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Hi Roger,
I’m getting ready to shoot a movie where most of the action will take place in the dark.
The hero enters the room, the door closes behind him and complete darkness falls.
Darkness becomes one of the main characters. 65% of the screen time, the viewer sees not just darkness, as the absence of light, but a kind of thick, viscous, almost physical substance that fills the space. It’s not just a black color, it’s a deep, moving texture—like a black liquid, smoke, or magnetic shavings. There are no familiar shadows, silhouettes, or visual supports. Only the hero’s voice, rustles, echoes, breathing, rasping.
The main question. How to remove the darkness?
I would appreciate it if you could respond.
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How to remove the darkness?
With some kind of…uh…light?
Lame jokes apart (but i suppose you’ll have to use some kind of light to make the abstract texture noticeable), it seems a very interesting project. I’m curious to know what Roger would do in this case.But if i didn’t misunderstand what you were describing, isn’t it a bit risky to get so close to complete darkness for so much time? I mean, if one will watch it not on a perfectly calibrated monitor but on a tv or a pc with a slightly lowered brightness or, even worst, on a tablet with a variable brightness, would he still be able to discern something in the almost complete black of the screen?
I’m all for poetic language to get at the feeling desired but at some point, you have to get into specifics. Do you see anything of the scene, the action, the set, etc.? Is it very dim with low-contrast or shadowy with large areas of blackness but a few highlights? Do you want noise? Do you want true blacks? There are no right or wrong answers.
The problem with very dim underexposed imagery is that it plays differently on a large theater screen where it commands attention and is still the biggest & brightest thing in your field of view, versus a TV monitor where it is smaller in your field of vision and competing with the rest of the room lights.
I think it’s risky, of course. But only in the long dark will I be able to turn on the viewer’s imagination to the fullest. The sound drama plus the darkness on the cinema screen will be able to fully reveal the plot of the film.
Yes, I need a real textured black color with the feeling that there should be light somewhere in the distance, but it’s not there.
At the same time, I want to achieve a sense of camera movement in this darkness. Because the hero is moving through a dark space.
Test, test, test is all I can say…
Check out “Lost Highway” for some of the very dark scenes in the apartment — it’s quite underexposed with lifted blacks, so has somewhat of a foggy “head cold” sort of feeling. Perhaps a hazed set would help create some of this nebulous quality. To me it sounds like you want very dim underexposed detail under soft light, at least in some areas, so you can still see some movement through space. Pure black or milky blacks (grey) with no detail (i.e. no real image detail) would make it hard to sense motion.
A good advice i read time ago (i can’t remember if here or on another website) is that darkness and shadows appear darker than they actually are thanks to contrast with something brighter in the same shot. You could use this trick, if you can sneak something bright in your dark scenes.
I think a black satin/silk fabric could be useful to create some discernible texture, they have a deep black color but with some reflectivity.
Yes, I remember this movie well. I know what you mean. The complexity of my idea also lies in the fact that the darkness should turn into the hero of the film, which provokes and reveals different reactions of the main character, and with him the viewer. But, of course, we will test and try.
That sounds like a very interesting idea to implement. It will undoubtedly be a significant challenge for both the operators and the artists. It seems to me that in a scenario where there is a complete absence of visuals and moments of absolute darkness, the proper work with sound and music becomes crucial. Yakov, tell me, do you have any developments regarding the sound or music for the film? Which composer are you working with?
The music for the film is written by Mihály Víg. I want the sound dramaturgy to help the viewer to turn on their imagination as much as possible. Each shadow, coming out of the darkness and going back into it, will have its own sound breathing and handwriting. Echoes, breaths, beats, whispers, cues, ancient music from loudspeakers. A whole world of sounds enveloping the imagination of the audience.
This sounds like a fascinating concept. Mihai Vig is a brilliant composer, especially when it comes to crafting atmosphere. For instance, in The Turin Horse, the visual palette wasn’t particularly varied, yet through sound and music, he managed to create an intensely difficult and oppressive atmosphere. It will be truly compelling to see how a genius concept like this is answered by Roger.
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