Limits of darkness

How to show darkness in cinema? It is physically impossible to exhibit complete pure black, because film is always shown through light - whether it is a projector projecting light onto a white screen or a screen with light-emitting elements - the basis for showing film is always light, and black light does not physically exist. What to do if the operator needs to show total pitch blackness? In connection with a feature film in development, which takes place largely in a room without light sources, a creative need has arisen to experiment with creative research methods on how it is possible to show maximum darkness in the film. This project aims to test systematically how it is possible to show maximum darkness in the film, also taking into account that subtitles will affect the accommodation of the human eye. The conditions of the experiment are a classic film test - different versions of light, camera sensitivity, exposure are tested with different post-processing and workflow configurations, and the result is observed taking into account the characteristics of both the projection and the television or computer screen. As a result of the creative research project, test material is created, which can be used both by future filmmakers for further experimentation with the material themselves, and as educational material that demonstrates different possibilities of showing darkness in a situation where there is not what is known in the film as "motivated light" (a light source perceived in the diegetic space, which justifies the use in the frame the nature of the existing light).