Why movies today look so dark today, in theaters and at home

“Why is everything so dark in new films?”It has quickly become a common refrain in moviegoing circles. This phrase first appeared in large numbers during the final seasons of Game of Thrones After each episode, viewers furiously shared their frustrations on Twitter. Anything It’s all going on in the screen. A lot of explanations and theories have flooded the internet since then about a host of “dark” productions, some accurate (brutal streaming compression, suboptimal viewing conditions) and some decidedly less accurate. (No, it isn’t to “hide bad CG.”)

The truth can’t be boiled down to any one factor. This conversation has been missing one crucial element: the filmmaking trends and directors who are producing dark imagery. If streaming compression is a necessary evil of modern distribution, and if viewers will choose to watch movies and shows in suboptimal conditions regardless of the filmmaker’s intent, then why are so many directors, DPs, and colorists designing their work in a manner that’s incompatible with how so many people view media nowadays? This is what filmmakers are getting. It’s not easy to answer.

To get those answers we must stop talking about technology Off to the side. The real answers are based in form — meaning the visual language of a movie or a show — rather than shallow conversations about which evil modern camera is to blame, or about whether digital cameras handle light differently than film cameras. These tools are not the end of the line. There are a half-million ways to use tools. There are many other ways to use them. Mad Max: Fury Road, Resurrections by The MatrixYou can also call it: The Way of Water: Avatar, These blockbusters are among the brightest and most clear. While tools can be used to make an image, artists made every decision about what they wanted.

Hence, why do filmmakers choose to capture such dark and difficult-to-understand images?

Photo: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.

For starters, it’s probably better to view overly dim night scenes as a byproduct of a particular style rather than its central aim. The most recent uproar over a film looking “like that” cropped up on TwitterThe upcoming remake Peter Pan & WendyDirected by The Green Knight filmmaker David Lowery. Though the unique hideousness of YouTube compression did a number on the photography by Lowery and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli (the version of the trailer on Disney Plus looks significantly better and brighter), it’s still a pretty perfect example of the modern style. Digging deeper into Lowery’s overall style, and where his work exists within the larger continuity of filmmaking trends, can help us better understand how this murky, low-contrast “look” came about.

A key concept to understand in the “Why are modern movies so dark?” debate is “motivated” light. The most motivated light sources can be anything that is rationally and tactilely connected to the particular scene, such as sunlight shining through windows or the glowing glow from a desk lamp. It is notmotivated lights are the exact opposite: lighting designed to create a particularly stylistic impression that might not have any “real” basis in the context of a scene.

Take, for instance, Wes Craven’s 1996 seminal classic The Scream — a film often remarked on for just how lit It is all there at all times. A early The Scream In this scene, Sidney Prescott embraces her boyfriend Billy Loomis following a scary home invasion. After Sidney throws her arms around Billy, Craven cuts to a tight close-up on Billy’s face, illuminated by a harsh, ominous, icy-cool light that telegraphs his sinister intentions.

Where can I find them? It is Where is that light coming? The bedroom they’re in has no lamps switched on. Is it the moon? The only window into space is the one that you can see. Hinter Billy, and the light we’re staring at is so much brighter and closer than the moon could ever be. What on Earth? That is the light?

Simply put, there is no answer. Craven often didn’t feel any real need to rationalize why a bright light would suddenly appear one second before disappearing again in the following shot. It’s a purely stylistic choice, employed for that one moment to cast doubt on Billy’s trustworthiness in the audience’s mind. It’s an extremely stagey choice that fits neatly within the larger series’ heightened, melodramatic style. The Scream wouldn’t really be The Scream Without it.

The hyper-lit style was a fairly common staple of cinematography in American cinema during the ’90s, and like all trends, it eventually fell out of fashion — in this case, a few years after The Scream Cinemas. The 2000s saw filmmakers embracing more directional, shadowy lighting styles, evoking a grittier, more “grounded” aesthetic while retaining a sense of classic Hollywood polish. In 2010, there was a major style shift towards hyper-naturalism. Even broad, big-budget blockbusters like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 He embraced an indie-film look that was inspired by smaller-budget films. Not only are the lights in that film always motivated, they’re Realism is possible.

Warner Bros.

