Watch the video:
What do I mean by underexposed films?
First, let me explain what I mean. If you know how to read a waveform, the skin tones are what you should be looking at. E.g., traditional exposure for skin tones for Caucasian skin is about 70 IRE. On modern shows, they’re in the 50-60 IRE range.
People watch these shows. Sometimes they complain, as in the case of The Game of Thrones, but mostly they accept it.
There’s nothing right or wrong here, it’s a creative decision.
Or, is it? Was this decision planted in someone’s brain over years of habit?
I’m going to present three reasons as to why this trend might be a creature of repeated bad habits.
#1 Underexposing to preserve highlights
The first is simplest to understand. The cinematographers who’ve arrived on the scene today might also be influenced by digital cameras. It was only in 2010 that the Arri Alexa became available, and you finally had the same dynamic range, or more, in digital cameras than you did with film stock.
Even so, many productions still had to use cameras with lower dynamic range, or at least poor highlight performance. When the highlights clipped, due to a bright object or light or reflection, the result looked like video. To counter this, cinematographers underexposed their images slightly.
They could do this because sensors behave better than film stock in the shadows. Modern sensors are much better than film stock in the shadows. Even back in 2010, sensors did okay in the shadows compared to film, so you could underexpose a bit and recover detail. Of course, they also did other tricks like adding noise and so on. They had the power of color grading, called DI, to get the frame to look right, as long as they underexposed to preserve highlights.
This is a habit-forming trend. What happens when you consistently underexpose to preserve highlights? The exposure of skin tones also falls. It’s natural. You get used to watching underexposed skin for over a decade, until you forget what properly exposed skin looked like!
This is not just a cinematographer thing, because cinematographers can use their trained eye to correct the image, or use exposure tools. The problem is, at the same time video villages and monitors became the norm. Today everyone on set can see what you’re filming, and slowly but surely even directors and clients got used to seeing underexposed images, which makes series like Ozark work (but it would never have worked twenty years ago). You only have to look at the flak Gordon Willis received for experimenting with underexposure.
Then there’s the second theory.
#Log and flat images
When log became the norm, many productions didn’t know what to do with the flat image. You won’t believe it, but I’ve seen even big budget films that were shot on Red cameras that left the flat looking image as-is, because they didn’t realize it needed to be color graded. They got used to looking at a flat image.
To you this might seem ludicrous, but when you’re staring at flat images all day, it becomes hard to tell, because your eyes adjust to it, just like it does adjusting to a misty day in the real world. You get trained with the low contrast.
You might have seen the trend yourself a few years ago, where everything, including commercials, looked flat. Why did it happen? What was the compelling reason why flat looking images became a trend? The only logical explanation is that clients, directors and cinematographers got used to looking at flat images, and without the right training, flat images creeped into their aesthetic.
The thing with log is, the highlights get underexposed while the shadows get raised. The issue is similar to looking at underexposed images. The skin tones change in log, and it needs to be color graded properly to get the right exposure. If this critical step is not understood or performed correctly, you don’t get the exposure you were aiming for, let alone correct exposure.
It’s incredible how the two revolutions of the last decade and more, DSLR filmmaking and log workflows directly contributed to many underexposed and flat-looking videos and films. Thankfully, the flat image trend is slowly dying, but the underexposure trend continues.
Why so? This could be explained by the third reason.
#3 The curse of HDR
The newest technology today, is HDR (High Dynamic Range). When you use HDR monitors on set you’re lighting and watching to a set standard, which is Rec. 2020. It has its own rules of thumb for highlights and shadows, etc. It also depends on the brightness level of the monitor and target brightness for your audience. I’ve explained all this in greater detail in my video on HDR:
We’re looking at underexposure habits again, because something in the scene will seem too bright and a cinematographer or director might try to compensate for it by underexposure.
This isn’t that big of a deal, because there are transform tools available to convert Rec. 2020 to Rec. 709. Where the issue is, in in the grading, because you’re having to make two versions. One for folk that have HDR TV screens, and the rest that don’t.
