Collateral & the Death of Neon
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- čas přidán 4. 06. 2024
- An exploration of street lamps, crime cinema, and disappearing worlds.
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Music by Tyler Floyd
www.tylerfloydaudio.com/
Why The Ring Didn't Use Color Grading: • Why The Ring Didn’t Us...
Searching For Fallen Angel's Lost Lens: • Searching for Fallen A...
Additional Attributions:
10:14 - Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) [voiceover clip]
• Los Angeles Plays Itse...
More information on the "moonlight towers" referenced at 3:20:
• Why use many streetlig...
Citations:
Moro, Francisco García. “The Death and Life of Hong Kong’s Illegal Façades.” ARENA Journal of Architectural Research, 2020, Art. 2.
ajar.arena-architecture.eu/ar...
Yaldız, Esra et al. “Loss Of City Identities In The Process Of Change: The City Of Konya-Turkey.” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 140, 2014, 221-233.
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Links & Sources:
docs.google.com/document/d/10...
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:59 Part 1: Street Lights & The Color of Crime
11:03 Part 2: Collateral & The Rise of Neon
15:54 Part 3: LEDs & The Loss of Identity
23:46 Conclusion - Krátké a kreslené filmy
Obviously, LEDs are here to stay--I just hope lighting authorities move away from 4000k, because yes it very much is prison lighting and basically every human being alive hates it. 2700-3000 is about the right mix of usable light and "this doesn't make me feel crazy"
Exactly, we need to push for 2700k lighting.
Is that why the sun changed
Not only the death of neon but the death of fluorescent lighting which I’d argue is even more impactful as it was more widely used. LED lighting just doesn’t look the same whether captured in celluloid or digital
I hate fluorescent lights
One of the few ways I feel LED lighting looks good is in Black & White.
I've done some amateur school projects where I've preferred LED street lights for particular scenes and moods.
It's a different vibe.
Phosphoresant
I can forgive losing an aesthetic of an era to actually make progress towards saving energy and through that having a net positive effect on energy consumption and helping our environment.
We don't light our streets and homes in a widespread manner with gas.
Give it enough decades something will replace LED, and then up and coming generations will bemoan the loss of that aesthetic.
It's simply a cycle.
LED does perfectly fine, great in fact--it can do all the colours you'd ever want and more. Plus, it's all in the colour grading, in a film context. But seeing the amber in person just has no substitute, that's true.
I can praise the video, which is amazing, but to focus on a small seemingly uncommented-on detail, man is it uniquely awesome that you post your sources and citations. It's already reflected in your work just by the way you write and compose your videos, but just having it also written down in the description is simply so awesome yet rarely done by others.
My respect for a content creator increases tenfold when they put music sources in the description. This is even better
Las Vegas came to mind during this video. When I was a young, my father would drive me up and down the strip to look at the all the lights. Being a “small town” boy, I was fascinated and drawn to them. Vegas always held that mystery and appeal for me.
However, when I last visited it held no mystery or appeal and I couldn’t quite place the reason. Upon returning home I figured out that the way Vegas lights the buildings is no longer the same.
Great video. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about something I’ve instinctively felt but never thought about
Another small town boy here, been to Vegas multiple times but only since 2011, and although I was wowed by the scale and grandiosity of everything my first time there (aren't most people?), "old Vegas" as shown in films and as experienced by others has a very unique and interesting appeal that is lacking today IMO.
Yeah Vegas sucks now
Downtown still has a more authentic feel, Fremont has classic neon signs on display too
But the Strip is so different now
@@quickcanary As a GenX growing up in the NYC in the late '70s/early '80s, Times Square in the 1980s was thing of seedy, magical, menacing, beauty! Then it became a outdoor shopping mall in the '90s.
I probably missed half the video because I kept sending notes to myself of movies to watch/rewatch. Great essay.
"Near Dark flashed only once. I immediately recognized Bill Paxton in his role. I went back ten seconds and saw "Near Dark" a vampire movie I barely remember. A reluctant vampire movie shoot at night. From memory that's all I remember. I have to watch it soon now.
