Battle of the Shadows - Week 10 - Grace McCarney

 

    In my last post I shared a picture of the Christmas lights outside my partner's parent's house. One of the lights was a fun projector/Gobo type gadget that shines upon the front of the house. My partner pointed out to me the other night that if you lie on the floor in his brother's room at night, you can see those projected lights shine in from the window, and they create fun shadows. His brother's room is filled with Star Wars merchandise and collectibles. From the ceiling hangs at least ten to twelve different action figures of ships from the Star Wars movies. In the pictures above I show you the same angle of the room with the lights on versus off. With the lights on you can see some of these ships. Once you turn the lights off you can see the projected fun lights from outside create really cool shadows of the ships in the room. With the color of the lights and the intense shadows, I almost felt as if I was watching a space battle above me. I think shadows are an incredibly interesting aspect of lighting. It's something that not every one notices in a show or movie, but they can be an integral part of telling a story. For example, in Film Noir movies such as Casablanca, they shone shadows of Chess pieces on the walls during scenes to indicate the intense conflicting emotions throughout the movie. Shadows have a very powerful emotional affect in lighting and I loved seeing that displayed by a happy accident made out of Star Wars ships and Christmas Lights.