Cars at Night

[cigarjoe]

I just finished watching an excellent Film Noir "Crime Wave" and was struck by its great cinematography.

 

Now my question concerns car headlights, in a awful lot of films, not just noirs when cars are driven at night they are apparently driven without the headlights on, lol, I'm assuming it had something to do with avoiding the reflection in the camera lens but maybe it was just sloppy filmaking?

 

In "Crime Wave" all vehicles at night ere filmed with the lights on, with apparently no problems. So what is up with this, anybody have an answer?

[ValentineXavier]

Funny, but I noticed the opposite. When people are driving a car at night, they don't turn the headlights off when they get out of the car! They just walk away, and leave them on, presumably for quite some time, in some cases.

 

Now, if you want to see a film where the headlights of cars are an important plot point, you should check out *The Cars that Ate Paris*, an Australian film, directed by Peter Weir.

[cigarjoe]

I've noticed that also.

 

Someone on another board suggested it is just sloppy film making.

[cigarjoe]

Saw one recently that illustrates what I'm talking about "Where the Sidewalk Ends" right at the beginning after the credits the squad car pulls up to the Precinct House without the headlights on then a few sequences later pull away again without them on.

[cigarjoe]

Finally got a reasonable answer on this and thought I'd share, and it has to do with the day for night filming methods, using filters to simulate night time which make sense.