Tech Noir
- future noir
- cyber-noir
- cyber noir
Noir shadows in a near future lit by screens and machines.
Opens a video model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
Tech noir puts the noir shadow into a future where the light comes from machines. A face lit by a monitor is lit from below and from close range, which is unflattering in a way that suits the genre.
The machines are also the threat. Lighting a character with the thing that is hunting them is efficient storytelling, and the audience reads it without being told.
How it works
Screens are the key light. A monitor, a control panel or a status display sits near the face and throws a cold cast onto it, with the rest of the room falling into shadow.
Cold blue is the base and warm accents break it up. A sodium lamp, a warning light or a cigarette gives the eye somewhere to rest and stops the frame reading as one flat colour.
Steam, grime and worn surfaces keep it from turning into clean science fiction. The future in this look is second hand, and the set dressing carries that more than the lighting does.
When to use it
Use it for near-future crime, for a hacker at a terminal, and for any scene where technology is doing something to a person.
Skip it for a clean optimistic future. Polished white surfaces and even light move the scene to a different genre entirely.
Told apart from its neighbours
Neo-noir is the wider family and needs no technology at all. Tech noir is the case where the machines supply the light. If the key comes from a screen, the narrower name applies.
Dystopian describes a world that has decayed, with or without noir shadow. A dystopia can be shot in flat grey daylight, which tech noir never is.
On film
James Cameron named the nightclub in The Terminator (1984) Tech Noir, and the term for the look came out of that film. Blade Runner (1982) is the fuller version, where advertising screens, searchlights and flickering interiors light nearly every face in the picture.
- The Terminator (1984)
- Blade Runner (1982)
The prompt
Replace the blanks, keep the rest. Then run it on a video model.
tech noir on <subject>, machine lit interior, screen glow on the face, hard shadow, steam and grime, cold blue with warm accents
What goes wrong
The model lights the room conventionally and puts a screen somewhere in it. Say the screen is the key light and that it falls on the face, or the look never arrives.
The second failure is a clean future. Ask for grime, steam and worn surfaces by name. Without them the frame reads as corporate science fiction.
Leave out
daylight, clean future
Watch for
The screens are the key light. Say so and the look builds itself.
Questions
Shoot it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
Next to it in noir and the dark genres
