Lighting

OOOOOO Let the light in...

Lighting Choices

    Fun fact: we actually got a light from the BECON TV guy! In more detail, for the beginning scene of our opening sequence when Hailey (our main character) is seen playing with her dolls, we mixed natural lighting from the window plus our actual light to make it bright, using high-key lighting, making this an active choice. We want to make sure that it is clear that it was a normal sunny day and that she's happy, childish, and innocent for our mise-en-scene. The brightness of the lighting evokes a cheerful and content mood as she is playing with her toys and dressing up her dolls. We kept it consistently high-key lighting as her dad drove her to the playground and she walked around, having fun. In fact, we wanted to make sure the contrast of this scene and the kidnapping scene greatly contrast with each other and evoke different moods. As the sun starts to dim, it creates a three-point lighting as the sun shines against her back, and it is more low-key lighting, showing that she is in the darkness, foreboding something in front of her is evil and she is oblivious as darkness/black is associated with evilness and she is "in the dark" about what is going to happen. As a result, this evokes a scary/eerie mood as she is devoid of light. We chose the natural light because it worked naturally in our favor because the sun dimming made it naturally darker as her happy and fun day came to an end, but also because we couldn't drag the entire light with us to the park since it needed to be connected to an outlet, so this was more of a practical issue. Hence, lighting was essential to tell our twisting story!

Wishes

    If we were not broke high schoolers and were movie directors, we'd be going all out. We would most likely have an artificial light in all of the scenes to control the amount of brightness even with the sun. It would give us major control of how light/dark and how warm/cool. I wished we were able to provide better lighting during the car scene because it was so dark since the car covered most of the lighting and the interior was black, so a small light would have definitely helped. As a matter of fact, we would make it look warm/natural to make it look like the sun is shining through the windows of the car. Additionally, during the playground scene, as the sun sets, I think it would have been better if the light was in front of her and then transferred and went to the back of her, so it looks like she is enveloped in darkness, then is consumed for our mise-en-scene to demonstrate that something sinister is slowly approaching and the audience should be wary to evoke a tense mood. Overall, I wish we had more equipment to use, but sadly our access is very limited.