The Los Angeles area is dry and rainy, with plenty of sunshine, and the sun shines brightly in the sky almost every day, which is an ideal location for most crews. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

But not for Murphy's crew, there will be no sunlight at all in his entire exterior scenes, the lens tone is completely dark, and sufficient sunshine will only bring trouble, and the crew needs to be shaded everywhere during shooting, otherwise if the film is overexposed, even with the current technology, it is very difficult to grade color in post.

"David, the light is too bright, too soft!"

In almost every scene, Murphy can be heard shouting, "The light should be harder, the tone should be darker!" ”

This film is different from the previous "City of Chaos", the whole story is full of gloomy atmosphere and despair and absurdity, which belongs to the relatively rare black and very utter desperate personal biopic in Hollywood.

Murphy never thought about what kind of profit the film would generate, but the first thing he thought about was whether it would be more productive during the awards season, and the nature of the film determined that it could not do much commercially, so it would not be widely circulated, and it was also contrary to Ross's ideas.

Now that he promised his friends, Murphy naturally wants to do better, if he really wants to become famous and become a world-renowned film, the Oscar is the best way and platform for communication.

In the past, typical Oscar-winning films with a noir style were not without success during the awards season.

For example, "Chicago" in 2003, "Million Dollar Baby" in 2005, "The Departed" in 2006, and "No Country for Old Men" in 2008......

Of course, these films are not as dark and thorough as Murphy's style, and they are still the mainstream orientation of Hollywood films, and they are not as commercial as the films directed by Murphy.

Several of Murphy's masterpieces are black from the surface to the inside, and the value orientation makes the defenders scoff.

Although he suffered successive setbacks at the Oscars due to stylistic issues, Murphy was not prepared to make fundamental changes in this film.

Is film noir a celebration of cynicism, or the courage to confront the darkness of human nature? Is it identified by visual style positioning? Or is it determined according to the main idea and the overall tone of the story? Is its visual style merely "eerie", or does it harbor a deeper theme?

Murphy has his own understanding of these.

It must be admitted that film noir is an artistic phenomenon with the characteristics of film art, and at the same time it is a very complex film phenomenon, and film noir is not a theoretical concept, but a description and induction of a certain film industry production fait accompli.

Whether in the studio or on location, Murphy laid out four basic principles for the crew in the construction and shooting of the set.

Most of the scenes are lit according to the night scene; The composition prefers to use diagonal and vertical lines rather than horizontal lines; The use of lighting treatment makes the actor often hide in the night scene of the city, and the actor's face is always covered by shadows when he speaks, or the light and shadow are used to divide the face; The tension of the camera takes precedence over the physical movements of the actors.

In addition to these four basic principles, Murphy also uses more techniques in on-location shooting.

After the first few days of shooting, Murphy communicated with Filip Raschel and adjusted the shooting method appropriately, and they preferred to use low-angle lighting, large light ratio lighting, and a very tough camera tone for the later shoots.

In this way, they generally use a more solid focus, and generally do not use diffusers or fog mirrors to soften the picture.

For example, Fili-Raschel often uses wide-angle lenses and small aperture to obtain a large depth of field, which can easily cause a sense of depression on people.

In addition, in some scene layouts, Murphy asked Helena Espora to appropriately add some props with typical black connotations, such as the fall of angels, and in the subsequent shooting, Philippe Raschel used unstable lens compositions to separate and squeeze people from strangely shaped light areas and lines, objects, such as the light and shadow of blinds, doors, windows, stairs, metal frames, etc.

This is especially true when using larger angles of elevation and elevation angles.

In almost all of his shots, Murphy asked Filip-Raschel to use diagonal and vertical lines instead of horizontal lines to compose the shots, and the split shots of the diagonal lines can make the world of film noir appear restless and unstable.

In film noir, light enters the room in strange shapes, and the viewer sees jagged quadrilaterals, acute triangles, vertical slits.

Murphy's treatment of the noir elements of this film also has a strong visual element, and that is the use of bloody images.

Needless to say, from the original film to the present, it is his forte.

