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Posted June 19, 2017 by Gavin Hoey in Videos
 
 

Film Noir in a small studio

How do you sum up the film noir style? For me words like dark, moody and sinister would be fitting but there’s a lot more to it then that. There’s the style both in lighting and subject matter to consider too.

I always think of Film Noir as being high contrast, black and white scenes lit with hard light resulting in strong shadows. Rightly or not I also think 50’s style crime drama and that’s what I set out to produce in my small home studio.









The trick here was to set my main light low and hard (No softboxes or umbrellas) That gave great shadows from the Venetian blinds and the up light gave a sense of menace, as well as the subtle feeling our hero was on a higher floor looking down.

The rest was down to Styling. So asking Brian (the model) to have a bit of stubble, giving him a bottle of whiskey (or cold tea in this case) and of course, having him hold a vintage kids cap gun all helped set the scene and tell the story.


Gavin Hoey

 


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