’ve mentioned it in other pieces. But cinematic lighting? The one element that everything that’s been filmed has? The only reason something can be seen in a theatre or on TV at all? If “cinematic lighting” doesn’t exist nowadays, then clearly reality’s been gaslighting me!

But sure, blame modern filmmaking for “ruining cinematic lighting”. In the meantime, I’m going to do something much more productive.