[Daughter of person who built superduper high-end cameras for the US government for a living.]
"Filmmakers working with celluloid also need to take into account that most American film stocks weren’t manufactured with a sensitive enough dynamic range to capture a variety of dark skin tones."
If you look at old color movies, you'll see that a lot of nighttime scenes were shot in the daytime with a filter over the lens. And this was because the science of color film was not yet advanced and you couldn't shoot color in low-light.
Oh, there was film that could capture the full dynamic range of color in low-light, but it was so fucking expensive that only the US Government could/would pay for it because it was a need to capture research, and the cameras with the shutter speed to deal with this kind of film were also astronomically expensive. It was not financially practical for a motion picture studio to buy a single camera that cost as much as a mansion, nor was it financially practical to shoot reels and reels of incredibly expensive film* when most of it ends up on the cutting room floor.
Studios had big budgets in the 1950s-1970s, but they sure as hell didn't have the budget of the US Military Industrial Complex.
At the time In the Heat of the Night was shot, we were just starting to see nighttime scenes shot at night in our motion pictures, so yes, Sidney Poitier had to be lit up super bright unless he was being filmed the newest in high-end pro equipment.
However, that all said, by the mid 1980s film and cameras capable of full dynamic range was the standard due to advances in technology, so after that? No excuse except for people too lazy to adjust lighting and calibrate a meter. :(
*Think about it -- even in the heyday of the picture camera, even after supply and demand brought prices down, 3200 speed film cost 4x as much as 400 speed film due in large part that it was simply more expensive to manufacture due to the cost of the raw materials and process.
no subject
"Filmmakers working with celluloid also need to take into account that most American film stocks weren’t manufactured with a sensitive enough dynamic range to capture a variety of dark skin tones."
If you look at old color movies, you'll see that a lot of nighttime scenes were shot in the daytime with a filter over the lens. And this was because the science of color film was not yet advanced and you couldn't shoot color in low-light.
Oh, there was film that could capture the full dynamic range of color in low-light, but it was so fucking expensive that only the US Government could/would pay for it because it was a need to capture research, and the cameras with the shutter speed to deal with this kind of film were also astronomically expensive. It was not financially practical for a motion picture studio to buy a single camera that cost as much as a mansion, nor was it financially practical to shoot reels and reels of incredibly expensive film* when most of it ends up on the cutting room floor.
Studios had big budgets in the 1950s-1970s, but they sure as hell didn't have the budget of the US Military Industrial Complex.
At the time In the Heat of the Night was shot, we were just starting to
see nighttime scenes shot at night in our motion pictures, so yes, Sidney Poitier had to be lit up super bright unless he was being filmed the newest in high-end pro equipment.
However, that all said, by the mid 1980s film and cameras capable of full dynamic range was the standard due to advances in technology, so after that? No excuse except for people too lazy to adjust lighting and calibrate a meter. :(
*Think about it -- even in the heyday of the picture camera, even after supply and demand brought prices down, 3200 speed film cost 4x as much as 400 speed film due in large part that it was simply more expensive to manufacture due to the cost of the raw materials and process.