MOVIE AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT LICENSE
“It’s funny how much license you can get with some choices like that pink light,” says Laxton. Notes of Wai’s work can be felt in some of the most dramatic moments where Chiron’s mother, Paula, played by Naomie Harris, stands over her son scolding him while a pink light glows from her bedroom. Laxton cites director Spike Lee and Claire Denis as inspirations as well as Wong Kar-Wai’s work on films like Happy Together and In the Mood For Love. The use of natural and ambient light throughout the film mixed with small warm fill lights and touches of color play on the film’s dream-like sense of reality. Which for us meant anamorphic lenses that express this heightened sense of existence that I think audience members sometimes associate with bigger tent pole films, but were presenting this sort of nuanced subtle story but with that same heightened value.” Our idea was to present them visually with that same amount of intensity. What it means to that character to be bullied, to have to deal with these sexual questions that he’s going through in his teenaged years. “The attempt was to promote those emotions, not just to present them, but to promote them to a place where you can sense the intensity by which Chiron’s character is going through these things. Laxton used Hawk V-Lite anamorphic lenses, throughout the film to help amplify the emotional state of the characters within the majestic widescreen format. “We never had two cameras actually.” Whether it’s one of the many tracking shots following Chiron’s back through his world or watching his reaction, one can sense a precision in every shot. “The whole thing was one camera,” says Laxton. “I knew that relationship like the back of my hand because that’s where my life and Tarell’s overlapped,” he told the Hollywood Reporter.Īnother strategy in accentuating the film’s unique feeling is using a single Arri Alexa XT camera through the whole shoot. Jenkins used his own experience, growing up with mother struggling with addiction, to write the screenplay. It’s a historically black community where the majority of residents live below the poverty line.
MOVIE AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT MOVIE
Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the play on which the movie is based, both grew up there in the same part of Liberty City, Miami. Those conversations started when we were in our early 20s in college.
“We didn’t talk about Moonlight of course, but I think on some level those conversations about what it is to be a filmmaker, who our voices are as filmmakers. “I started talking about this movie 17 years ago when I first met Barry,” Laxton tells TIME. Their filmmaking style developed after they met in college at Florida State University. On the phone Laxton is modest about his work and credits the film’s success to his close friendship with Jenkins. It’s an intentional move away from the aloof style and perfection of most big budget films today that attempt at realism. “We all have a way in which we’re viewing the story that we’re telling and I think who we are dictates so much of how we see the world.” In Moonlight, it’s the process of keeping the audience aware of the maker’s hand and of the actors playing. “I think we all have gazes,” says Laxton about his take on photography. David Bornfriend/A24 Cinematographer James Laxton and director Barry Jenkins on location in Miami.
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