Why Are Movies So Dark These Days? (polygon.com) 105
A filmmaker walks us through the reasons behind the 'dark cinematography' that's causing so many complaints. From a report: Take, for instance, Wes Craven's 1996 horror classic Scream -- a film often remarked on for just how lit everything in it is at all times. An early scene depicts protagonist Sidney Prescott embracing her boyfriend Billy Loomis in the wake of a terrifying home invasion and her near-death at the hands of a masked killer. After Sidney throws her arms around Billy, Craven cuts to a tight close-up on Billy's face, which is illuminated by a harsh, ominous, icy-cool light that telegraphs his sinister intentions. But where is that light coming from? The bedroom they're in has no lamps switched on. Could it be the moon? Hard to justify, as the only windows in the space are behind Billy, and the light we're staring at is so much brighter and closer than the moon could ever be. So what on Earth is that light?
The answer is, simply enough, nothing. Craven often didn't feel any real need to rationalize why a bright light would suddenly appear one second before disappearing again in the following shot. It's a purely stylistic choice, employed for that one moment to cast doubt on Billy's trustworthiness in the audience's mind. Itâ(TM)s an extremely stagey choice that fits neatly within the larger series' heightened, melodramatic style. Scream wouldn't really be Scream without it. The hyper-lit style was a staple of cinematography in American films during the '90s, and like all trends, it eventually fell out of fashion -- in this case, a few years after Scream hit theaters. The 2000s saw filmmakers embracing more directional, shadowy lighting styles, evoking a grittier, more "grounded" aesthetic while retaining a sense of classic Hollywood polish. The 2010s featured another huge shift in style, this time toward hyper-naturalism. Even broad, big-budget blockbusters like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1 embraced a look torn straight from indie cinema. Not only are the lights in that film always motivated, they're realistic. Where earlier films might have used the presence of the moon or a table lamp to justify much brighter lighting, movies like Deathly Hallows, Interstellar, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes let the light of a lamp simply look like a lamp.
The answer is, simply enough, nothing. Craven often didn't feel any real need to rationalize why a bright light would suddenly appear one second before disappearing again in the following shot. It's a purely stylistic choice, employed for that one moment to cast doubt on Billy's trustworthiness in the audience's mind. Itâ(TM)s an extremely stagey choice that fits neatly within the larger series' heightened, melodramatic style. Scream wouldn't really be Scream without it. The hyper-lit style was a staple of cinematography in American films during the '90s, and like all trends, it eventually fell out of fashion -- in this case, a few years after Scream hit theaters. The 2000s saw filmmakers embracing more directional, shadowy lighting styles, evoking a grittier, more "grounded" aesthetic while retaining a sense of classic Hollywood polish. The 2010s featured another huge shift in style, this time toward hyper-naturalism. Even broad, big-budget blockbusters like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1 embraced a look torn straight from indie cinema. Not only are the lights in that film always motivated, they're realistic. Where earlier films might have used the presence of the moon or a table lamp to justify much brighter lighting, movies like Deathly Hallows, Interstellar, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes let the light of a lamp simply look like a lamp.
OLED? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now we're back with having televisions that can display proper black, the cinema directors may be having some fun with the range.
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I'm pretty sure this is the reason. And if you have a non-OLED HDR screen like I do, you can't turn it up as bright without blowing the whites and reducing the screen's dynamic range, so you need a dark room for it.
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But why can't they just say "fim noir" instead of "dark" or "indie cinema"? Everyone who cares about such issues will already know what film noir means. The summary feels like some 16 year old discovering cinematography for the first time and trying to sound cool about it.
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Does Film Noir even exist now? Hearing that makes me think of black and white films from the 30s and 40s.
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There are som remakes of old noir, maybe some new ones that might be considered noir. But the style was very much about deep shadows, eery lighting, etc. They weren't "dark" in the sense that you wanted to crank up the brightness just to see what was going on, but it's a lot like the style that some new movies are emulating if only in a few scenes.
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If you read the article (In my defense, I had had read it previously) they explain the darkness as more about trying to achieve realism with the lighting. It's nothing even remotely related to noir. We're talking about the scenes with practically zero lighting, and zero style in my opinion, just people talking (muffled) to each other, in the dark.