That's the beauty of the pause button. You'll find it too someday, young padawan.
Or in other words; _just watch it again..._
Growing up in the 80s and 90s I have a fondness for the old, warm sodium glow of the night. Some of the comments here, such as how things easily lurk between the sodium glow, are bang on, and evocative of a bygone age. Great video essay.
What I remember most about warm lights is BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
It is pretty funny how people were saying very similar things about sodium street lamps when they were first introduced as they're now saying about LED street lamps. They had a decent point back then about how sodium lamps don't allow color vision (but purchase cost, efficiency, and lifetime won out as mentioned in the video), and now we're annoyed about LED street lighting that brings back color vision (and again wins out in cost, efficiency, and lifetime) 😂
edit: I mean, I get it. That's the whole point of this video. Reminds me of how we think about playing N64 games on a CRT - a beautiful visual experience that has met "a slow demise to the unstoppable force" of new technology, to quote the video
@@Concorde1059Yes, but they could pick different LED lighting. They just choose to pick brighter probably because it's cheaper or something.
I hate it because it affects my sleeping plain and simple and it's so much brighter that I can't see the stars. It's more depressing.
And it doesn't just affect humans. It affects wildlife LEDs brightness has been shown to impact local wildlife in the way that the orange glow lights that we used to have were not as impactful. Night is supposed to be dark not the other way around. We light it up for some individuals benefit at the cost of others. Light pollution is actually very bad.
I don't have blackout blinds, which come with their own disadvantage like not waking up naturally to the natural sunrise. So it's ironic that I have to keep the lights on, but I actually switch my LED lights for LEDs that mimic fire. I can actually sleep through that color, but I can't sleep through the traditional light glow very well. I thought the orange ones were bad too. But now I'm just depressed. I don't even live in the big city and yet the big city comes for me, urbanism increasing development and taking over. And lighting's just one of those things that reminds me of the thing I have lost.
@@Conorscorner the warm buzzing of CRT televisions and monitors too. everything had a droning ambient sound.
@@milliedragon4418 I'm trying to understand your situation, but I'm failing. "Night is supposed to be dark" seems to be a reductive take on the need for street lighting.
After all, there's a reason street lighting became ubiquitous after the tech became cheap and reliable. There's an enormous societal and economic benefit to lighting, but I do agree with you on the point of sleep impact.
In my view, the reason that lighting has become so intrusive is due to the mass dominance of our urban areas by the automobile. In dense, walkable areas, street lighting isn't as necessary and is less intrusive.
Just my two cents. Have a great day!
Film noir...
Blade Runner...
Foggy nights wandering the streets of Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong in the early 90's while in the Marine Corps...
Even movies like Collateral (one of my all-time favorites).
I never understood why experiences like this had such a profound effect on me over the course of my life.
Thanks to your work, now I know.
Finally, someone has given a voice, a vision, a reason, for all that I've loved over the years.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Man... I'm glad I visited Hongkong in 2011. It's kinda weird that I'm getting emotional right now over advertising signs. But as someone from a country with strict light pollution laws, going out at night in HK felt magical.
Thank you for this video.
Come to Japan! After 7 years I still get a kick out of just walking around the bar districts, with all the colourful signs. I hope it's never "fixed"
I was lucky enough to visit HK and the iconic (now redeveloped) Kowloon City in 1997 - it was *unbelievable* - HK was a Jackie Chan Movie by day; high concept science fiction by night
I really REALLY miss the pre-9/11 world 😪
I was only discussing this a few weeks back with a pal. Heat, Collateral, Blade Runner, The Driver, Terminator...the list of great movies set at night goes on and those fillms now document a 'look' that has vanished from our urban environments. It's a damn shame! Collateral is so specific in how it wants to capture the range of light in LA. We will never get a film that looks like it again, sadly.
I've looked back on sodium vapor light with nostalgia for some time now. We still have a good number where I live, but along with LED headlights I've become aware of how fleeting the lighting of my childhood is. Bright yellow headlights and the orange glow of the streetlights that I used to try to read or play gameboy with as a kid are comforting to me, and more and more they're relegated to the more industrial and run down places where they sharpen the edge to those places.
