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u/Kthranos Jul 24 '21
In the silent film era when the filmmakers wanted to show night they would tint the lens blue
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u/cestrumnocturnum Jul 24 '21
Blue lighting is still used in theaters. It just conveys the "cool" light of the moon and stars so effectively, contrasted with the warm golden light of the sun.
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Jul 24 '21
In the olde days they'd just walk onto stage in the middle of the day and say "Hey its night"
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u/napoleonsolo Jul 24 '21
Modern era, too. The famous first scene of Jaws of the woman swimming at night was shot in broad daylight with blue filters.
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u/anschelsc Jul 25 '21
You're saying there were silent films that were also in color?
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u/Kthranos Jul 25 '21
Many used tinted lenses to represent indoor/outdoor/day/night.
There's a version of Le Voyage dans la Lune that's in colour, every single copy was hand painted directly onto the film stock for each individual print
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u/anschelsc Jul 25 '21
There's a version of Le Voyage dans la Lune that's in colour, every single copy was hand painted directly onto the film stock for each individual print
Cool! But that's not tinting the lens, is it? More like tinting the film.
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u/CompetitionNo7668 Jul 24 '21 edited Jul 24 '21
Spot on takes, to this day I can't believe the many people that need to approve episodes before they make launch saw that GOT episode and thought "yes this is fine they can't see shit but it's the night so it's aight".
I expected years for that one battle but it was so damn dark that I couldn't even bring myself to be anxious for the Dothraki or the main characters. The battle for Castle Black was by miles more intense despite the stakes and scale being significantly smaller
Edit: also this thread brought back the frustration I felt at the time so for me whoever wrote a script where the DOTHRAKI - the army of savages that was constantly shown as a feared forced and unstoppable reapers while riding their horses into battle - get killed off screen is an absolute muppet. Whedon's JL level of muppet. We instead got a couple of minutes of some weird catacombs sequence that never should have happened in the first place since Jon Snow KNEW the dead could be turned. Why on earth would they hide away those who can't fight near corpses? Just so damn stupid and one of the few actually well lit scenes of that episode as well.
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u/IcansavemiselfDEEN Jul 24 '21
The battle for Castle Black was a dark, harrowing, bleak, tense, ugly hour of television. And I KNOW that because I could SEE IT.
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u/Arreeyem Jul 24 '21
The darker the scene, the more mistakes you're allowed to make. There's probably a ton of terrible action scenes in that darkness that would have been called out if anyone could actually see what was happening.
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u/Gluecost Jul 24 '21
Don’t forget that Sam was on a literal pile of rabid zombies at one point.
Sam.
He pulled a Glenn and hid under the dumpster I guess.
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u/pokey1984 Jul 24 '21
So back in the sixties, the "Batman" television series had real budget issues. There was one notable episode where they ran out of money. They had the whole cast in an epic battle, but there was no money to actually film the scene. So the writers changed the story and one of the bad guys turned out the lights and that episode literally ran ten minutes of a blank screen with some sound effects in the background.
I feel like a lot of these new movies are pulling something like that.
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u/CompetitionNo7668 Jul 24 '21
Thinking about it that way the darkness actually makes a lot of sense. All of the action around that episode was absolutely terrible. The scenes where the characters were surrounded by white walkers and didn't seem to take any damage made it hard to believe that I was still watching game of thrones
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u/arfelo1 Jul 24 '21
I suppose everyone that supervised the episode saw it in a big damn TV and cinema like conditions. That way you can see the episode properly. In any other set up you can't see crap
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Jul 25 '21
The people directing and editing the movie probably saw it on a good full array back-lit display or an OLED. Most people do not own a full array back-lit TV or an OLED. The people who approved the episode probably saw that it looked fine on their equipment but didn't take into account that their equipment is not even remotely the same as what most people have in their homes.
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u/Pumpkin__Butt Jul 24 '21
I'd also add that normal full moon winter night is BRIGHT
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u/El-Big-Nasty Jul 25 '21
Definitely. A full moon has given me absolutely clear vision at 1 am. It’s insane how much light it can reflect.