Re:OLED? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are just some scenes in great noir films that I couldn't imagine being as impactful in color. Think of the dueling cigarette smoke between Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. In color it would just be a lot harder to get right. Attempts at colorizing have been pretty dreadful. The colorized version of It's A Wonderful Life, which, despite it's reputation, has some of the darkest sequences I've ever seen in a movie; as Jimmy Stewart slips into absolute despair, and Capra's cinematographers are able to manage that transformation from aw-shucks Jimmy Stewart to a dark, self-destructive figure through the use of lighting and shadow.
But there are color films that pull similar tricks. A lot of the Godfather is filmed in dimly-lit rooms, bars, hospitals and the like, underscoring that the Corleone Family and their competitors live in a spiritual underworld. That's the gift of the German Expressionists to the world of cinema; that lighting can actually be a narrative device.
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There are just some scenes in great noir films that I couldn't imagine being as impactful in color. Think of the dueling cigarette smoke between Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. In color it would just be a lot harder to get right. Attempts at colorizing have been pretty dreadful. The colorized version of It's A Wonderful Life, which, despite it's reputation, has some of the darkest sequences I've ever seen in a movie; as Jimmy Stewart slips into absolute despair, and Capra's cinematographers are able to manage that transformation from aw-shucks Jimmy Stewart to a dark, self-destructive figure through the use of lighting and shadow.
But there are color films that pull similar tricks. A lot of the Godfather is filmed in dimly-lit rooms, bars, hospitals and the like, underscoring that the Corleone Family and their competitors live in a spiritual underworld. That's the gift of the German Expressionists to the world of cinema; that lighting can actually be a narrative device.
Eraserhead. Enough said.
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Lynch is kind of a genre unto himself.
Re:OLED? (Score:5, Informative)
"Noir" was related to the themes of the stories not the visuals of the films
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True, and many of the examples listed are also dark in nature too. Ie, later Harry Potter movies aren't light hearted.
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Certainly the heyday of film noir was the 1940s to the 1950s, and thus is very much associated with black and white. Watching some of the old nor classics like Double Indemnity, A Touch of Evil and the Maltese Falcon, it seems to me that these films were made at the height of black and white cinematography, when cinematographers and directors had fully mastered the medium of black and white film. You had guys like Karl Freund (cinematographer) and Billy Wilder (director) bringing elements of expressionism f
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Probably because film noir implies a lot of things beyond just the lighting choices.
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But why can't they just say "fim noir" instead of "dark" or "indie cinema"? Everyone who cares about such issues will already know what film noir means. The summary feels like some 16 year old discovering cinematography for the first time and trying to sound cool about it.
Although low contrast and low light conditions are fairly common in film noir, those cinematic properties are neither universal in the genre nor central to its definition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir#Definition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir#Identifying_characteristics
I only looked this up because several of the movies mentioned in TFA are clearly not examples of film noir, regardless of how photographically dark they may be. A noir film doesn't require photographic / cinematographic dark
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Now we're back with having televisions that can display proper black, the cinema directors may be having some fun with the range.
I think it's the right idea... but backwards.
The reason isn't that TVs are better, but Theatres are better.
Not only does the theatre projector have a great dynamic range but it's in a dark room so you can see things in the dark.
As for the balance of home vs theatre I'm honestly not sure how streaming vs video rentals would have changed the dynamic considering filmmaker considerations.
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Re:OLED? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not that. They're doing this because they don't have the artistic skill to create compelling, interesting compositions in their shots, and instead rely on the high contrast of the image to generate a dramatic effect. How do I know? I'm an artist, and I see similar techniques used by novices all the time. That same complaint about movie franchises creating predictable, boring sequels also applies to the cinema directors who are more concerned with following current trends than creating a watchable movie. Schindler's List used a lack of color to set the emotional tone of the story; 300 used it to ruin the movie.
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Completely agree. Wish i had mod points right now.
You have said much more eloquently than I would have exactly what I came here to post.
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And worse, they seem unable to grasp that if the viewer is constantly trying to make out what is in the shadows, it becomes taxing just to watch the movie. Visual fatigue is a real thing, and unless your shots make it clear what is going on in the story, people are going to come away with a very bad impression.