I find christmas lighting nostalgic in a similar way, it's not "lost", but it feels like an anachronism that especially since the pandemic has seen less and less usage in my area.
I miss that greenish-blue glow of mercury vapor street lights. It's all what you grew up with, I suppose.. I was born in 1957.
I just bought my own sodium vapour street light to put up as I've really been missing the yellow glow
@@ChristinaGXL I put a mercury vapor street light over my garage door for the same reason 25 years ago.
Sodium-vapor has such a dreamy charm in my mind. I remember loving the night as a child, mostly because of them. Peaceful orange landscapes enveloped in placid and velveteen cumulus skies of shifting and juxtaposing reds and purples. It felt as though the world of dreams had come to visit.
This feels like the video essay I’ve been waiting for for so long, you have crystallised and fleshed out my exact thoughts on street lighting and in relation to movies, incredible work
I want to mention Walter Hill’s “48 Hours” (1982) and its outstanding use of nighttime San Francisco neon lighting.
Hill took it even further in Streets of Fire (1984) since it was a fictional city he created. It went on to influence the look of the videogame Streets of Rage and the anime Bubblegum Crisis, both soaked in neon.
I loved the cinematography and lighting in 48 HRS
A local bowling alley is still maintaining their old neon sign. It's a nice touch of warmth against the harsh radiation of commerce that surrounds it.
I hope they never take it down.
Due to a manufacturing error many of the LED streetlights have turned a dark purple. The result on foggy nights is creepy beyond description.
It is eerie but I still prefer it to the sterile white glow of normal LEDs.
Due to the positive effects of chromatic dispersion amber colors are far better at illuminating foggy and rain-hindered highways. This is why HPS high mast lighting will probably not go away in the immediate future.
Did you pull that out of your ass? Making purple LEDs is a whole another thing, and no amount of phosphor degradation will make white LED appear purple.
Chromatic dispersion? Most HPS lights have craptastic glare control compared to anything remotely competent with LEDs, and yes there is a standard for that (EN 13201), and yes there is a specification for glare from the light and glare from the road reflection.
So yeah, HPS is deader than dead.
At least in terms of the purple LEDs thing, this is a known issue due to phosphor delamination inside the lamp
www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-are-mysteriously-turning-purple-heres-why/
@@VEC7ORlt Still on the streets of Tampa
And something different, besides my other comment, there is a real big problem with how we humans are making our world uglier. This bit about Hong Kong is just really sad, yet I see it on so many levels, in so many places around the world. We really need to educate young people about beauty, because without beauty life is dull.
You turned a niche topic into a dreamy, nostalgic trip back through time. The music and narrative flow was excellent. Well done and thank you for twenty five minutes of comforting nostalgia.
The cities around my location don't have a lot of businesses using LEDs yet. The ones that use them are usually small businesses that use rope LEDs in the window. And your video points out them being directional, and that clarified something I had noticed when looking around at night.
When a store has those rope LEDs in their window, their directionality is like a spot light. Looking towards them makes everything else look darker.
So even if other stores next door have neon lights or some other colored lights, the brightness and the directionality of the rope LEDs gets in the way of anything that might make a good night time scene.
I seen photos of I think it was Japan where they have embraced LEDs. When they're plentiful, then it doesn't get in the way because you have multiple directional LEDs balancing each other. So you still get the romance of a neon lit night scene. Plus a multitude of colors.
But if it's just a one or a few places, it does take away the romance.
Also ruins the other side of the street because you get a dominating staccato reflection in any windows for rope LEDs.
I would bet that somebody will come up with LEDs in a diffusion tube to simulate the glow of neon lights. Bring back the romance.
I do love the art and craft of making neon lights. Would hate to see it disappear completely.
I have a bunch of LED strip lights that are diffused to look like neon, you have to get pretty close to make out the individual LEDs.
The trade off is that light only comes out of one edge of the rectangular strip which has pros and cons.
Replicating the full tube effect would be difficult because fairly thick wires need to be hidden within, can be done with larger tubes but not so much with small diameter like neons.
