Well, I thought that I’d talk about one theory I have about why films from the 1980s-1990s have better lighting. This was something I ended up thinking about after watching two different – but related – Youtube film documentaries on a Sunday morning in mid-April.
On its own, this fascinating Patrick Tomasso documentary (warning – brief horror/crime imagery) makes a lot of good technical points about things like dynamic range and film-making tools. But, if you watch it in combination with this “Midday Reviews” documentary (warning – lightning/flashing lights) about “modern” films looking better in black & white than in colour, the amazing lighting in 1980s-1990s movies suddenly makes even more sense. And it does – just check out these desaturated clips (warning – brief flickering glitch, flashing lights) from “Blade Runner” (1982) for a great example.
Just like how I learnt from the Patrick Tomasso documentary that a man I’d barely even heard of before – Dean Cundey – probably had a large influence on the lighting in a lot of the art that I make, since I grew up watching older 1980s-1990s films (both during my 1990s childhood and my teenage years during the 2000s), a lot of the cinematographers, directors and/or lighting designers in these 1980s-1990s films grew up in the 1950s-1970s. For example, looking on Wikipedia, Dean Cundey was born in 1946. He would have spent his childhood and very early teenage years in the 1950s.
This was a time when black & white films were a lot more common than they are today. Most of the directors, cinematographers and/or lighting designers in the 1980s-1990s were probably in their thirties at least when they worked on the films that they made. This means that they probably grew up watching a fair amount of black & white films. Yes, colour films have been a thing since at least the 1930s – with “The Wizard Of Oz” (1939) being the classic example – but B&W films were still very common in the 1940s-1960s (just look at the entire “film noir” genre).
Even as late as the 1960s, television shows were sometimes filmed in black & white – with “The Addams Family” (1964-67) being a classic example. And, without colour contrasts, lighting design becomes a lot more important. Although there were probably badly-made films with flat or bland lighting back then, the medium often forced older 1920s-1960s film-makers to make things stand out visually using just light and shadow.
If you want an excellent example of this, then Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” (1941) is probably the obvious one. The film is considered to be an “ahead of its time” classic because of its clever storytelling and excellent direction, but the lighting design in it absolutely rules as well. Here’s a screenshot to show you what I mean:
(Click for larger image) This is a screenshot from Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” (1941).
Notice how both the ceiling and ground floor are totally shrouded in darkness, focusing the viewer’s attention on the middle of the screen. Also, notice how virtually everyone (except the person standing in front of a gloomy closed door) wears dark clothes – which stand out against the grey wallpaper and the white light from an open doorway. And notice how the character everyone else is looking at is standing in the brightly-lit doorway – the area with the most visual contrast – further guiding the viewer’s attention to him.
Yes, this is a “masterpiece”-level example, but all of the people who made amazing-looking 1980s-1990s movies grew up with films that did stuff like this. Old black & white films that had to rely on good lighting more than modern colour films did.
Whether consciously or subconsciously, growing up with these films probably helped to shape how they approached and handled lighting. Which, I’d argue, is one of the many reasons why so many films from the 1980s-1990s have much better lighting design than some modern films do. Because the people making them were – deliberately or unknowingly – making black & white films with added colour, rather than just thinking about making colour films.
————–
Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