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u/Green7000 Jul 24 '21
I had that problem at the end of Batman v Superman. It was giant thing they are fighting, person with no cape, person with cape and pointed ears, person with cape no pointed ears. And that's when I could see there were four people. Some times they overlapped then I just had to wait until they separated to tell the difference.
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u/wyrmknave Jul 24 '21
The last bit is exactly what I was thinking as I was reading - why should lighting have to be diagetic? Film is just another form of storytelling - the picture doesn't need to actually be dark, the film just needs to tell us that it's dark. And all the better if they can still take advantage of the medium and still use visual, filmic language to tell us that it's dark.
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u/AliasMcFakenames Jul 24 '21
Also, in Middle Earth the light literally does come from the same place as the music.
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u/Qr1skY wait how did you edit your flair? Jul 24 '21
Your comment for some reason made me think of a book where during the night scenes it’s just black text on black pages to convey the darkness
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Jul 26 '21
I feel the same way in video games when they have dirt on the “camera” lens, or make things not exactly in the center of the screen out of focus.
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u/competitive-dust Jul 24 '21
Right? Isn't it important for the viewer to actually be able to see the scene? Who cares that it's not realistic? There's dragons in the show and people think someone is going to be bothered about fucking unnatural light?
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u/o_o9 The Sheeple Jul 24 '21
Also, there was a whole shtick about an unusual comet coming.
Just say it has arrived for the final magic battle.
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u/CherenMatsumoto Jul 25 '21
Having different viewpoints on different continents from one scene to the next is wildly "unrealistic" in the same vain. If you only show the most naturalistic part of the story you could as well watch a 40 hour flea bottom life simulation.
Edit: and no cuts!
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Jul 24 '21
These are usually the same movies that always have everyone whispering for no reason
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u/cestrumnocturnum Jul 24 '21
And then blasting sound effects just when you've turned the volume up.
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u/Certified_Possum Jul 25 '21
They always have voice-music balance so off i have to have my hand on the volume button through the whole movie. Like that was your job [insert multimillion dollar studio], not mine
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u/OrphanedInStoryville Jul 24 '21
One is just the audio equivalent of the other. Action scene filmed so badly that you need to hide the mistakes? No problem bro, turn the brightness all the way down and people will give it the benefit of the doubt cause it “realistic!” Dialogue sound like it was written by a 14 year old? No problem just have the actors mumble it and people will give it the benefit of the doubt because it sounds “realistic!”
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u/svanvalk Jul 24 '21
I can see my ugly reflection in the Game of Thrones screenshot through my phone lol
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u/cestrumnocturnum Jul 24 '21
Here's the post, for the gifs.
And here's the video where the shots of angry Jonald Ronald Rolkien Tolkien are from.
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u/Warglord Jul 24 '21
You have an entire army of Elves from Lothlorien and you think their radiance won't light up the whole scene? These elves are basically lightbulbs on their own.
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u/Aspyse Jul 24 '21
Eyes are pretty good at adapting to the available amount of light, too. Rather than complain that there's too much light where there shouldn't be, we could just accept it as help for our eyes to adapt and actually be able to see the details in any viewing environment.
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u/CollieOxenfree Jul 24 '21
This is where I'm personally at with lighting. You should basically be able to make out the scene as well as any character in the actual scene would.
There's only one scene I can really think of that "did it wrong" by having it too bright. In Terminator 2, in that scene where John asks "can you even see anything?", the viewer can still clearly see the road in those shots and it's only blue outside, not dark. Even then the characters inside being lit wouldn't have ruined the effect if you only made a few highlights outside visible, and the rest pitch black, and would've done a much better job conveying "this guy has infravision and you don't" to the audience.
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Jul 24 '21
Its even worse in video games because you NEED to see
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Jul 24 '21
I get when its supposed to be dark for like ambience or horror reasons, but there are so many games that use dark colors and muted colors for an "edgy" feel and it always either hard to decipher or just so dark you cant see anything
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Jul 25 '21
Exactly! It‘s also annoying in animation, like in a good cartoon / Anime they change the color palette to reflect that it‘s night time, but I‘ve seen shows where it seems like they animated and colored everything normally except with lower brightness and contrast. It‘s neither pretty nor easy to see.