@@ExplorerLoki I was thinking someday somebody may come out with LEDs inside a tube that has a combination of internal reflector to scatter the light, and translucent exterior to give the glow.
@gregorylagrange I hope so. Putting aside environmental concerns for a moment, nothing compares to real neon.
The lights I have are flexible so they can be made into a sign/image by the user, maybe rigid LED tubes that are custom made at the factory would be feasible.
@@ExplorerLoki I have the same type of LED's in my bedroom and I really like the warm diffused light they produce. I could see someone coming up with a version with a flat core with diodes on both sides and diffusing tubes on both sides that could closely mimic the 360° light of a neon tube.
Just wow. Banger after banger. I have a few youtubers I hold up as my all-time favorites, and over the last year after finding your videos, you have basically beaten the old favorites into bloody piles. I subscribed for notifications, which I never do, and I don't get the notifications and actually manually check your channel for new videos. Your deep dives are such a refreshing counter to the shallow trash of mainstream CZcams. I go back and rewatch your Wong Kar Wai and Fallen Angels videos frequently, and I've rewatched all of your videos at least a few times.
You and I seem to like the same kind of films, or at least obsess over the same films. Not an expectation, but it's definitely cool.
I may be the only one, but even color temperature matching to tungsten, the light still isn't the same. I've messed with a lot of LED COB lights, LED grid lights, and even LED video walls for lighting, and no matter what I do, it's just not the same. Maybe it's just my old cynical eyes.
Always cool to hear that the videos about my strange little obsessions are connecting so well with people, I really appreciate the support. And as for LED, while it definitely has its place in the modern cinematographer/gaffer's toolkit, it's hard to fully match the characteristics of things like tungsten halogen lamps (let alone the weird imperfect light from old office fluorescents or street lamps). I can totally see why some in the industry today will still accept no substitutes.
How on earth does this channel not have more followers?? This is some seriously excellent work!
Collateral, Drive, and Nightcrawler all give off the same feeling to me, like it’s their own specific genre. L.A Neo-noir crime drama I think can perfectly describe it. I wish there were more movies like it. I’m always trying to discover more movies like them
If you haven't watched it yet, I'd point you toward Nicolas Winding Refn's show Too Old to Die Young. Its pace isn't for everyone but it has one of the most interesting visions of neo-noir L.A. to come out in some years.
@@WatchingtheAerial thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check it out
Zodiac has the same vibe although it doesnt all take place at night
Night walks around the suburbs used to be a staple of me keeping my sanity. These days I simply cannot relax while on them due to the harsh sharp nature of LED lights. Though I know that most people just don't care enough or even notice a difference in lighting, so I guess they're here to stay.
I remember the first time I walked under an led streetlight. I could see my shadow cast by each individual led. It tripped me out.
Man that orchestra of sicky light bouncing off the marine layer was my sole companion on way home back home in LA a decade ago when I was a junior banker.
Honestly loved the moody quiet light to decompress in, watching the dance of night shift guys going home, drunks, homeless, guys coming in for Asian market open, guys doing fuck knows what. Definitely played up in my head that I was in some noire shit on those decompression drives to try to make those old hundred hour weeks feel like I was doing something real and hard and meaningful.
Its kind of funny thats gone along with that part of my life, and frankly didnt even know it went away once I left.
Another banger from the most underrated essayist on this website
First I've seen and immediate sub
my man watchingtheaerial using footage from underrated masterpiece The Fanatic by Fred Durst starring John Travolta to make his point, what a legend
someone has to spread the gospel of the moose
Italian viewer here: this was exceptional, the title is a little deceiving, it was much more deep, extensive and comprehensive than anticipated, plus it sparked lots of reflection, great job guys!
Thank you so much for making this. I've been a lifelong enthusiasts of lighting tech and I partially credit spaces like what you've shown as starting my interest. There was a mall in NY I used to frequent as a child, had so many setups of neon art and Colored Fluorescent fixtures hung at angles from the ceiling. Its all been ripped out now and replaced with boring led setups, far from the imagination it used to be. I like to call this sort of LED lighting "adulting" or "boring dystopia" as i feel it represents the increasing sameness of it all.
