Electric radiance of Los Angeles at night. Still incredible after I originally posted this back in 2011
LA Light from Colin Rich on Vimeo.
Colin Rich’s interpretation of the city captures the downtown district including a memorable reverse view of the Hollywood sign. Colin’s “LA Light” journey serves as a homage to the best of LA’s landmarks at night.
The most notable benchmark for cinematic brilliance of LA’s nighttime hues and tones could be Michael Mann’s 1995 feature film, ‘Heat‘.
This movie captured a quiet ambience, albeit with some lesser known architecture.
Dante Spinotti the cinematographer on ‘Heat’ provided stark unsentimental framing and Elliot Goldenthal gave an equally minimal soundtrack avoiding the mundane and elevating the sober mood into a truly admirable realisation.
This motion fanfare pleases the eye with dark greens and grey tones, hues of neon and vibrant swishing energy. Colin’s backstory of the challenges of filming (on his vimeo page) included some LA insights from user Better Yeti:
“I ride up to the helipad on my mountain bike a couple times a week, and I’m always seeing people getting hauled off when they try to hop the cyclone fence and get down to the sign. The cops aren’t fooling around. Every now and then they send out the helicopter, and the ominous PA blast: “GET AWAY FROM THE SIGN”. Very dystopian/1984-ish”.