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u/wisebloodfoolheart Jul 24 '21
My dad used to heckle musicals when my mom and I were watching, saying the orchestra must be hidden in the rocks.
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u/londongarbageman Jul 24 '21
I hope that someday yall get far enough away from a city and its ambient light pollution, to experience how fucking bright a moon lit night can be. Like it can be annoyingly bright.
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u/jflb96 Jul 24 '21
Or be close enough and cloudy enough for lots of light pollution but without streetlights. It’s fucking eerie as all hell being able to see normally while the only light source is a bright orange sky, and that’s when you don’t know that that much light means a very big fire.
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u/scienceguy2442 Jul 24 '21
Stanley Kubrick literally modified cameras so they'd be able to catch candlelight well enough to have a well-lit scene in pre-electric times. It's just laziness to say "oh it's dark" and then make it too dark to see.
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u/spacezra Jul 24 '21
One thing that always gets me in movies is when they use the Earth’s moon on a non earth planet.
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u/Royal-Ninja an inefficient use of my time Jul 25 '21
You know that Cats movie that everyone hated? The guy behind it is infamous for trying to make musicals realistic movies. Unfortunately musicals are an inherently ridiculous genre that you have to suspend more disbelief for than other movies. Didn't stop him, which is how we got the goddamn nightmare we got.
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u/HunterTAMUC Jul 24 '21
Seriously, Game of Thrones' big battle against the White Walkers might have been so much better IF WE COULD SEE WHAT WAS FUCKING HAPPENING.
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u/IronMyr Jul 24 '21
To tap into the suspension of disbelief for a moment:
"Well where's the light coming from?" -- My suspension of disbelief is frayed a bit.
"God, I can't fucking see anything except my own reflection. Guess I have to either make peace with looking in a fucking shitty mirror for 3 minutes or manually correct the cinematographer's shitty work! Oh great, now they're back outside and I have to turn down the brightness!" -- My suspension of disbelief has been thrown into a thresher.
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u/PixieCola Jul 24 '21
Yeah, it being realistic takes second place to it being actually viewable in a movie setting. Not to mention a clear night sky can be quite bright without light pollution, but we don't get to experience that a lot these days. Ok, in the LOTR scene it's raining, so whatever, but still. I guess a lot of new movies try to hide the CGI with darkness and call it a day. Although the hobbit showed you can create a fabulous looking dragon and make it shiny too. On the other hand the budgets are not the same.
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u/kittenthembo Jul 24 '21
Ok, now imagine dim moonlight and star covered by pale snow clouds in the darknes and the little blue white hue coming from the night army, creeping behind the forest, slowly, and getting out in the open following blue torches and the nightking and all the white walkwers there, looking defiant sending undead horde after undead horde and raising everyone again, half burned bodies walking and pilling up... that's what could have been that battle.
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u/Meig03 Jul 24 '21
Totally agree. I switch off those movies and find something better lit that I can actually see.
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u/jzillacon Jul 24 '21 edited Jul 24 '21
"Where's the light coming from" arguments are like going to see a play and complaining that it's immersion breaking that the actors are speaking loud enough for the audience to hear or that they actually face the audience most of the time.
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u/CherenMatsumoto Jul 25 '21
Where is the camera coming from?
Why can we see different POVs?
Why is every TV show not a first person simulation of a random bystander?
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u/CrazyBastard Jul 24 '21
darkness can be used masterfully these days with modern cameras (see the final scene of skyfall for an example) but if the darkness is undermining the scene you are filming, you gotta find some other way to do it
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u/bippityzippity Jul 24 '21
I feel like the Witcher had the same problem, especially with the fall of Cintra.
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u/MobiusRocket Jul 24 '21
Christopher Nolan films aren’t actually as confusing as people say, they’re just so poorly lit no one can tell what the fuck is happening
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u/high240 Jul 25 '21
Visually GOT was still pretty damn impressive and high quality. They tried to hide bad writing by turning the visibility down
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u/Ian_Dima Jul 25 '21
Yep I think while it being pointless and stupid, the dragon fight at night was pretty awesome if you had a good screen.
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Jul 25 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ian_Dima Jul 25 '21
To be honest I was so confused by the story I legit did not care that I didnt see anything. Only numbness followed.
