Probing Questions (2026) is a comedy short Directed by Aruhan Galieva and Jac Clinch and starring Stuart Laws and Aruhan Galieva.
The look was inspired by John Alton's infamous noir work of the 40's & 50's as well as James Wong Howe's lurching voyeuristic camera work in John Frankenheimer's Seconds (1966).
I researched Alton's approach with gels and sourced equivalent modern lee filters for the key light and kickers.
BPM filters were used to give that classic helation on the backlights.
Chiaroscuro lighting techniques were applied in a range of ways: sliced cinefoil, uniform stripped gobos and the serendipitous selection of the oast house location which gave Us the perfect staggered slats needed to blast our hard source through to create the wonderful shape that we achieved.