There is however, places in this country still left in this world. I am based in Missouri, and on a few occasions I've driven out to the Remains of Metro North Mall. Only a small portion of it is left, the old Macy's is there standing next to all the fake luxury apartments and boring streetlights that replaced the mall. The Macy's still has its original 1000w Mercury vapor parking lot lights, some dead but others still there. Its a small piece of land stuck in 1976 that has brutally staved off time for so long. Going there in person at night is unreal. An accidental preservation of the what the past look liked that you can just go visit if you wanted to. Taken plenty of photos there and of my car in that parking lot. Some day some developer will want to knock down the Macys and put some other crap there, but for now I'll enjoy the solitude there.
This video very much helped articulate what I've been feeling about the LED revolution so thank you again for making it. It's also nice to know that other people care about this and its good for us to know the cinematic aspect as well. :)
-The Bulbman 4/17/24
Great video! This is something I have always noticed and tried to articulate when talking about a certain look of films from different eras. Especially New York films. They always had that cold blue aesthetic that just let you know it was NY. Love your work man, keep doing what you’re doing.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices this stuff. In the netflix film "the engineer" they either messed up color grading really bad or didn't think about how filming on a street with LED lights would break the 1990s immersion
It's netflix. They didn't care lmao.
Thanks for this interesting, thrilling and informed feature! One of my favourite memories is driving through Hong Kong in the frontrow, upper deck on a bus in the mid 1990´s. It was like a dream, floating through a tunnel of light with all these forms that made no sense to me. The signs would be hanging so low that the bus could just pass beneath them.
While LEDs might be a huge energy saver, its a lightsource made in hell!
As an Angeleno, I was very aware when mercury vapor streetlights were swapped out for sodium vapor. The "California Moonlight" bluish tinge was traded for a sickly yellow cast that heightened shadows and was more difficult to see in. It was obvious that the switch to sodium vapor was made because of cost considerations, not lighting visibility. In person (not on film) the mercury vapor lights seemed white with a very slight tint of blue, not green. The green is an artifact of film.
I'm glad the sodium vapors are disappearing. Their light was ugly and made it _harder_ to see, not easier. LED lighting is easier to see in, is adjustable and costs even less to power and maintain.
Cinematographers and their lighting crews have lots of tricks to use if they wish to replicate or remind of an earlier municipal lighting scheme. And many tricks for getting the modern iteration to look good (or however they want it to look) as well. As for me, I'll always have a sense of nostalgia about the mercury vapor lights of the nights of my childhood and youth, won't miss the sodium vapors at all and look forward to enjoying the better visibility afforded by LED's.
While mercury vapor lamps do look extra green on camera, they do always have a green cast due to the dominant spectrum lines. The eye somewhat corrects for it if you are used to it - but if you put one MV light in a row of similar color temperature LEDs, it will look quite greenish.
Forget streetlights and neon, the worst thing LEDs stared replacing were car headlights. Now everyone driving a car newer than 2017 looks like they're driving with their brights on.
Amazing video as always! Love seeing the way that the advancement of tehnology and lighting changed the way cities are precieved in cinema!
Celluloid was Nitrate Film. By the 1950's it was gone and became Cellulose Acetate Safety film. By the 1970's, They were using Polyester.
The CZcams algo suggested this video and I watched the entire thing. I didn't expect this topic to be so fascinating.
Good job.
Another outstanding video and the music so good! Tyler Floyd, wherever you are, I just have to say ❤
I don't understand how this channel doesn't have millions of followers, this is fantastic work, truly a professional masterpiece.
Your editing is great and narration as well. Amazing work, your channel currently is very underrated but keep the quality consistent and you will gain more exposure eventually.
I loved this video, it is already a great resource to study the history of street lights and cinema.
Wow, so interesting, thank you - wasn't even sure what the video was about from the title, glad I watched.
Loved this video! Really appreciate your thoroughness.
I’m obsessed with LA’s street lighting. I remember when “prison” LED lighting came to the Wilton / Beverly area. Thankfully it got changed not long after to a warmer tone of LED. Living closer to Pasadena now, where incandescent street lamps still rock their amazing glow.
