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Posted Mar 6, 2023, 5:42 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 6,461
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisLA
I actually think the exotic trees and landscapes make for some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere. I especially love the fact that the LA region is using more native plants, the colors are down right breathtaking.
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Only certain climates in the US & world allow for this kind of an odd or exotic planting, which some people may think of as from a planet in Star wars. This type of landscaping isn't common in Florida because such plants don't do well when there's too much rain, while in areas like georgia, the weather during the winter can be too cold & tends to make them die off. I'm sure the recent cold in parts of SoCa are stressing them out...
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As is true of many ppl living in the LA area, lots of the landscaping is transplanted too...
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Quote:
In this interview with Julia Louis Dreyfus, she talks about how the TV show Veep moved its filming location from Baltimore to Los Angeles. Halfway through, she says, "We never shot anything exterior during the day in California to stand in for the East Coast because the light is so different there." Having recently moved from Baltimore to Los Angeles myself, I'm curious - what does she mean?
I don't know if there's a technical term for it, but as an east coast transplant, the light in LA during the day is completely unrelenting and (almost always) cloudless before fading into a slinking, lingering golden hour. The Mid-Atlantic is rife with clouds and humidity; you rarely see that haze around street lights on really humid nights where I live in So-Cal, because there are very few nights that qualify as humid. NCIS is a classic example of this for me; it's inconceivable that you could confuse most of the scenes outside with anything in the greater DMV area vs. Southern California. Even besides the red curbs, the light is just harsh, even in "winter" scenes.
posted by jetlagaddict at 6:59 PM on September 6, 2016
Best answer: It's bright as hell here in LA with a clear sky 300+ days a year and very little humidity, so the light is always crisp and undiffused. Even on a bad air quality day when you can see low haze in the distance you don't get much actual diffusion in the main part of the day if you stay very close to sea level. Cameras are even more sensitive to that diffusion than the eye, and it changes even the artificial lighting you use for exterior shots, which means that the way a lit exterior shot looks on the East Coast is different.
Even on shows I know shoot here, you can see a distinct difference between "outdoors" shot on a sound stage versus outside because of the face shadows. You'd have to blast someone with an extremely bright extremely diffused light to compete with the sunshine and still get the baseline "evenly lit face" you get elsewhere, or indoors.
The glare off walls and inanimate objects here is no joke too. If you happen to be on the road between 10am-3/4pm, you're getting your retinas burned from the sunflare off all the other cars. I don't even know what shows here do about that, except avoid shooting at or near anything shiny.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:30 PM on September 6, 2016
It's certainly true that the light is different in NYC. I can't explain exactly how, but I can see it instantly in a show shot on location here. For example, I knew for certain that The Night Of was shot in the city even though I didn't actually recognize most of the locations in Jackson Heights where I live. You can always tell immediately if a show that's supposed to be taking place in NYC was actually shot here; the light, specifically, just looks wrong if it's a different city standing in for NYC.
posted by holborne at 7:43 PM on September 6, 2016
The light in NYC is very different-- colder, bluer, glassier-- than the warm, yellow, thick light in SoCal. Light in SF has the same quality as LA but tends grayer and doesn't get the fantastic pink and red sunsets that you get in much of the southwest more than a couple times a month in the summer. NYC sunsets are mostly like a nickel yellow, edging into gamboge. You'd have to go to a lot of trouble with lighting to get the same effect on the east coast.
posted by blnkfrnk at 8:22 PM on September 6, 2016
David Hockney talked about LA light, and the way it struck him even as a child in Bradford (54 North with flat matte close skies): "one of the things I noticed right away . . . was how Stan and Ollie, bundled in their winter coats, were casting these wonderfully strong, crisp shadows. We never got shadows of any sort in winter. And already I knew that someday I wanted to settle in a place with winter shadows like that."
