In "This Killer Is Not Too Cold", the success of styling is first and foremost due to the success of photography. In this regard, the most obvious feature of the film is the simplicity and subjectivity of the shot. The lens is the unit of film language, and the film achieves the effect of lyrical expression through the lens assembly of montage. From the perspective of styling, "the image is only the constituent element of the lens screen and visual image". The creation of film images ultimately requires the means of photographic modeling expression to become a visual image.
Therefore, the intake of lenses plays a decisive role in screen modeling, and the success of film modeling should first be examined from the aspect of photography.
The film opens with three sets of shots to show the environment in which the story takes place, the first is a long shot of skimming the sea to reach the city, an aerial wide-angle shot, the vast blue and gray sea surface alludes to the loneliness and calm of the inner world of the protagonist Leon, in contrast to the dusty images of the Japanese film "The Killer" (1967). The coastline and large forests foreshadow the hero's chance encounters and changes in life conditions and hopes.
Then the camera pans up, and a panorama of the city appears, and the city is not embodied, but is depicted as an isolated island (or "rivers and lakes"). The latter set of shots is the streets of the city and the location where the story takes place – "Little Italy". The camera is taken from the moving car, and the viewpoint is higher, which also conveys a sense of loneliness.
After that, quickly push from the street into a dark café, and by this point, the environment has been explained. The entire process was completed succinctly with five shots (three groups). The same is true at the end of the film, Mathilde in the woods kneeling in front of Leon's flowers, and the photographer uses a panoramic shot from above, slowly pulling back and panning up, revealing a panorama of the woods and the city.
Front-side lighting (i.e., the camera and sunlight are in the same direction during shooting) makes the green of the woods much brighter than in the opening film, and the tone of the audience's "visual perception" is warmer.
The city is on the other side of the sea, indicating that the heroine has found the other side of her soul. Here, the simplicity of the lens is not casual shooting, but through the means of the shape, but only natural light usually cannot meet the styling requirements of the film, at this time, artificial lighting becomes an important means.
At the beginning of the film, Leon goes to teach the leader of the drug gang a lesson, and two classic passages in it show the importance of lighting: Leon leads several people to the balcony, lowers the roller gate, and the bullet passes through the thin door to form some beams of light projected into the house. If you only rely on the natural light outside the house, then the projection should be a beam of parallel light, and the three-dimensional sense is not strong.
In this case, the lightsmith used a light-collecting lamp to project light from the direction of natural light through the bullet hole, so that the resulting beam was scattered, which not only enhanced the beauty, but also showed the mystery of the killer and the nervous, fearful mentality of the target person. After that, the target retreats to a corner of the room, ready to call the police, and Leon suddenly appears from the dark hallway behind him to subdue him.
Here, the projected light that previously passed through the bullet hole becomes a frontal light source, but the frontal light source makes the aisle no longer dark. To solve this problem, the lighting engineer placed a high-brightness 90° left light source, and when it was too bright, the aperture of the camera was lowered to reduce the brightness of the entire picture, when the brightness of the target person was normal, and the aisle behind him was dark. Leon's sudden appearance was achieved precisely by artificial lighting.
In order to express the character and psychology of the villain Stan, in the shots where Stein appears alone, strong top lighting is used, which is a commonly used method in movie lighting, "can make normal people ugly, even perverted".
The actor who played Stan was movie star Gary Oldman, his brow bones and cheekbones were high, and the lighting artist placed the light source above the back of the actor, so that Oldman's forehead and nose bridge were bright, and there were heavy shadows under the eye sockets and nose. Coupled with his superb acting skills, the audience knows at a glance that this is a guy who is not easy to mess with.
