Week 4: Penumbra - a Game of Light and Shadow

It is week four and we have successfully completed our latest project - a remake of Ingmar Bergman's Personna 1966.
It is quite a peculiar fact that we were given a task that is very closely related to our name- Penumbra. Penumbra literally means dim light, more specifically a partial shadow between regions of complete shadow and  complete illumination. What I consider the hardest part of this week's task was recreating Bergman's use of Chiaroscuro and Back Lighting.In order to achieve the highly contrasted signature of Personna we spent a great deal of our  time on set in carefully positioning and directing the lights. This was not an easy task to do given the amount of space we had on set. However, despite the fact that this is the first time we used lights we managed to think creatively of lighting and the way it the affected the image . The lighting we applied was not 100% direct ,we used reflectors and made a good use of the white wall we had which additionally played the role of a second reflector.
As a director my ambition for this piece was to make it as simple and sterile as I can so that the focus is only set on the characters, like in Bergman's Personna. This is why I chose a room with plain white walls which were also perfect for creating a highly contrasted image.Another aspect I wanted to emphasize on was to try to replicate Bergman's psychedelic tone. This is why, I consider the pace of our film,the timing of dialogue and the precise framing and transition of every shot to be very important. Actors movement was also very crucial and had to be staged in a very precise way so that the actors' faces were correctly illuminated and there were not unnecessary shadows, which would have distracted the simplicity of image we aimed to achieve.
One of the things I would change is the pace of the Nurse's actions in such a way that they do not look intimidating to the audience. Although I visually like a lot our production I think that if we had enhanced the brightness and contrast of our footage during the post production it would have been even a closer replica of Personna.*Nevertheless, I am quite happy with the achieved and I consider our latest to be one of our best given the fact that this was the first time we used lights.

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