It's similar to how many impressionist painters moved to Provence and the Mediterranean coast (which is further north than Baltimore!) for the light and the sharp shadows and the sense of hyper-saturated colour.
posted by holgate at 8:35 PM on September 6, 2016
The sunshine is much brighter in Los Angeles (well, really in Southern California, and I'm guessing in the Southwest and parts of the South as well) than it is in the Northeast, and there are far fewer clouds. Not to mention that low-rise sprawly development almost everywhere doesn't block the sunshine at all, and tall trees are almost invariably landscaped and non-native.
This is something I noticed upon moving here. I now own 4-5 pairs of sunglasses I wear year round, whereas in New York I had one pair which was reserved strictly for sometimes in the summer. It's also something that is apparent if you watch film and television closely. The exterior lighting on Mad Men (shot in L.A., takes place in NYC) never looked right, for example.
If you moved here in the spring or summer, I'm guessing this is something you'll start noticing in a few months, when it doesn't become grey and dreary like you're used to. Summer light is relatively similar to the Northeast aside from what I mentioned about the lack of tall/foliage-bearing trees and dense vertical architecture.
posted by Sara C. at 8:57 PM on September 6, 2016
A lot of shows, Bones, Justified etc take place in the mid-atlantic but are shot in LA and environs and it's very obvious I think having lived both places. LA is gold and warm, the East coast is blue green and cool. Watch the pilot of Justified and then watch a later episode (mostly filmed inland) and it'll jump out at you.
Also wild tall grass and thick green weeds and bushy trees. Don't exist on LA. Whereas live oaks and savannna aren't so common in NY state. The background is all wrong.
posted by fshgrl at 9:44 PM on September 6, 2016
I'm not a film person, but I am from Boston and now live in Seattle. Pretty similar latitudes, but when I moved here in the middle of the summer, it was pretty shocking how much brighter the sun seems. Insert joke about sun in Seattle here - but really, the sunny days here are so much brighter than the sunny days in Boston. I feel like I'm constantly squinting here in July and August.
posted by lunasol at 10:07 PM on September 6, 2016
Lots of midcentury Mitteleuropa escapees wound up in SoCal, and one of the draws was the light:
Thomas Mann was the exile who loved Los Angeles best — so much that he became an American citizen and planned to live out his years there (disgust with McCarthyism impelled him to leave for Switzerland in 1952). Mann had always adored the Mediterranean, and to him Los Angeles was the next best thing. “I was enchanted by the light,” he rhapsodized, “by the special fragrance of the air, by the blue of the sky, the sun, the exhilarating ocean breeze. ...”
posted by notyou at 10:15 PM on September 6, 2016
Best answer: This is also a noted phenomenon in France, where you've got generations of painters who noticed that French Riviera light is very different from Parisian light. As someone who is regularly in both places (though not at the same time ), it's very much A Thing. LA is a lot like Nice – awash in sun, striking blue skies, saturated sunrises and sunsets, never any fog, and once the sun's gone, bam, it's night, as another commenter so aptly put it. Monet and the Mediterranean goes into this and has some beautiful paintings linked. Monet lived just outside of Paris, then fell in love with Riviera light on a visit with Renoir. Parisian light is very much like Oregon light (I hesitate to say like NYC since I've never been there): more diffuse, mysterious, all sorts of fog densities. Impressionist paintings very much reflect that.
posted by fraula at 12:56 AM on September 7, 2016
I grew up in the Midwest and I remember the first time I was in Southern California on business. Specifically Palm Springs. I was stunned by how bright the sun was. I couldn't not wear sunglasses.
posted by LoveHam at 4:38 AM on September 7, 2016
The light here in LA is just stronger than that I grew up with in Chicago. I go back east, especially in the winter, and the sun seems anemic. The movie Drive captures LA light well.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:58 AM on September 8, 2016
I really noticed this when The X-Files moved from rainy, overcast, moody Vancouver down to LA for its last season. Mulder in the bright sunshine? No thanks
posted by drinkmaildave at 5:57 PM on September 10, 2016
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