Lighting Assignment Kelsey Schmitt

Don't Breathe (2016)
Director : Fede Álvarez
Cinematographer : Pedro Luque

Hoping to walk away with a massive fortune, a trio of thieves break into the house of a blind man who isn't as helpless as he seems.

In this critical scene, the film takes a drastic turn when the blind man turns off the power in the house, leaving everyone blind. This scene uses mostly close up framing to display the fear on the faces of Alex and Rocky while blindly searching for each other in the basement. This scene makes great use of shadows by using low key lighting, conveying the darkness of the basement and the last bit of illuminating light coming from upstairs just before the blind man turns off the lights. This scene shows the audience how the lighting would look as if you were in complete darkness. To do this, extremely low key lighting is used to convey the vision one would get from their eyes compensating from being in the dark. This scene also uses indirect light on things found on shelves in the basement, in order to slightly illuminate Rocky and Alex's petrified faces, as well as the terrifying blind man. When cutting to the part of the scene that shows a close up of Rocky  feeling her way around the basement, direct light is used on her face to show how truly visual impaired she is, where her eyes are seen as black circles. The color pallet used in this scene seems to be a dark grey color, where little is visible expect the brightness coming from the blind man's white shirt that contrast greatly from the dark surroundings. When the man fires his gun, the room is lit up by sparks for a brief second. When the gun goes off the room is lit by high key, harsh, L.E.D style lighting.