Transformers was similarly handicapped - the robots were rendered with detail to such a degree that it made it almost impossible for the viewer to see what they were looking at. Instead of using
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300 used it to ruin the movie.
It brought the style of a highly praised for its art and writing comic book to the screen. It looks quite a bit like the comic book, and quite unlike almost any other movie until then, it was brilliant.
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300 used it to ruin the movie.
It brought the style of a highly praised for its art and writing comic book to the screen. It looks quite a bit like the comic book, and quite unlike almost any other movie until then, it was brilliant.
Ohhhh so THAT explains why 300 was so frakkin cheesy!
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Ohhhh so THAT explains why 300 was so frakkin cheesy!
I think taking 2500 years old Spartan war propaganda and taking it at face value is what makes it so cheesy.
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You do understand that the comic book art style is the result of choices made by the artist to expedite the drawing process, right? The reason why comics are not photo-realistically rendered in oils is because the average artist couldn't finish comics fast enough to keep the reader's interest.
The issue with 300 is that the choice to render the entire movie in sepia tones distracted from the story they wanted to tell. It didn't look like a comic book - it just looked bad. Sometimes it takes a bit of ex
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Up until the mid-1990s you could always tell TV series shot in Canada even if you had no clue otherwise, because everything that wasn't front and center was too dark to really see. I concluded that they didn't have the budget for proper lighting, but maybe not the skilled lighting directors either.
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Remember when every movie from the late 90's and early 2000's had this horrible greenish tint?
Thanks, Matrix.
Cameras are a lot better than they were (Score:4, Insightful)
Not just this, but most video is shot with digital sensors, which have immensely better ability to resolve detail in very low light. In the world of film, you have three ways to make an image brighter: Increase the aperture of the lens, increase the length of time the shutter remains open (kind of a limiting factor for movies) or to change the film to one that is more responsive (and thus more grainy) to light.
Digital sensors still have the idea of responsiveness to light vs grainy output. This is the ISO speed. Film 30 years ago probably topped out at something like ISO 1600, and 15 year old digital cameras might've been able to do ISO 6400. These days, cameras can handle ISO values above 200,000 and take images that need minimal or no noise processing even up to 25,000 ISO. This means that you can shoot in very dark places and still get useful images. That means you don't have to do some of the fakery or extra BS production crews used to do to simulate darkness, like slapping a blue filter or lowering exposure from daylight shooting conditions.
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That's not even considering color grading during digital post-processing. All modern films are digitally post-processed, and so directors have the ability to more precisely adjust overall lighting and coloration of scenes, no matter how they're shot. You still need in-scene lighting, but you can certainly fix a LOT of issues just digitally. "Slapping on a blue filter" to do day-for-night shooting isn't done physically or on-scene any more, of course. You just apply a digital filter in post.
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I'm betting digital projectors do not deliver the same lumens that film and bulbs did. Of course, arc projectors had immense output.
If nothing else, filmmakers are probably adapting to darker screens. HDTV is a secondary issue, that is fixed in post-production and/or digital manipulation. You can buy that box for $400.
Re:OLED? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we're back with having televisions that can display proper black, the cinema directors may be having some fun with the range.
Most people do not have OLEDs or TVs that can display proper black.
Those people who do spend the overwhelming majority of their time looking at a TV in lighting conditions that make proper black irrelevant.
And above all, directors don't give a flying fuck what you do in your living room. They develop for cinema. They colour grade for cinema. 100% of their fun has 0% to do with anyone's living room.
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Except movies theatres still use the same projection technology, and unless it's made for TV, they are going to color grade and adjust for theatrical presentation. (Sorry, but no, home theatres aren't going to kill the theatre anytime soon - not everyone can have 100" screen with surround sound system). They're not filming or grading a movie for home presentation, and the grading
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(Sorry, but no, home theatres aren't going to kill the theatre anytime soon - not everyone can have 100" screen with surround sound system). They're not filming or grading a movie for home presentation, and the grading for home presentation doesn't happen until it's time to make the home presentation.
