Leverage Did It Well
I didn’t notice this the first time I watched Leverage (or the sixth), but when I posted a GIF of Hardison last week I noticed something…
The line is adorable, the writing fantastic, but the big thing I noticed is YOU CAN SEE HARDISON. Aldis Hodge is lit up so you can see his face easily.
Here’s another GIF.
And another…
So, here’s the thing. In most shows black actors fade in the background. They’re lit incorrectly and the dark background combined with the dark skin means the character vanishes. Especially on shows with cops and a lot of white people.
Poor David Sinclair (Alimi Ballard) of Numb3rs is invisible in every night scene because he’s not lit up correctly.
Before the advent of colored TV there were more black actors. They were common almost. But with color came the problem that a dark background makes a fair skinned person stand out while making a darker skinned person vanish. The Hollywood solution was to stop hiring darker skinned people. (Not a good idea).
In the first GIF Hardison is in a darker room. He should have vanished, they back-lit him, had ground lights, and framed him well.
Same with the second on, notice the light on his head. He’s glowing like an angel.
Third GIF… notice the lamp placement? The light almost washes out the color of the green towel behind Hardison, but it means the viewers see him perfectly. And isn’t that really the goal?
this is obviously about racism but also some part of you looks at this gorgeous human and thinks “OF COURSE THEY WANTED HIM BATHED IN SOFT LIGHT SO THAT WE COULD ALL GAZE UPON HIM AND BASK”
There’s a bit in one of the DVD commentaries where they talked about working with the lighting and not shooting until everyone is lit.
To be honest, yes to the above but also the real skill is when Hardison and Parker share a scene. Because they’re about as polar opposite as can be in terms of ideal lighting … But if a cable show produced on the smell of an empty rag can pull it off, no one has any excuse.
Leverage used a lot of the same crew that Star Trek:TNG and DS9 had used. The lighting techs were equally adept on those series. TNG was typically lit very bright, DS9 typically lit very dark, but you could always see what was happening. (And they both aired long before High Def televisions, so no excuse there!) You could hang out in Engineering with dark skinned Geordi and pale skinned Data and clearly see what they were both doing. You could hang out at the bar with a gray Cardassian, an orange-ish Ferengi, a brown Klingon, a black human, and a white Trill without losing focus on anyone. You could take in all those lovely makeup and costume details the various aliens had, whether it was a night shot or a bright morning, without having to squint.
I especially appreciate that kind of talent when I think about the last season of Game of Thrones, where they chose to do a huge night battle with a thousand extras, dressed them all in stylized costumes and intricate battle makeup, spent millions of dollars on fancy special effects, and then decided to light the whole episode so darkly that most viewers could barely see any of it.