Movies like “The Shining” are a far cry from earlier movies that used brighter lighting to justify the use of the moon and a table lamp. Deathly Hallows, Interstellar, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes The lamp will simply shine its light. like a lamp. This led to darker, better-lit sets. In big-budget studio fare, more and more filmmakers began to seek out real sunlight to light a scene — or at least lighting equipment that could precisely emulate its texture and quality. While independent films could use natural light within their budget limits, larger movies began to adopt it as a way of expressing themselves. Realität human beings navigating Realität human spaces.

Established cinematographers like Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki Roger Deakins started to lean more and more into this style to wild acclaim, on films like Birdman, Prisoners, and Skyfall. Particularly, Lubezki was the focus of attention for his work. The RevenantHe used very little lighting equipment in order to film the highly technical revenge story set in the Canadian wilderness. He bet an entire film on the sun’s rays, firelight, and the low-light capabilities of a small army of Arri Alexa cameras. In a unique modern manner, the results are stunning and compelling. Itt was a formative experience for many young cinematographers who realized, “Wait, I can do that too!”

This is the landscape where the current generation of filmmakers cut their teeth — David Lowery being a prime example. Looking at his work, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single light, outside of surreal dream sequences, that isn’t thoroughly, fanatically rooted in the real-world logic of the space it’s set in. He and his most frequent cinematographer collaborator, Andrew Droz Palermo, are practically allergic to even the slightest hint of light that feels “unmotivated” or fake.

While some may be offended by the literality of this method, it is difficult to dispute the effectiveness of the end result. Lowery’s films are soft, painterly, and melancholic. They feel as if they take place in the viewer’s own lived memories, rather than a heightened Hollywood fantasy world. Through this, he’s been able to make highly fantastical and strange stories feel tactile and humanist. The look has become Lowery’s calling card, one he shares with a host of other directors with similar sensibilities such as Amy Seimetz (She Dies Tomorrow), Jeremy Saulnier (Green RoomDenis Villeneuve (Dune, An Arrival, Blade Runner 2049).

Image: Warner Bros./HBO Max

The motivated-light style, like any other type of lighting has its limitations. Those are felt most strongly in scenes that lack a good justification for practical light sources — especially night scenes. Where filmmakers of previous eras would lean on artificial blue-white “moonlight” flooding a dark street or room, contemporary filmmakers with a naturalistic itch can’t always make that approach work for them. In a film that relies on motivated sources, the intrusion of an obvious film light masquerading as the moon threatens to undermine the audience’s immersion. It simply isn’t part of the film’s language.

Then, what’s the solution? Many filmmakers choose to stay true to their naturalist beliefs and recreate that feeling. They force the audience into a difficult to navigate frame. Others don’t stage scenes in those conditions in the first place, avoiding light-deprived environs altogether.

But the truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem for filmmakers who feel married to an organic style of lighting. There will always exist. Some scenes that will test the boundaries of a filmmaker’s chosen aesthetic, such as the night scenes many viewers took umbrage with in that trailer for Peter Pan & Wendy. For the scene where Peter appears in the Darling children’s window, Lowery and Bazelli chose to use Tinkerbell as the main light source for the scene.

This poses an additional challenge. Tink can be You can also bright, and the room around her is realistically dark, then the effect could ultimately err on the side of “spooky,” which isn’t exactly fitting for the grand entrance of a certain magical boy from the wonderful world of Neverland. If the surroundings are not too dark, it could be distracting. Brilliant, They could end up looking more like nighttime. Ultimately, Lowery and Bazelli opted to split the difference, with Tinkerbell casting a soft glow on other characters’ faces, and leaving the rest of the space fairly dark Without being black.

Is it possible? As the arguments show, it depends on each viewer. This is something that nobody can really speak with authority on until the final resolution of the film has been released. But the argument can be made — and deserves to be made — that this particular stumbling block is well worth the distinct, of-their-time sensibilities that artists like David Lowery bring to the table.

Rather than insisting on filmmakers bending their work to meet the lowest common denominator — that is, people streaming trailers on their phones via YouTube — we should take their commitment to the naturalistic light style as a demand for viewers to honor the intention of their work, and do the best they can to see movies the way they were intended and designed to be seen: on a good screen in a dark space, either in a theater, on a disc, or via a streaming service that doesn’t destroy their work with oppressive compression algorithms. For people who are really passionate about film as a medium, and respect what a delicate process image-making is, that shouldn’t be too big of an ask.