Directors & Lighting

The reason that I've been tampering with ISO and light levels is due to the fact that I'd like to channel directors such as Gaspar Noé, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher and Nicolas Winding Refn.

Enter the Void. Noe

Although this movie isn't a Thriller, it possesses a lot fo the 'arthouse' features that are present in 'Drive', which, if included in my film opening, would be a way in which I develop the Thriller genre.

Low level lighting, lots of attention on colours and neon

The film is almost one big continual tracking shot; I loved the flashback scene wherein the protagonist enters a a dorm room to see an acquaintance's miniature city make of lights. Aside from the CGI effect of the protagonist floating about the city/"void" once dead, I would like to incorporate the moody colours schemes and minimalist plot.

Soderbergh's Side Effects is a medical thriller orientated around a girl who kills her husband after being prescribed drugs from her unwitting psychiatrist. The lighting throughout the film is low key and if you look closely at the laptop screen in the screencaps, the ISO levels have made the lighting emanating from it lessen. The overhead lighting in the hallways grow lightly and the colours in each shot are usually dominated by one key colour tone; either yellow or red.

David Fincher's Zodiac is set around real life events involving the investigation into San Francisco's Zodiac killer in the 1970s. The lighting is either dim and warm or light and sterile. In the newspaper offices, the beams of the structure or white and yellow; the colour is at a higher saturation, which looks pretty cool. Therefore if I were to film in a location which an obviously predominant colour scheme, I will do everything in my power to increase the vividity of it.

Refn's latest film Only God Forgives is pure eye candy but is seen by some to have no key substance. The plot is, on the surface, simple. However for an action thriller, the movie takes an oddly anti-violence take on a classic revenge story. This is besides the point--the movie's cinematographer is the colourblind Larry Smith, which makes his work on the lighting immediately more impressive. Most of the movie is filmed in Thailand at night, hence the use of colourful club lights, street signs and neon-everything. Everything glows, giving the film a dream-like feel at night, whereas in the day there's a touch more realism.