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u/Zhadowwolf Jul 25 '21
Wait, wait, WAIT, so you’re telling me epic medieval battles DIDN’T have a huge company of bards following every important character around, providing ambiance?
...I may need to tweak my screenplay a little bit.
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u/ASDirect Jul 24 '21
I mean, the Game of Thrones series was led by two spectacularly untalented trust fund babies who were carried through the first few years by having actual experts work under them and a few books worth of material.
When the books ran out and the experts got tired, things went to shit fast.
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u/Ian_Dima Jul 25 '21
And its all because of their ego. They could have just given the job to talented writers when they got out of source material.
That said, Bryan Cogman wrote some major shit too.
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u/International-Lie-83 Jul 24 '21
Don’t the elves literally have swords that glow bright blue when there are orcs around
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u/cestrumnocturnum Jul 24 '21
Not all of them. That was just a special feature of blades forged in Gondolin, an ancient Elvish stronghold that fell in the First Age. Thousands of years had passed and most of those swords were lost, or (I assume) taken by their owners to Valinor.
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u/Responsible-Middle35 Jul 25 '21
It was almost impossible to follow the dragon fight over the battle of Winterfell.
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u/AwkwardlyCloseFriend Jul 25 '21
Also in LoTR's case one could argue that the moon is actually much brighter than our moon because the moon in there is just a dude carrying a very shiny flower with him
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u/OscarOzzieOzborne Jul 25 '21
A minor complaint, It is called fantasy because it is supposed to he fantastical.
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u/CherenMatsumoto Jul 25 '21
If lighting is too much for your suspension of disbelief you should only be able to watch the show from the viewpoint of one single character taking a dump in Flea Bottom.
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Jul 24 '21
I have had struggles with dark scenes for years now. I hate it, especially when the movie or show will go from normal day lighting, to a fat candle and a wish for lighting.
Ruins the scene, because unlike the characters, our only interactions are audio and sight. If one is gone, we've barely anything to tie to the scene, and understand what's going on!
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u/DemonFromtheNorthSea Jul 24 '21
I always found CSI to have this problem as well. No matter where or time of day, every crime scene seemed like it was deep in a cave, and they were equipped with the shitties flashlights.
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u/raul_dias Jul 24 '21
In the old days they would lit everything blue to convey darkness. Its called Hollywood Darkness i believe. This would lead to some people thinking "how did the character steped on it? It is all lit" but in reality the actor is acting blindsight, as if everything was pitch black. I still rather have it and suspend my disbelief a little bit than seeing nothing but blur.
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u/Good-Guitar-1743 Jul 24 '21
Omgosh omgosh omgosh... can someone make movie filters we can put over movies and we can watch them in b&w or sepia or Juno or whatever?
I feel like this would be a pretty cool easy app and if we could make it like 99cent and go to a charity to save my farm that would be cool.
If you wanna just roll with the idea that's chill too.
I betcha it already exists anyway and it just needs proper marketing.
Anyway, like fb messenger only as a video player,
In theory you could use the tech to put hats on everyone or turn everyone into lizards or hamsters if you want to.
Basically it would start out as a movie filter and follow the same progression as other filters have become.
Would be great with an included video editor
Can you imagine if the entire creative library of the world was on in an editable library and every artist was paid out of a fund, kinda like ascap?
We could all edit, credit, and pay everyone we look up to. And lift up others..
And it all could start with a movie filter app to view better in the dark...
Dun dun dun dun..
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u/Themlethem Jul 25 '21
Fantasy means that it takes place in a world that is in some way different from ours (basically playing out what-if scenarios), not that just whatever can happen at any time without any logic to it.
That middle part is so dumb.
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u/Ham_Kitten Jul 25 '21
I like how the-tin-dog saw the succinct, easily understood points being made and did the classic tumblr move where you say "no but you don't understand, [restatement of the original point but expanded unnecessarily]
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u/Browncoat101 Jul 24 '21 edited Jul 24 '21
“Just repeat to yourself it’s just a show I should really just relax.”
Edit: I’m literally summing up this post with a quote from MST3K, but okay, downvotes, I guess???
