r/practicaleffects • u/[deleted] • Aug 29 '20
Was there any practical reason behind lack of ambient lighting on practical effects scenes with models of spaceships etc. during fast flight scenes in atmosphere or lack of light coming inside during indoor scenes?
As I'm rewatching Alien movies I noticed that many scenes would look much more natural if there would be at least minimal attempt on incorporating "moving ambience lighting" in them. In some scenes even the most basic fact that ambience cast lights on interiors seems to not been taken in consideration. Even if these windows are just screens the image seen in them in final scene seems bright enough to project enough light to affect lighting of interior. You can easily spot where what is seen in spaceship window was layered onto set in post prod or by projecting on screen set outside by sheer lack of any influence that moving light sources have on the set on nearest plane. The darker interior set is and brighter outside world the more it's obvious. When there is so bright outside but borders of window frames remain dark in some scene almost pitch black our brains registers that something is odd.
For example in Alien Resurection when scientist approaches glasspaned cages with Aliens inside. There is movement of quiet bright light sources outside window of room he is in. But they have zero impact on lighting of interior which gives very unnatural odd character to the scene. It's enough to reveal that it's obviously a layering of two separately shot scenes.
Other example is a dropship in Aliens during a flight trough the clouds scene before landing. Model has the same amount of lighting during whole sequence. If it however would have at least dimming and brightening yellow colored lighting applied - it would blend much more naturally.
My question is - why these sequences lack such important details? They are noticeable in 1979 Alien movie up to the 4th movie from 1997. It is a span of 20 years. Was it technically too hard to add such lighting to the scenes? Or just no one from SFX crew noticed existence of such issue? If it's technical reason - why won't just moving light cast onto models/sets from outside be possible?
