- This topic has 7 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 6 months ago by
.
-
Topic
-
Hello dear Roger,
I am analyzing an interesting topic at the moment for my university in the context of masculinity and the staging of masculinity. Next week I gonna hold a presentation about it. And I would like to ask you:
Do you handle male characters any differently than female characters concerning visual storytelling? E.g. in lighting, framing, and so on?Because I know that there actually is some practice until this day for example to light the women a bit more “soft” or “gentle” than the men. That would be interesting to hear if you applied that practice yourself!
Thank you so much, hope you are well,
Simon
-
Replies
-
It’s a bit of an outdated view on lighting. Back in the 1940s-60s, you read interviews with some cinematographers who sometimes suggested that “realism” in lighting meant lighting men to look rugged and tough (more use of sculptural hard cross-lighting, no diffusion on the lens) and women to look beautiful (more use of a soft frontal key light and diffusion on the lens) — which is not how we define realism today.
Practically speaking, beyond lighting a space naturally with the impression of using only practical sources (whether true or not), we sometimes do “cosmetic” lighting adjustments for an actor if they need to be flattered visually in the scene, but that might hold true for a male or female character depending on the scene.
It’s true that more often, we are asked to light the female actor in the scene a bit more flatteringly, more glamorously, than the male actor, sometimes for a good story reason… but other times there are other external pressures to do so, or it is just expectation on the part of someone in charge. One could complain that it relates to the “male gaze” and the objectification of women in media, and that’s true sometimes, but there are other factors too.
Thank you, David, that is very interesting! I have the same opinion as you, concerning realism and lighting women vs men. Most of the time it makes no sense to make difference because of gender here but it might make sense for the story. But I was still wondering if practices like this still exist – and seems they do.
Thank you and greetings from Leipzig,
SimonI don’t think it exists in the way you describe in the original post – lighting today is more based on emulating a source so if the men and women are lit by the same source then they get the same lighting more or less. The differences I was referring to is more subtle in terms of adjusting the light in a close-up for cosmetic reasons.
I think it is interesting to study the care that was taken in the past to light an actor when in a close shot. We were recently talking with Billy Williams and had, in anticipation, revisited some of his work: ‘Women in Love’, ‘The Wind and the Lion’ and ‘Gandhi’. Often his close up lighting would vary quite considerably from the wider coverage but this is only apparent if you specifically analyze the lighting. Not so when simply following the story, which certainly benefited from his care. The actors too must have loved what Billy did for them as his close up shots were always beautiful.
Today there is a tendency to light a set and shoot in the same lighting for a close shot as for a wide. Sometimes a shoot will cover the wide and tight with multiple cameras so there is no chance to make a change if desired. Personally, I will often adjust my lighting as the camera (single camera) moves in to an actor for a close shot, regardless of that actor’s gender.
I notice it’s more common to add a mild softening filter for an actress’s closeup than to change the lighting, but then I work a lot on TV where that’s just a faster “solution” to something that should probably not be described as a “problem.”
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.