Sure, but I do think the market for movies and where people watch them has swung A LOT towards home viewing. Well before COVID people were just waiting for the VHS or DVD release. Streaming movie releases don't
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Its probably not so much the televisions, but the cameras used in filming. Digital cameras can perform much better in low or natural light conditions than film cameras can, and so filmmakers can be much less careful about how they light scenes. In many cases, it could be due to lazyness/cheapness on the part of a director, since it takes a fair amount of effort and knowledge to properly set up lighting for good effect in dark scenes (key lights, highlights, etc).
Realistic lighting can be fine, depending on
Less Electricity & More Fear (Score:1)
It's a double bonus. A scared crowd is a controlled crowd.
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You contradict the report. Scream is a horror movie, horror movies are supposed to be scary, and yet, they achieve that with bright lights. We associate horror with darkness, but you don't have to be all dark to be scary, see "The Shining" for instance.
And it interesting you speak about "controlled crowd". When we go to watch a movie, we actually *want* to be controlled. What we see is not real, they are actors on a set, and we want the production to make us feel like it is. We want them to play with our em
Technology (Score:2)
They do it because they can now, with digital HDR cameras and being able to adjust the lighting in post. Screens are better at reproducing dark tones too.
When any new tech enables a new style it is suddenly everywhere. Remember when Schindler's List coloured just one item in the frame? Not long after everyone was doing it.
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This is why we can't have nice things. (Score:4, Informative)
So now we'll get videos where we can't see the actors we can't hear. Wooo, dynamic range, FUCK YEAH!
Re: This is why we can't have nice things. (Score:3)
Money (Score:1)
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You are saying they are preparing to shut down movie-making completely and currently are just trying to milk it for a few last billions? Makes sense to me.
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So complete cretinization. Also an option, the supply of cretins with disposable income is pretty large. Yes, makes sense.
When was this written? (Score:2)
Scream? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Interstellar? Planet of the Apes?
Was this written in 2013?
Re:When was this written? (Score:4, Informative)
Scream? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Interstellar? Planet of the Apes?
Was this written in 2013?
You missed a line.
The 2010s featured another huge shift in style, this time toward hyper-naturalism.
90s movies (Score:4, Insightful)
The author is correct about lighting. 90s movies are well lit and look great. A good example is The Professional. It was filmed with natural lighting and it shows. Especially the scene that transitions from a brick wall to the wide shot of NYC and Central Park. It seems like after digital took over everything looks too uniform, clean, and polished. You actually see less detail this way IMHO. I don’t think there’s a movie made today that doesn’t have some digital processing added. Baz Luhrmann seems to go against the grain and make movies with vibrant colors.
Personally avoid dark movies & games (Score:2)
If I am going to spend a few hours playing or watching something, might as well choose one with pretty colors & visuals
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In those cases it was the cheap ass theater trying to stretch the projector bulb lifespan.
Three Masterclasses in Lighting (Score:2)
1. Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
2. Amadeus (Milos Forman )
3. Schindler's List (Spielberg)
Both Barry Lyndon and Amadeus were filmed 100% natural light, day or night. No electric lights were used.. all fire or sunlight. Kubrick had a stupid-fast lens originally made for the dark side of the moon fitted to one of his cameras for this.
Dunno what Forman's cameraman used for glass for Amadeus, but the result was beautiful.
Schindler's just drips with the 1930's lighting but more "natural" and less "noir."
I was frank
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One scene in Barry Lyndon, which I recall as a willow tree moving in the breeze, reflected by a pond, was like motion picture Monet. I believe that the very fast lens was used in a candle-lit indoor scene.
I saw the Lucas funded remaster of Putney Swope the other day. It is mostly black and white, with some color scenes. The transfer is impeccable and reveals meticulous and beautiful lighting and photography.
The Lost Weekend is another visually impressive black and white picture.
Video? What about audio? (Score:1)
(120dB) MUSIC!
(14dB) voice dialog
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I finally had enough of volume extremes and took matters into my own hands. I don’t own a surround sound, just an amplifier and two speakers. The optical out from my tv goes into a DAC. From there it goes into a Behringer studio compressor and then my amplifier. Now volume extremes have a hard limit. Nothing can be louder than I allow. Movies are enjoyable again. I don’t care how many speakers make surround sound good, I only have two ears.
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yes most decent AVR units have 'nighttime' setting or settings day, evening, midnight etc. Its just a compressor with progressively more aggressive profiles.
Where day is none, and midnight is max.
