There’s a growing appreciation in Hollywood for films and television shows that showcase actors of color.
Those works have received major awards, inspired difficult conversations about race and brought diversity of talents and thoughts forward. The issue remains, however, that black actors and actresses in particular are often under-lit on camera today, even in big-budget productions.
Steven Ross, artistic director and associate professor of the film division in the College of Fine Arts, said “ultimately what (the cinematographers) are trying to create is separation, so that your character is separated from the background.” It’s about creating images where the skin tone of the actor is different from the color that’s behind them, he said.
One movie Ross mentioned particularly struggled with that is Stir Crazy, a 1980 film that features lead characters who are both white and black, resulting in conflicting lighting necessities.
Ross said this stems from difficulties in capturing darker skin as effectively as that of lighter skinned actors. The darker skin gets, the more light it absorbs rather than reflects.
Ross touched on particular instances in which that idea was a specific challenge, such as one where he was working with a black actor and a white actor in a film together as prison cellmates, sharing essentially every single frame.
“You really had to design special lighting to reduce the amount of light on the caucasian actor, and the light absorbed really presents a real problem,” Ross said.
The incapability to fully capture the skin of black actors is not a new issue, Akil Houston, an associate professor in the department of African-American studies, said. Houston attributed the idea to the history and development of film.
“Part of the challenge is when you look at film stock, if you go back to the older period when it was actual celluloid, there was what was called a Shirley Card,” he said, which was the name of the original model for Kodak’s color reference cards.
“That was sort of the default setting for skin tone, and Shirley wasn’t African-American,” Houston said. “More often than not, when people were learning to light (and) trying to figure out how to shoot for different subjects, those skin tones weren’t considered.”
Houston said most films out of Hollywood from its inception up until the mid-1990s struggled to light darker skin tones effectively. As time has passed and technology has improved, however, creators have done a better job of capturing darker skin tones.
Ross said in today’s cinema, the “cameras are so incredibly advanced in their ability to handle low light situations and create more naturalistic looks.”
Houston specifically mentioned 2016’s Moonlight as a film that displays a good example of showcasing black actors.
“(The film) has done well in the ability to light various hues,” Houston said. “There are people with fair complexion and with dark complexion, and I think the film does a good job at highlighting those nuances.”
Ross said he believes most films today excel in this area.
“The level of quality that is being achieved now in terms of looks by professional cinematographers is at such a high level … it’s rare that I’ll go to see a film where you don’t see a high level of cinematography,” Ross said.
Erik Armstrong, a sophomore studying theater performance, has acted in four films during his time on campus and said lighting black actors and actresses “is really a subjective thing.”
“Sometimes you are really under-lit (and) I can see that you’re too dark for the screen,” Armstrong said. “But other times I think the dullness of the shot looks good and looks better than it would if it were brighter.”
Armstrong said he feels he has never been treated like less than any of his white colleagues.
Armstrong said lighting isn’t that important of an issue in the grand scheme of things, but he felt that since there’s now attention being drawn to the matter, it’s a step in the right direction.
“In comparison to 20, 30, 40 years ago, we’ve made so many strides,” said Armstrong. "For people to even notice that actors of color aren’t getting the lighting that they deserve, that, by itself, is a large part of it.”