It’s like the audio problem. Earlier you had only a few standards you had to color grade to, now you have many kinds of devices, each with their own color space and curves and peak brightness. It’s become a thankless job, especially because most people can’t agree to one common HDR standard. It’s a technical mess.
I see a lot of modern shows that might be underexposing because of either poor exposure habits due to HDR, or incorrect workflows due to HDR.
There’s also the ugly trend of converting normal images to HDR, like converting 2D to 3D (it’s never the same thing).
These are my reasons why I think we’re seeing a lot more underexposed films and shows today than we did twenty years ago. The films of the past looked bright and punchy. The films of today look mostly flat and underexposed.
It could be a style thing.
Or, it could be a disease.
What’s your take?
Can you recommend any books or articles where one could read more about this topic? Thanks!
“Writing with Light” by Vittorio Storaro comes to my mind. But it’s not cheap, due to the high quality printing and the limited audience. He was another one of the masters of Chiaroscuro (light and dark) and took a lot of inspiration from classical painting.
Oh, and have a long, hard look at “Assault on Precinct 13”, also from the seventies.
(DoP Douglas Knapp)
While you make good points about erroneously wrong results, I think there is a cultural trend here too. In the early 1980 all crime series on German TV, even the ones with a better budget, looked like soap operas. People were used to seeing dark images only in cinema.
Then came Fassbinder with his mini series “Berlin Alexanderplatz”. He was already popular enough to insist that his stuff should look dark, after all it was a very dark story. When it aired, though, people kept calling the station and complaining about not being able to see anything.
Well, at the time people had tube TVs at home, which could barely reach 80 nit and reflective coatings were not very good.
Now people have screens that offer 300 nit or more and they got used to watching TV looking like cinema. One of the very popular came series, called “Tatort” (crime scene) is still alive. If you compare the early ones with today’s, you get soap opera vs cinema. Actually, production value and lighting has been improved a lot and it can be fun to watch these in a darkened room with a projector. They are also experimenting with more daring grading, editing, and even storytelling. Yes, audiences got educated over the years and have better screens now.
I’m glad you mentioned Gordon Willis, who earned the nickname “the Prince of Darkness,” and was nearly fired from The Godfather when Paramount executives saw the dailies and were horrified that you couldn’t see Brando’s eyes.
The 70s saw films become grittier, and more realistic, which included lighting decisions like Mr. Willis’s. I am primarily a still photographer but my own work has been influenced heavily by my love of film, especially those of Kubrick and Lynch.
And while I know how to “properly” expose a photo, I find with my own work I tend toward, often significant, under exposure. I do this for two reasons, I want the image to more closely represent what my eye sees, as opposed to what the camera is capable of creating, and I very much try to manipulate the mood of my work, often through under exposure and color.
While you make some excellent points here and I’m sure they all factor into this trend, I suspect much of this underexposed work is intentional, in order to capture a certain aesthetic.
I remember many years ago watching a documentary on cinematography, I believe it was Visions of Light, and the film discussed Polanski’s framing in Rosemary’s Baby. There was a scene shot in a narrow hallway, with the camera shooting through an opened door, and much of the action was obscured.
The person discussing the film mentioned how the film is designed to have you moving closer to the screen, to crane your neck as if you can enter the film and peer around the door frame into the room.
I love underexposed images for the same reason and love to gaze deeply into a frame, trying to make out some hint of a subject hiding in the darkness.
I immediately thought of this when I saw the first image of Jason Bateman in your example. And I have to say, I personally love how that image is exposed and graded.
But it also takes a talents DP to pull off anything that defies or bends the rules of exposure and it’s clear from your video that in many cases, these choices are not being made for artistic choices, and are not particularly well executed.
Thank you for sharing this, I enjoy your film commentary immensely.
Tim
I agree with Tim, I find underexposed films actually draws me into the drama …..it’s very effective in suspense thrillers.
Sareesh, as usual, has given a very logical explanation