I have good properly matched, surround speakers 7.1 system, and its eq'ed and yet for any modern movie or prime time tv show, can't hear the dialog in half the program if you use any setting other than 'midnight' Its not the system. Its the recording - pop in something mastered before 2005 or so and it sounds gre
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Yes and no - the problem with some of these current movies - Ambulance - is a great example. It has to be so loud it is likely damaging to listen to before the dialog is easy to follow without being frustrated, if you try and watch without the compression.
(at least the DVD version) I don't know if Streaming other releases have different audio mastering. Still stucked with metered internet here so I watch disks that come in red envelopes like 2005 too.
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Well, clearly most people don't have or don't know how to have an endpoint do this magic. This is the issue, and why so many people complain about it. At a certain point, it seems like you should have 2 audio tracks, the default where it sounds like it used to sound so you can hear it, and an optional second track the audiophiles can enable with full dynamic range and presumably know how to handle because they want something more advanced.
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At one time I had a TV that had a -20db button instead of mute, it was great for these types of problems, Im surprised the idea never caught on.
For anyone who's ever painted minis before (Score:1)
I first noticed the technique in visual media wh
To hide bad CGI (Score:2)
Rendering time (Score:3)
The excuse for why some video games were dark is that they could hide rendering flaws and it enabled a higher frame rate. Can someone come up with a similar excuse for why live-action movies are dark? How hard is it to make up some BS about digital FX tools?
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The excuse for why some video games were dark is that they could hide rendering flaws and it enabled a higher frame rate.
Darkness? I have never heard of darkness doing that. Sure low draw distances that are masked by fog/grass/doors. That way you don't have to load as much. Silent Hill springs to mind foremost for using that to its advantage.
Darkness in games is usually a bad design decision on the dev part if you would ask me. Either by not understanding how lighting works making upping the gamma slider needed, by having the unbelievable scenario of a space base not having any kinda tape what so ever to craft gun+flashlight
I've noticed a general lack of contrast. (Score:2)
The Word You're Looking For is "Motivated" (Score:5, Informative)
After Sidney throws her arms around Billy, Craven cuts to a tight close-up on Billy's face, which is illuminated by a harsh, ominous, icy-cool light that telegraphs his sinister intentions. But where is that light coming from?
In cinematography, having a recognizable source of light is called "motivated lighting." It is often accepted that motivated lighting appears more natural, since there is no reason for an astute viewer to question where the light is coming from, but there are no rules in art.
Often motivated lighting is a "practical" light source (a light source that is visible in the set, such as a lamp or window) but even then the "real" light source is almost always a secondary, off-camera light that is providing the correct amount of light for the exposure sought. Unlike in photography, where it is more common to adapt all 3 exposure settings (ISO, shutter speed and aperture) to an existing light source, in cinematography the Director of Photography more often than not decides on the exposure settings beforehand, in order to achieve a particular look from the camera at hand, and then adjusts the external light sources accordingly. Though, again, there are no absolute rules and different looks require different techniques (i.e: shooting at a higher ISO because it's an intentionally low-light scene with a single candle motivating the light etc.)
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You should write summaries for Slashdot. It would be nice if the summary actually had something remotely to do with the question posed in the title.
Made for young people with better eyes (Score:2)
We don't realize it, but our eyesight grows worse with age. My son can see things in dim light that I simply cannot. Youth is what most cinema features target because that's their main demographic. We geezers are simply outvoted.
"I can't see what it is, but git off it anyhow!"
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Sooo, they are ignoring the customer group with the most disposable income? Sounds kind of stupid to me. Oh, well.
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I'm not sure older people pay significantly more at theatres per visit. Remember, a lot of attendees are on dates, and often one buys the fancy snacks to impress their date, even if it wipes their wallet clean for a few weeks. The old saying is, "Ya gotta empty your wallet if you wish to empty your [bleep]."
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It works like this: parents can control their own desires, but they have no chance against the relentless badgering of kids for products and content that has been advertised to them.
So yes, by targetting the kids, they are getting more out of their parents wallet than they could otherwise.
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It's hard to recycle ideas if your audience actually saw the first three times it was used.
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Good point.
