What we feel when watching a short film isn’t accidental—it’s carefully shaped by how the scene is lit and shot. Previously, I explored the mechanics of static photography, but a friend's dream of becoming a screenwriter recently pushed me to experiment with the world of short films. This forced me to quickly learn how to handle a moving camera and, more importantly, master the lighting that comes with film. I wanted to explore how different colors of light can induce specific emotions or atmospheres, which is why I focused heavily on mood lighting and the classic Hollywood three-point lighting system in this project.
For example, Hollywood lighting relies on three distinct lights to illuminate a subject from the back, left, and right to separate them from the background. The issue when you're starting out is balancing these intensities so the subject doesn't look washed out. My short film, 179 More Days of This—which follows two high school exes walking past each other in a hallway as they remember the highs and lows of their relationship—uses these techniques to mirror their emotional shift. The hallway scene properly utilizes color temperature, where the shifting hues draw the viewer's eye to the characters' internal nostalgia.