From expressionist painting to film noir, this kind of visual image has been repeatedly created and watched by human beings, developing such a complex and rich and self-contained visual map of film noir, which has the aesthetic meaning of Oscar Wilde.

However, even if a film creates a typical visual film noir style, it is not necessarily a film noir, and the decisive factor is the general tendency of the film's narrative, the endless gloom and darkness of the dominant idea.

"Damp city streets, dramatic staircases, dark train stations, slanted camera angles, melancholy shadows and dreamy lighting effects......"

During the break, Seth Rogan looked at Murphy's footage and could see a lot of typical dark elements in it.

"Film noir does have some commonly used identifying elements, but those are not decisive factors."

With a cup of coffee in hand, Murphy stood behind Seth Rogen and said, "The defining feature of film noir is not the visual treatment, but the desperation and gloomy consciousness that the narrative presents." ”

He took a cup of coffee and continued, "The theme of our film is not tragedy, but a kind of confusion and despair. ”

Seth Rogan immediately thought of a movie he had seen and said, "The Godfather 3's heart-rending cry in front of his daughter's corpse at the end of "The Godfather 3" is horrific, but it is a tragedy brought about by violence, not a completely sunken world in film noir. ”

Murphy nodded and said, "There is no genre more seductive than this type of film with its darkness, violence, guilt, and illegal passion."

In fact, Seth Rogen's "The End of the World" was also influenced by his style, in which there are numerous black elements.

"The concept of film noir, which is so broad and unusual, is largely carefully crafted after the film itself has already been created."

Robert Downey Jr.'s voice rang out, and the guy hadn't removed his makeup yet, he walked over step by step, and said, "Film noir is perhaps the most creative period in Hollywood history, if not measured by its peak productions but by its average productions. You can pick any film noir and it will be better than any silent comedy, musical and dance film, western, etc...... Film noir seems to be able to bring out the strengths of every profession, such as director, cinematographer, screenwriter or actor. It is not uncommon for a film noir to reach the highest point in an artist's career. ”

Murphy and Seth Rogan both looked at the guy, and even Gal Gadot, who was behind him to explain the work to the assistant, looked up.

Robert Downey Jr. walked up to Murphy and laughed, "That's not what I said, it's Paul Schrader wrote in his Film Noir Notes." ”

"That makes a lot of sense." Murphy shrugged his shoulders and said, "Film noir has a very strong set of values, and its narrative and control ideas have a fundamental view of the world. The narrative mode of film noir is very intrusive and corrosive, it is like a highly contagious virus, when it encounters other bright, rational and warm humanitarian genres, it will immediately occupy it, and rewrite this genre as a subgenre of the genre of film noir. ”

Murphy spread his hands and said, "So, it is a good deed to know the evil in human nature, and it is also a good deed to create and watch film noir." ”

Hearing this, everyone else seemed to be frightened and showed a thoughtful look, only Robert Downey Jr. scoffed and directly sneered, "You like to put gold on your face too much." ”

His words immediately alerted Seth Rogan and Gal Gadot, who both shook their heads and laughed.

Murphy looked at the time and reminded, "Alright, let's get ready to shoot." ”

With his order, the otherwise quiet bar immediately came to a close, with Tyrese Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. sitting at the front of the bar, and the two had a brief exchange in preparation for the upcoming shoot.

This is the bar where Murphy and Rose often meet, and the owner of the bar is also a friend of Ross and is willing to provide the crew with a filming space for free.

What will be shot here is the scene where Ross becomes one of the leaders of the drug cartel, and it is also an important scene at the end of the film.

In the bar, Murphy asked Filly Raschel to set up multiple cameras, ready to shoot with multiple camera coverages.

In general, a single camera can shoot a specific scene, and a single camera can capture the whole picture.

But Murphy's shooting, unless there are some special scenes, rarely uses a camera to frame it, and basically adds a second or even a third camera position.

These auxiliary cameras are mainly used to capture the entire scene from multiple different angles, and the auxiliary images are shot together with the main frame to form a complete shot, and then when editing, Murphy is able to use different angles of footage to compose the edit.

All the shots are the result of Murphy's careful consideration. (To be continued.) )