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After posting a comment or two about it at ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
facetofcathy's post the other day, I'm tempted to write a rebuttal to the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_dahne_ bit about how talking about Leverage lighting Aldis Hodge badly is racist is ridiculous.*
Someone at Cathy's post figured out that this refers tothingswithwings' post here, though I don't entirely agree with Megan's logic, and darkrose and deepad make some good addendum and rebuttal points here.
However:
All of us, I think, would agree that the topic is not ridiculous and does reflect on the white-centric nature of Hollywood. Because this is actually a fucking issue in media production, that people are TAUGHT about. Because I was taught about it in theory, for fuck's sake, as an undergraduate.
Anyone who's done study of film/tv in the US knows about standard lighting (e.g. three-point lighting, key-lighting, etc.). These methods of lighting date from the earliest days of Hollywood studio cinema. It shouldn't be rocket science for me to tell you that the basic methodology of lighting for US film and television is only designed to make white people look good...because they weren't LIGHTING people of colour then.
Particularly 'difficult'...in a relative sense of needing to throw out the existing book...is lighting people with darker skin tones, because the play of light and shadow necessary to highlight their features is different due to absorption of light. For people of colour with lighter skin tones (and darker ones), one also must at the very least consider a change of the colour used to light them. Lighting white people often is done with a blue gel...which doesn't flatter a lot of POC.
Fun fact from my undergraduate reading (so of course I now can't find anything that cites it, sigh): Julie Dash had to dress her Daughters of the Dust cast in light pink instead of white, because the lighting she used for her all-black cast made the white not look white...where it would have looked white under a 'standard' blue gel.
Now, the question is--is your white US cinematographer gonna know or care?
Some Western ensemble television shows where one main character is a POC and the rest are white will probably not change their lighting for scenes with the POC or even just the POC hirself due to time constraints and/or budget. Figuring out how to light hir in scenes with white characters would be complex. (I'm not saying that is right. I am just speculating as to why.)
Leverage does have really bad lighting overall, imho. But where Aldis Hodge also looks absolutely TERRIBLE in comparison to non-POCs is in the intentionally-dark lighting/tint of Supernatural; it makes the white mains look edgy, but completely washes out his features. As I said in Cathy's post, I'm surprised it met network colour standards at all. My guess is that it didn't and was fixed to do so. Another example of lighting for a white cast that doesn't do particularly well: this CJ (Allison Janney) and Charlie (Dule Hill) shot/reverse-shot from The West Wing. The caps here look unaltered to me save for size.
Anyway, my point being: this is an actual area of discussion in film and television production. Has been for DECADES. It is not ridiculous or facetious.
And in my mind, poorly lighting people with dark skin tones is cheap or lazy. But it doesn't surprise me.
Disclaimer: I am not a lighting designer, though a good friend of mine is. My knowledge of lighting is for the screen and is fairly limited. If I have fucked anything up here, please let me know.
facetofcathy's post the other day, I'm tempted to write a rebuttal to the _dahne_ bit about how talking about Leverage lighting Aldis Hodge badly is racist is ridiculous.*Someone at Cathy's post figured out that this refers to
thingswithwings' post here, though I don't entirely agree with Megan's logic, and darkrose and deepad make some good addendum and rebuttal points here.However:
All of us, I think, would agree that the topic is not ridiculous and does reflect on the white-centric nature of Hollywood. Because this is actually a fucking issue in media production, that people are TAUGHT about. Because I was taught about it in theory, for fuck's sake, as an undergraduate.
Anyone who's done study of film/tv in the US knows about standard lighting (e.g. three-point lighting, key-lighting, etc.). These methods of lighting date from the earliest days of Hollywood studio cinema. It shouldn't be rocket science for me to tell you that the basic methodology of lighting for US film and television is only designed to make white people look good...because they weren't LIGHTING people of colour then.
Particularly 'difficult'...in a relative sense of needing to throw out the existing book...is lighting people with darker skin tones, because the play of light and shadow necessary to highlight their features is different due to absorption of light. For people of colour with lighter skin tones (and darker ones), one also must at the very least consider a change of the colour used to light them. Lighting white people often is done with a blue gel...which doesn't flatter a lot of POC.
Fun fact from my undergraduate reading (so of course I now can't find anything that cites it, sigh): Julie Dash had to dress her Daughters of the Dust cast in light pink instead of white, because the lighting she used for her all-black cast made the white not look white...where it would have looked white under a 'standard' blue gel.
Now, the question is--is your white US cinematographer gonna know or care?
Some Western ensemble television shows where one main character is a POC and the rest are white will probably not change their lighting for scenes with the POC or even just the POC hirself due to time constraints and/or budget. Figuring out how to light hir in scenes with white characters would be complex. (I'm not saying that is right. I am just speculating as to why.)
Leverage does have really bad lighting overall, imho. But where Aldis Hodge also looks absolutely TERRIBLE in comparison to non-POCs is in the intentionally-dark lighting/tint of Supernatural; it makes the white mains look edgy, but completely washes out his features. As I said in Cathy's post, I'm surprised it met network colour standards at all. My guess is that it didn't and was fixed to do so. Another example of lighting for a white cast that doesn't do particularly well: this CJ (Allison Janney) and Charlie (Dule Hill) shot/reverse-shot from The West Wing. The caps here look unaltered to me save for size.
Anyway, my point being: this is an actual area of discussion in film and television production. Has been for DECADES. It is not ridiculous or facetious.
And in my mind, poorly lighting people with dark skin tones is cheap or lazy. But it doesn't surprise me.
Disclaimer: I am not a lighting designer, though a good friend of mine is. My knowledge of lighting is for the screen and is fairly limited. If I have fucked anything up here, please let me know.