Yeah, Collateral is a gorgeous film to look at, just like Heat or Thief. But is surprises me that although we have all these amazing technological advancements, many of the most beautiful movies I can think of have been made a long time ago. Besides Thief and Heat I think of movies such as: Lawrence of Arabia, Apocalypse Now, Bladerunner, Aliens and In the Mood for Love.
THANK YOU for this great analysis and commentary. Absolutely brilliant
It's not just that low pressure sodium vapor lamps are "warmer" or "yellow"-they emit an incredibly narrow range of wavelengths around 590nm, which corresponds to a yellowish-orange hue. This stimulates the L cone (560nm peak) the most, the M cone decently (530nm), and rod cells (monochrome night vision) a bit, but basically does not stimulate the S cone (420nm) at all. All colors of objects are formed by interaction of pigments and a source light, and to see blues the S cell must be stimulated. Blue pigments reflect only blue wavelengths so have nothing to reflect, and red pigments mostly reflect orange. Hence the way the orange cab changed colors: mercury vapor have a wide, spiky spectrum, overwhelmingly in wavelengths smaller than 560nm.
As for warmth, wavelengths and mixed light that predominantly stimulate the S cone are generally deemed "cool" and ones that mostly stimulate the L cone are "warm." LPS leaves S out of it and so is "warm." LEDs, even CCT warm ones do and so seem "neutral" or cooler, even if the mix is warm. The spikiness of the distribution seems to be what makes the lights seem sickly. Certain pigments reflect darker than they should, created a splotchy and washed out appearance, even when the light is warm.
Just watched Collateral and Drive My Car on Criterion Channel. Timing was perfect. Your channel is one of the best!
When I was shooting my 16mm feature, I found a downed sodium vapor streetlight on the roadside and salvaged it to light some of the shots of my film. Turning it on at night in your house makes for a strange vibe...
Incredibly cool video. Where I grew up we through many different kinds of streetlights when I was growing up, and I always thought about how different they made me feel when they changed. Orange always felt enticing and mysterious, but when it switched to a quite blue LED I felt more uncomfortable moving around. It's absolutely nostalgia, and no-one was making movies where I was so the better form of those lights is for the best, but the old orange lights really set a mood growing up. Everything is now clean and perfect and I feel nothing seeing it.
It would never have occurred to me that something as matter-of-fact as the streetlights in a city would make such a difference in how a movie looks and feels to an audience.
Commenting for the algorithm. Great work man, keep it up. 👍
I was intrigued by the title of the video but I was not prepared by the depth of the content. Bravo!
Your channel is a wonder, and I hope your uploads can become a big more frequent. All the best for your projects and everything else.
One of the best and most captivating videos I've seen in a long time. I wish your channel great success!
something i like about LEDs in LA are the 2019 defects that come out as purple, absolutely love the look it gives on camera and i’ve been trying to capture as much as i can since this little error will probably only exist in this time for about 5 years lol
Thank you for the video. Very well done. I was a big fan of Hong Kong movies during the 80's, espescially Wong Kar Wai's movies (in particular, Days of Being Wild). For those looking for a sentimental movie about Hong Kong, I would suggest Stanley Kwan's Rouge. While not so much a feast of neon signs, it does an excellent job of contrasting the past with the (then) present.
Im confident that LEDs woll eventually become so versatile that something extremely close to old school neon signage will be possible for much cheaper and with much higher efficiency, in fact I've seen some EL wire setups that get pretty close
I'm pretty sure it's already possible. It's probably just the times and moving on from the styles of neon signage.
Love how someone else is obsessed with city lighting, also love the 10:56 critter cameo!
So glad Tom Scott sent me here. What a wonderfully scripted and edited video. I will now watch all the films featured that inspired it.
Michael Mann puts on a masterclass in digital street photography later on in his career with Miami Vice. I dont know a single other movie that looks like that. And the nu metal phil collins cover is just the cherry on top.
Great video btw! The algorithim just recommended it to me even though i watched your video on The Ring back when it dropped. Should have subbed then but glad i have the oppurtunity to now.
