Creating 70's Look (Grindhouse, "Shaft" "Superfly")

[octopoli]

What is the best way to light to recreate the look of 70's blaxploitation films like "Shaft" "Superfly" or more recently "Black Dynamite." I am shooting a student thesis with that look in mind on 16mm. The lens the school provides us are older Zeiss SuperSpeeds (not in the best condition) which we tested and their flaws/age really help for the look we want. In terms of lighting I've been watching a lot of those movies and notice they use what seems to be a lot of point source lights. I was thinking of using a series of fresnels (2ks, 1ks, and 650s) and putting them through frames of 250 to take a little off while using harsh open faces for highlights or night scenes. I don't know if I should scratch the idea of using diffusion. Those film do have pronounced shadows but I wouldn't say they are super hard like a 1950's noir. So I figured 250 would be the best to use.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Those films from the 70's, often low in budget, have an odd mix of available light and artificial light, and the artificial light often was small tungsten lamps, left undiffused or barely diffused. Partly because they didn't have the output to be softened on a large scale, particularly if they had to be gelled to daylight balance.

Some of those movies used lens diffusion such as Fog Filters, but most were shot clean, but used zoom lenses which were not particularly sharp -- but the hard lighting help counteract that, give the impression of greater sharpness.

Most of these movies were shot in 35mm, so if you are shooting in Super-16, you want to err on the side of more sharpness & less grain. The stocks and processing & printing were on the contrasty side back then.