Camera sensors, HDR (Score:2)
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reflection (Score:2)
Realism my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Movie watcher: I can't see a damn thing in this scene, it's just two people talking in the dark.
Movie maker: It is completely realistic lighting. Why would you want lighting on subjects that comes from no possible natural source?!
Movie watcher: How did that car just explode when they shot at it? Why did they not even try to revive that person or take them to the hospital? Where is the bathroom on that shuttlecraft? ...
Movie maker: You have to suspend disbelief so you can properly enjoy the art and learn from the story.
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Movie maker: Shut up and enjoy your shakeycam!
Same reason (Score:2)
Probably the same reason they make speech unintelligible.
As long as it is "artsy", it doesn't matter if you can actually see or hear anything (besides music and explosions).
Editors learn to edit (Score:2)
Title poses a question. Entire summary prattles on about something nothing at all to do with the question.
The Cinematographer on Lord of the Rings said... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Where is the light coming from? Same place as the music."
Realism is all well and good, but telling a story is the first job of a filmmaker. If your viewers are complaining they can't see what's going on, they're not engaging with the story.
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Thank you, sir.
Realism is so overrated in cinematography.
I'll take a Wes Anderson planometric shot any day. Deathly Hollows was kinda terrible TBH.
Wes Craven has random lights for the same reason Hitchcocok has random angles - to throw you off balance. Fear is irrational - that's the point.
A MOVIE isn't supposed to be realistic. Even documentaries use composition for effect.
Chasing realism is a cheap substitute for creativity. David Lynch could have a stroke and still do better than Realism.
Cheaper CGI (Score:2)
Lazy Direction. (Score:2)
Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
My theory... (Score:2)
is it let's them potentially cheap out on the scene. If you can't see half of it, that means they don't have to put as much work into the given scene. Keep that camera moving and keep it dark, you'll miss over all the flaws and details. HBO did this excessively well with GOT during episode 8.3, where the dead attack Winterfell. It was so dark and fast paced, you couldn't really see what was going on half the time. If you slowed things down and really let us take it all in, you would have to spend that much
Why Are Movies So Loud These Days? (Score:2)
I literally sat with my fingers in my ears during the entire length of "Top Gun: Maverick". Ironic that it won an Oscar for sound. I won't be going to the cinema again if that is the ongoing trend. I value what is left of my hearing too much.
As seen by a camera (Score:2)
They "let the light from a lamp look like a lamp" my ass.
They let it look like light from a lamp as captured by a camera
The problem is, cameras capture light nothing like the eye does. They capture brightness more-or-less linearly, while the eye captures light logarithmically. It works okay so long as the entire image is roughly the same brightness, but completely fails when there's dramatic variation - which the real world is full of.
If you're in a smallish room, call it a bit over a 3m cube, lit by a si
Why are they so figuratively dark too? (Score:2)
I mean, jeez, it seems like almost every damn movie has a less-than-uplifting ending. It's like, yeah, sure, the bad guys lose but the good guy winds up being horribly disfigured or loses his best friend or the love of his life in the process. Sci-fi always seems to have to be a cautionary tale basically discouraging people from dreaming of a more amazing future. Fantasy too. I mean, the longer Harry Potter dragged on, the more depressing it got. (Yes, I know, the books were that way too) Hell, even D
Dark mode, of course! (Score:2)
Cinematographers have just discovered it.
so they cant be pirated in theatres (Score:1)
To keep us from seeing sunlight (Score:2)
Ugh. I hate that.
Jackson's LotR (Score:2)
Peter Jackson is a well known talentless director and in FotR the lighting is incredibly bad and intrusive, often giving the impression - for example - that the Nazgul are riding around on motorbikes with headlights on full beam.
The reason is simple. (Score:2)
Big studios churn out "content" and they are simply saving money on FX. Dark, hard to see scenes are cheaper to fill with dark, hard to see CG.
Sometimes it's just silly (Score:2)
What really gets me is when you have an absence of light in settings that would be almost painfully brightly lit.
If you're in a workplace, especially something like a research lab or a coroner it makes no sense whatsoever for you to be sitting around in the darkness and using a tiny ineffective flashlight. You'd just have excellent lighting to start with so that you can do your job without that annoyance.
And if you're a detective investigating a scene, unless there's a compelling reason for it, you could ju