I hadn't considered that at all! Mercury vapor lamps create a look in neo-noir cinema that catches on and bleeds over to horror and action, and now a kind of sickly green LUT is the defacto look of modern blockbusters. Makes a lot of sense.
Store owner in japan says nobody is willing to fix his old neon sign... then shows neon sign repairmen with no work... excellent
What an awesome and absolutely beautiful essay on lighting and cinema. Thank you
haven't finished yet, but my god! the editing is so stylish and smooth! it's rhythmic! perfect topic to since i just ordered Being and Neonness. I honestly despise movies as a medium on the whole, but editing, cinematography, and lighting are the best parts. painting a story with pictures; guiding the audience to play together(!) we the artist.
scripts, the industry, and the rest of 'cinema' sucks. not every movies needs a 120+min runtime. it's masturbatory at a point. more short films. like 30-70 mins is nice!
Glad this popped up on my list, super interesting. Awesome work!
What a joy both for eyes and ears ❤ immediately wanna rewatch 10+ movies from the video
A very interesting and well put together piece that offers an historical and technological overview of an important component of the aesthetics of film-making.
What an insightful essay. Loved all of it.
What a nice piece of synchronicity. The last two movies I watched were Fallen Angels and Collateral and suddenly this appeared in my feed. Or, more likely, google does what google does.
But still! Great essay, it was an amazing journey through both cinema, cities, and the impact of lighting on our emotions.
Congratulations on making such an outstanding video!
Wow, what a fantastic essay and editing job! This video was impeccably well made, and you’ve definitely earned a new subscriber!
Throughout, I was hoping you would include footage from ‘Heat,’ one of my all-time favorites. I was so relieved to see it at 10:01 :D
I feel this way about John Woo films of the 80's and early 90's. They make Hong Kong feel like a lost world that I am nostolgic for, even though I wasn't even born.
That was beautiful, collateral was the very first rated r movie that I bought on my own. It holds a very special place in my heart and so does the lighting and my love for cinematography. Amazing work
You make the best video essays around
Its as if you read my mind. And when you do, i'm reminded that we are all thinking the world into existence and I am not alone in my thoughts.
Loved it.I have always liked Mann's imagery and this explained the full context. Great. Thanks.
I’ve recently started watching your videos after I came across your amazing Ring re-creation (one of my favorite films of all time). The aesthetic and vibe of that movie is something I’ve always wanted to recreate myself. I would love to see a video essay on the history of Technicolor, and how you could try to recreate that today.
What an outstanding video jesus. Glad it popped up on my recommendations and im now subscribed! Well done.
This was such a good video. Thank you.
Really loved this, great work
I watch a lot of video essays and just a small percentage leaves me in awe. This is one of best video essays in this website. At times I struggled to keep up.
I’m not even super interested in filmmaking but I devoured this video in one sitting. Absolutely fantastic stuff.
As with most other recent nostalgic takes on the same subject, an oversimplified chronology of streetlighting technology is presented. The narration implies that cities progressed steadily from arc to incandescent to greenish white Mercury vapor, to orangey HPS (high pressure Sodium vapor), to a neutral white 4000K LED. But that leaves out a major part of what really lit up in city landscapes as a whole in the late 20th century. You fully ignored a major contributor to streetlighting aesthetics in that time period. Which, if acknowledged, would blur one of the key premises of this story.
Mercury vapor lights actually gave way to a new generation of more efficient high intensity streetlights. What the world actually got was localized blends of orangey HPS (high pressure Sodium) *and* broad spectrum white MH (metal halide) streetlights. They work the same way, and look identical from the outside. So the average person could be forgiven if they assumed cities just screwed in a different bulb type to choose its color temperature (they can't). But they cast very different qualities and hues of light that nobody could miss. Even if a city like LA was dedicated to HPS for all of their public streetlights, there were also a ton of bland white MH lights appearing right alongside them: illuminating store parking lots, and playing fields, billboards, buildings, and backlit signs. MH lights also contributed to the ambient lighting in city location shoots during that time. The idea of some pure Sodium vapor aesthetic is a fiction in the real world. Many other cities chose MH bulbs instead of Sodium for their streetlights. But most cities and towns used a mix of both, clustering them over different streets and neighborhoods. You can't simply ignore the effect of those MH lights on the nighttime landscape. They were at least as common and bright as Sodium lights overall. But perhaps that's an inconvenient fact for your narrative, since MH lights were also engineered to cast a hyperrealistic neutral white light on city streets, and in movies and TV, and sporting venues. Long before LEDs ever came along to displace them.
