In this scene, they are in the middle of the woods under a canopy of trees. They show the sky and there is no moon.
The light has absolutely no motivation.
Motivated lighting is a philosophy where all of the light sources on screen have a logical source. The light from a smartphone on someone's face. A lamp next to the couch. Sterile overhead office lights.
Often filmmakers will still use their own custom light sources, but they will simulate these things to give the impression the light has motivation.
Compare this to when all they really had were bright spotlights and insensitive film. An indoor scene just couldn't have this warm and cozy feel. And the light was just blasted in from everywhere.
Black and white helped a lot. You could still get dramatic effect despite things needing to be overlit. Or you could play with contrast ratios and shadow.
All the stuff you need to see was very bright and exposed well onto film and all the stuff you didn't was very dark.
But there was no graduation in between. It was hard to be subtle.
And when television and movies went color, this black and white contrast advantage was lost.
You can see EVERYTHING. And look at those sharp shadows. Everyone is just being blasted in the face with lights.
This sitcom lighting persisted long past when it was necessary. It became part of the sitcom language.
I think M*A*S*H was one of the first shows to subvert the overlit sitcom aesthetic. They began to play with lighting that had more motivation.
But aesthetic standards are hard to kill. And despite the heavy influence of M*A*S*H, sitcoms persisted all the way into the Friends era.
Her lamp isn't even on. Everything is just lit by God.
I don't think you will see a living room or kitchen scene lit like this very much from here on out.
People are getting used to lighting making more logical sense.
With the advent of LED lighting that can be any size, shape, and brightness, as well as cameras that can interpret very dark images, modern shows can now use bright and dark as narrative tools.
I think Severance does this well, and still keeps everything properly motivated.
But this newfound flexibility has created new problems. If you can film dark things, how dark is too dark? And how do you make sure the audience can see all of the important visual information?
The two worst examples of unmotivated lighting are always space helmets and cars.
It's a conceit. You gotta see the faces so these things are usually forgiven.
But the biggest debate in the realm of unmotivated lighting is night scenes. People have lots of opinions on how best to use light in the dark.
This is because following a motivated lighting philosophy can be especially tricky. Particularly if your setting is a secluded area without any artificial light sources.
Many cinematographers will try to give some sense of moonlight. But moonlight is very hard to replicate, so the effect usually ends up looking pretty fake.
This scene during a blackout in Die Hard 4 looks like they took the brightest light they had, mounted it as high as possible and said, "Fuck it, that's moon-ish."
If the DP is hardcore into motivated lighting, they just make the screen really really dark, like the Long Night battle in Game of Thrones.
The really really dark option bugs a lot of people.
Froggie Tangent about Dark Scenes:
I originally thought people needed to adjust their display settings. But then I realized not everyone watches content in a darkened room like a vampire. But if you find a show or movie is too dark, turning off any room lights will help a lot. Watching it in HDR will also help. And watching it on an OLED will help even more.
Scenes this dark are mostly a fad. DPs are experimenting with the possibilities of new technology. But sometimes they forget not everyone has that technology yet. And they forget some people watch stuff on their phones in a room full of sunlight.
Eventually the fad will fade, we will all adopt better screens, and the darkness will land somehwere between "I can't see shit" and "it would never be that bright in real life."
In the olden days, since film wasn't sensitive enough to do scenes in the dark, almost everything needed to have unmotivated lighting just to make sure their film wasn't a grainy mess. And as a culture, we sort of got used to that style. They'd mess with the contrast ratios to give the feeling of night, but if you think about where the light is coming from too hard, it won't make any sense. They took a Broadway theater approach to lighting and so a lot of movies felt like they were on a soundstage.
The 1961 West Side Story is a good example.
They've got a spot light hitting them, but not the building behind them. I guess that could be an overhead street light. But street lights are meant to flood the area like an ever expanding donut of light. A spotlight is like a directly projected cone of light. It is perfectly pointed at the side of their face and not coming from above.
She has some magical purple light coming from... somewhere.
And then they are in an area under a bridge, far away from any lights, but they've got soft fill light with a bright rim coming from the right.
Speilberg's version has much more motivated light.
This one is a bit of a cheat, some very bright source off in the distance. But it feels more plausible to the brain and gives a better sense of darkness. It feels like some kind of industrial lighting. Or a security light at a junkyard.
Here he straight up shows you where the light is coming from. And his preference for anamorphic lenses.
And here he uses bright train lights to create silhouettes. This is clever because it allows everything to be very dark but everyone is still legible in the scene.
I'm torn. Because I study light. And so I am very aware of how shows and movies are lighting things. And unmotivated lighting sticks out in my brain. Like when I watch someone miming playing the guitar. Or using a camera improperly. When you know too much about something, inaccurate onscreen depictions just drive you nuts.
There are some techniques being experimented with to make night scenes more legible while maintaining lighting realism. I think the most promising is the infrared day-for-night process used in Nope.
But maybe it doesn't need to be solved. Maybe DPs should just light the night even if it doesn't always make sense. Maybe general audiences just do not care and I am a big nerd who should be ignored.
Which do you prefer?
Whatever lighting allows you to clearly see what is happening.
Realistic motivated lighting, even if it is dark and hard to see.
I didn't care about motivated lighting until you pointed it out, you dork.
Motivated lighting as much as possible, dark scenes should cheat to see detail
As long as it looks cool, whatever dude.
Voting ended onJun 12, 2025
kaledo-art
pixelskylines
titsay
izzy806
kianamaiart
romaincrisis
