Love Between Storeys

Modes & Moods: Darkness

A very common question for beginners on the film-making scene is, how do you light darkness? The answer is, you can’t. You need a light source somewhere for the audience to realistically be able to see anything. There’s a scene in the script when the elevator goes dark, and we used the gaps in the elevator doors to get some light into that darkness.

When the elevator goes dark, we switch the lights off mid-shot. First, the lights are on...

... then they're out. See the boxes of light left to give some light to the actors.

In the shot above, you can still see a bit of the ceiling top light fading out. In the next frame of the movie Aurélie’s face would probably be completely dark. Check out the chapter on The Doors and Their Cardboard Brothers to see how we set up the doors to give ligtht into the lift.

The darkness mode is a very short bit. After the elevator has stopped, it regains some light, namely from the floor and the emergency console. In our next and final Elevator Set post we’ll talk about how we showed our actors’ faces in an almost dark elevator.