Also, if a city wishes to put up warmer or cooler looking LED lights, that option absolutely exists when they order them. 4000K is often chosen as a compromise between the highest efficiency (at a cold 6000K), and a warm 2700K or 3000K that most people prefer, but which happens to need more power to get the same brightness. The same can be said for every size of LED light in existence. Don't pretend the technology somehow limits them to a certain look or color of light on location shoots today, that's just not true. In fact, most studio and supplemental lights used in the industry today are actually color tunable LED lights. Push a button, and the light goes from an incandescent look to daylight to fluorescent or anything between. And speaking of hyperrealism, what about LED walls in soundstages that reproduce any background digitally, including realistic depictions of sunlit, moonlit, or sunset scenes? With supplemental lighting playing a narrower role, to light the actor's face or create the illusion of a shadow in 'daylight'.
There's plenty of nostalgia for the look and feel of glass Neon tubes, and their association with the era of their heyday. It's understandable. But that quote about how LED signs replacing them can't replicate the 3 dimensionality of Neon tube lighting because of the directional nature of LEDs? It's wrong, or at least an outdated assumption. As with most newer, maturing technologies, they are still finding new ways to package and arrange them. Including as 'filaments' in lightbulbs, and now 360 degree round tubes bent into any 3D shape. Or animated, or changed remotely in ways that Neon never could. The switch to LEDs for similarly bright and colorful replacement signs just happened to be cheapest to assemble on flat panels. But that could change notably in the future.
What a well-told analysis of films nights past, present and future
wonderful work, thanks for the historical info. a favorite thing in visiting small midwestern USA towns is getting to see the different old municipal lighting still being used. it feels like walking through memories sometimes and is well worth the drives from the larger metropolis' to witness.
im a midwesterner that visits lots of small towns and ive never even thought about this before. some of the lights in places are ancient, a lot of places still dont even have lights. im going to really pay more attention to this from now on
I don't have a word for how much I enjoyed this!
Great video and surprisingly informative and fantastic editing.
Fascinating work. I enjoyed how well you tied film history with events in real life.
I've thought about this many times about how I have memories that exist in orange-scale. I remember learning that the light of my adolescence was from sodium vapor and I remember when my childhood street changed to LED. This was really great; a real treat
Great essay on a surprisingly fascinating topic, made all the more interesting by your presentation and thoughtfulness on the matter. We see streetlights change and for a little while it's noticeable. Then, it becomes just another part of the background - but this video made me stop and consider ambient lighting as something more than that. I'd never considered its impact on films though; some beautiful shots here demonstrate the impact of these changes, and a few films to watch and rewatch now - thank you!
Superbly well done. You could have put in half the effort and still made something worthwhile. Thanks for the excellent history lesson.
Amazing video, one of my favourite movies of all time
Great stuff. This video is up there with the best of YT film essayists.
What a great video essay, it was very informative and engaging from start to finish.
You are really, really good at this. Subbed.
Collateral was one of the best mainstream movies of the decade imo - still slept on by a lot of people..
Great concept for a video, really interesting stuff ❤
Such and underrated channel. This video is beautiful
high quality content !
thanks
excellent work. Don't know how and where you got all that information about city lighting and how it was used in film and it's artistic meaning, but WOW! Really well done!
Excellent video! Keep up the good work.
I remember going digital and photographing Japan with just the ambient light no flash just capturing the night vibe which you could not do well with film even using B&W and pushing it to the max. This was in 2003 I never went back to film after that.
Nice work. I could quite happily watch any one of the movies referenced at this very minute. But I'll wait till the end of the reel.