Light refractions happen all the time. This is especially true if you're astigmatic like me, the are beams of light everywhere and while I want to believe, I know they're not aliens. Photography lenses also have astigmatic behaviours, I think we've all marveled over the first few lens-flares we saw only to be bored after ten of them.
Bokeh is different.
This might just be the photographer in me that says this, but this is something we've lost in a lot of cellphone photography. Cameras that rely on real lenses all have this imperfection due to how focal lens and aperture work together in producing the photograph. And I think this is one of the ways modern photography on the Internet is a bit more soulless. We need those imperfections.
Ironically, modern phones introduce a pixel interpretation that looks a bit like pasta — or a brain if you're morbid — as a way to build up details. But it's not an organic imperfection but an algorithmical one.
Of course the JAMS video have a lot of sharp six-sided bokehs, they were doing things cheap. More expensive lenses have more blades for the aperture and that means the light artifacts will be rounder. It's also a beautifully shot music video with amazing shadow work.
Like Michael Mann's Heat had a lot of round blurry lights, and the Panavision anamorphic lenses used for this is probably up in six figures, and that's for renting them. No way was this affordable to a production company that had their live outfits in a storage locker.
While this can be assumed to have the hallmarks of going too far that I'll mention later, make no mistake, this is intentional character building not just for the city but also the two characters looking out over it. It's a fine line to walk but it used to be easier.
One would also be quite wrong to not mention Blade Runner (1981) which uses diffused light, amplification through smoke, and single point light beams to paint the world the characters move in. It's lived in, and gives an atmosphere of thing being bigger than they are. A simple light source from above and we immediately starts to fill in where that light source might be from. There might not be a window up there, but if the light moves and is aimed down we will believe it.
It obscures the faces in shadow and light but it paints the room in exquisite detail. Making the scenery stand out and be part of the whole. It serves the movie. That's why it's there and it's very intentionally used. Jordan Cronenweth really knew what he was doing.
The big issue here is that movies today has forgotten not only how to mix sound so that dialogue is heard better than the background music, so have the lightning taken a nose-dip due to digital after effects. Everything made for digital colour grading means you need to have the blandest lights so that you can tweak it. But this also means contrast — shadows and highlights — as well as focus is shit. It requires that post-processing to look decent, and non-focused backgrounds means you can get away with more there.
When this goes too far, the blurred shallow focus makes things look less, especially when paired with an expensive lens that removes edges. What was used to isolate suddenly cuts of the characters from their surroundings. As Like Stories of Old's video "Why Movies Just Don't Feel 'Real' Anymore" says, it turns into a very expensive paper doll collection. Imperfections make up so much of what we accept as "real" but it needs to be the right kind of imperfections. Which is why we're reintroducing grain into digital. Hell, I do that too with my photography.
I saw the Icelandic band Mammút on a small stage in 2009 and I got quite a few excellent photos out of it. Some messier than others but the light. Best photos I've taken at Kafe Deluxe and it's all down to the light and camera — apart from you know, know-how about the camera. ␃
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