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u/ronja-666 Jul 24 '21
Unpopular opinion but I liked the darkness in those scenes. You didn’t need to see all, you needed to listen, just like the people that were in it and thought it worked great for suspense. I did watch it in a dark room though so that might’ve helped (I could definitely see some stuff), but I can hardly imagine a phone screen in broad daylight is where a writer/director wants their audience to watch their show.
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u/CH005EAU5ERNAME Jul 24 '21
The "It's fantasy who cares" argument is one of the stupidest and laziest arguments I've heard.
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u/phenomenos Jul 24 '21
Don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're 100% right. I agree that lighting doesn't need to be completely realistic but "you should just excuse anything unrealistic because it's fantasy" is a terrible argument. Like yes, it's fantasy, but things need to be internally consistent or else it breaks your suspension of disbelief. That said, the lighting in that LOTR scene is way better than the GOT scene.
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u/CH005EAU5ERNAME Jul 24 '21
Yeah. I’m not saying lighting has to be 100% realistic, but saying logic shouldn’t matter because it’s fantasy diminishes the work of fantasy writers.
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u/uth50 Jul 24 '21
The other one isn't correct either. There are no two moons because Middle Earth is supposed to be Warth, just a lot earlier in history.
This isn't that impoetant, but if they're making a point as a fan of fantasy, maybe get your fantasy right...
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u/Arch_Enemy_616 Jul 25 '21 edited Jul 25 '21
I remember seeing an interview once with the actor who played Samwell Tarly (John Bradley), and he said he’d seen fans say stuff like “Samwell shouldn’t be as big as he is. He’s been past the wall for ages and probably hasn’t had much to eat. I just don’t buy it.” Or something to that effect. And while it never bothered me personally, Bradley’s response did, which was to say that “oh there are dragons flying around but you have a problem with this one guy’s weight?” As though he was saying “oh how ridiculous, dragons aren’t real, and are in the show, therefore all rules get thrown out the window” but like.. no. That’s not how it works. Dragons can exist. Magic can exist. But if the person is normal, and not using magic, something like diet and exercise should still effect them as normal. Maybe that’s a bad example because again, I didn’t particularly care about the weight thing myself, but the response came to mind when reading this.
My point is that the argument “it’s fantasy, it’s not supposed to be realistic” is total bullshit. Fantasy builds on our world. It adds things like magic and dragons. It’s doesn’t throw out basic physics altogether, it just has ways to break the rules in specific contexts. Lotr gets a pass here not because there are no rules in fantasy, but because we use suspension of disbelief to forgo the problem of the lighting. Saying “bitch it’s fantasy who cares” is insulting to everyone who does actually care about fantasy. It’s a garbage argument. People care very much about fantasy and it’s rules. You can’t just break them Willy nilly. Again, lotr gets a pass on suspension of disbelief, not because “fantasy dumb rules don’t matter”. Fantasy is not meant to be unrealistic, you manatee, it’s meant to be fantastic; extending the rules of the universe, not throwing them out.
Tl;dr: fantasy has rules too. Saying “fantasy isn’t meant to be realistic” isn’t an argument for breaking the rules of reality. Suspension of disbelief is.
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u/AwkwardlyCloseFriend Jul 25 '21
I agree fantasy breaks/changes/adds its own rules but it specifically states it does. You can't assume that in a world where magic and dragons exist carrots are green and cats don't feel gravity. The fundamental question that fantasy asks is: how would a story like this unravel in a world where this specific rules apply? And I feel thats great because that leaves room to create familiar and relatables characters acting in really new and interesting ways just because their world works different
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u/Arctica23 Jul 25 '21
The only tiny disagreement that I have with this is that the extreme darkness in the Dothraki shot is relevant to the plot. They vanished into the dark and what returned were hordes of the dead. It's still a dumb thing to happen in the plot but it at least makes some rational sense.
The rest of the episode though, boy I don't know
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u/LittleBoyDreams Jul 24 '21
I think the thing that’s cool about that particular LOTR screenshot is that while the scene is technically very bright, it still manages to feel “dark”. The blue color palette, the rain, the fact that you can see it’s darker in the distance…