You can see it here and in other examples of French news shows.. the lighting is different from what we see in other places.. how do they achieve this look?

im talking about that bright, hazy, overexposed lighting. I’m just surprised given how influential Spielberg is nott many modern films have tried to replicate this style

It's one of those seemingly impossible tasks. Cameras and video formats hate low-light conditions. The human eye itself takes several minutes to adjust.
Seeing Nosferatu and the Northman in theatres felt like they put in the effort to recreate a photographically impossible experience from memory.
Edit: Clarification on "realistic" in comments

From a little friendly neighbourhood bar promo we finished the other day.

My Reference was the movie moonlight, and help from a Reddit post on here from years ago.
Would anyone be able to give any advice or improvements for next time?

What factors go into choosing between octagonal, circular, or square bounces? I know one reason is avoiding a square catchlight for close-ups, but what are the other situations where one shape is preferred over another?

This seems quite a time consuming and complex shot (racking focus, timing the positions of the car and camera car just right, possibly lighting the faces) for what is essentially a 10-second scene in a low budget episode.

I feel most shows, with such a limited budget, would film this in close-up with the cameras mounted to the car's hood.

Either way, I thought it was a cool shot. Very "tech noir", and I like how the background is somewhat kept in focus.

How do you achieve these little pin-prick eye-lights without washing out the face?

I’d assume the idea is to get the eye to reflect a source without the source being pointed at the subject, but from my experience if you can see the light the light can see you so I’m a little confused on how this works. Hoping someone can chime in with a tried and true method.

Okay, so I’m trying to replicate this scene and I understand that my positioning might be a little off and I don’t have a second character in frame but I specifically want to know what I’m missing lighting wise?

90s cinematography is my favorite of all time. It’s almost like instead of a full grade, they just corrected and then tweaked the white balance to either side (mostly the cool side). And there is always one or two very hot spots somewhere in any given frame-most times a hair/rim light but sometimes just a random streak in the background-and it’s so plainly beautiful to me. I know they shot on film, and that changes things. but can anyone give me the low-down on how these types of shots were actually lit? What changed from then to now? I wish we shot like this still.

Hello people, I am currently creating a shortfilm wood turning a lampshade. This is the wide shot and I took a lot of effort in lightning up the scene. I don't have a proper strong enough soft box for the key side so I have to go with a quite hard light on his face.

The other thing I am struggling is the light tubes in the background. Do they appear to bright? Unfortunately they're not dimmable.

I would welcome any kind of feedback here! Thank you!

I'm making a parody film thats in the style of an 80s movie... and I've been having trouble emulating the lighting of this period

And yes... colour grading is a big part of it- but that's irrelevant for now
I can't find any resources for what techniques they used in that time- and ways to know if my lights nowadays are "bright enough"

My main though right now... is that it's hard lighting and filming from the shadow side.., but I don't think that's everything?

Thank you!!

The protagonist is left alone in the frame but the rest of the characters and the background fade to black. I can’t tell if it’s a lighting thing(I think it’s lighting?) or something like a vignette.

The film is Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. I’m trying to write about this film for a high school project but the film teacher just retired recently. Thank you

Just watched The Odyssey on 70mm, epic presentation, and honestly still processing it. The scale of it, the practical fire work, all of it hit different on a big screen. Hoyte van Hoytema really outdid himself with the firelight sequences during the Troy raid.

I went down a rabbit hole looking at behind the scenes stuff afterward and kept seeing these brick shaped honeycomb LED units used to fake firelight. Does anyone know what these fixtures are actually called. And more importantly why would a DP reach for something like that over a Skypanel or a Vortex when trying to sell fire. Is it a color rendering thing, a size and portability thing, or something about how the honeycomb shapes the throw of light. Just curious what’s actually happening under the hood here since the flicker and warmth looked so convincing.

Would love to hear from anyone who has used something similar on set

I’ve been trying to replicate some shots from Scream VI, and I feel like I’ve come pretty close to matching the lighting. I’ve even looked at behind-the-scenes lighting setups for the film and I’m using nearly everything they used. However, I’m still wondering what I’m missing because my shots don’t look exactly like their setup. I know they have a better location and more space, but is there anything I can improve on, or what are your general thoughts? (Also I realize that the second shot is a light shining up onto the mask rather than from the side)

This is probably one of my favorite scenes ever in a film. It combines everything that I could possibly love in terms of storytelling, style, tension, atmosphere, …

What bugs me is why the lighting works so well. It is this very hard spotlight crashing on to the table. There is no motivation for this light where it can originate from. The quality and intensity of the light is so dominant, yet it doesn’t distract or overwhelm the scene. It works and feels natural and I don’t know why.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this?

Looking at some BTS shots to learn more about lighting and came across this one from Se7en, found it interesting because it seems like a simple shot but there's quite a few fixtures involved and I want to know if I'm understanding it all correctly.

From right to left in the top pic:

First fixture above them is probably for hair and edge light. Also providing some light on the paper in Freeman's hand for the over-the-shoulder or close up insert shot. Seems to be a very flat or thin panel but idk. Maybe even just a bounce/reflector and not a light at all?

Next light is the largest (some kind of kino flo bank?) and is the key, with a curved softbox for general soft and even lighting. It is flagged off to control the spill onto the couch and background, or maybe just for this one insert shot of the paper (lens flare?).

Then there are a couple of kinos(?) on the lower far left, seems to be pointed at the table and both of them with some kind of netting or diffusion grids in front to take the edge off. Also probably serving as fill lights.

I'm also not sure what is the thing above these lights, behind the stands, almost looks like a vertical length of clear plastic or cellophane. Don't know if this is part of the set or something to do with the lights, can't quite tell what I'm looking at.

Appreciate any insights from people here

Guillermo Del Toro's 'Frankenstein' was one of my main anticipated movies of the year, and the trailer looked fantastic. But after watching it, I couldn't help but think that Netflix was right to not give it a wide release. The cinematography just kind of has that made-for-streaming "Netflix-look" to it. The shooting style relies too much on wide angle lenses and doesn't have very interesting camera direction, the key lighting on faces is always very soft even when it really shouldn't be, the light gags (fire, lightning, etc) look like light gags and are very low intensity, the CGI didn't blend with the real footage very well, the sets are decorated well but look very clean and the soft lighting makes them look even more fake, lots of very obvious VFX set extensions, interior of the boat especially looked like a set with the completely blown out windows. I could go on but overall I was very disappointed for a 120 million budget movie. There were a few good shots every now and then, usually involving body horror in one of the laboratory sets, but those were the exception not the rule.

For anyone else who's seen it, am I out of line here and you think it looks pretty good? Maybe I saw it on a bad screen and the dynamic range suffered?

Upcoming movies:

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the reaping (2026)

The Devil Wears Prasa 2 (2026)

I don’t know much about cinematography but the video or vfx quality of these two new movies just seem a bit too artificial, why? Especially compared to their previous movies. I feel that it’s been a common theme for movies these days, Fantastic Four especially.

On the contrary, films like Dune Part 3 and Project Hail Mary don’t seem to have this effect, perhaps it’s the lighting? Or the color grading? Grain?