Viewing Log: Moonlight (2016)

Director: Barry Jenkins

A look at three defining chapters in the life of Chiron, a young black man growing up in Miami. His epic journey to manhood is guided by the kindness, support and love of the community that helps raise him.

I wanted to watch this film as it recently won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Similarly to my own project, it features an all-black cast; the film aims to challenge the stereotypes that not only surround race, but sexuality too.

Colour
I was mostly inspired by the colour palettes used, especially in the first chapter of the film. I like the use of teal blue, pastel green and an emphasis on dark brown skin tones.  I found this to be really interesting, as usually in film and other media, mise-en-scene techniques such as lighting and post production editing has a tendency to make brown skin tones appear lighter. Instead, Moonlight, presents black skin as unapologetically beautiful.

“Tarell calls Miami a ‘beautiful nightmare’ and I think what we’ve done is paint this nightmare in beautiful tones,” Jenkins told IndieWire in a recent podcast. “We wanted to embrace the tension of that beauty, juxtaposed with the very dark things that are happening to the characters in the story.”

I'd like to use a similar technique in the Scene 2 of my animation. In this scene things appear to be great; Manon and Alecia are enjoying themselves in Paris and I want to convey this through the use of bright colours. Yet at the end of the scene the equilibrium is disturbed as they come into conflict with a soldier, which sets the tone for the rest of the film.

I've created a few colour palettes inspired by the film, using Adobe Color:

I used a still from the film, one that I thought had the nicest colours. I imported this into Adobe Color and it created the colour palette above.

I then used the drop down menu and changed the colour model to muted, as most of my film has muted tones.

I adjusted the colour palette to be sort of a combination of the colourful and muted palettes. Instead it ranges from the dark navy blue, to the very pale beige. I would like to try and use this colour palette in Scene 2 of my animation.

Sound
The film uses a classical score throughout. Although I haven't thoroughly thought through the sound I'll use in my film, I seem to be most drawn to films that use classical music.
What's interesting about Moonlight is that the music still has an influence from hip-hop. In my animation last year, I was influenced by both old and new hip-hop, notably Kendrick Lamar's album To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). The director of Moonlight, Barry Jenkins, was also inspired by this album and thus decided to use of the album's samples within the soundtrack.

"This movie isn’t about the entirety of the black experience, but in recognizing that people from our neighborhood don’t get films made about them often."

Even though my project isn't necessarily about being black, I'd like to pay subtle attention to the use of black characters, by using influences in a similar way to how Jenkins has done.

Jenkins also discusses how the score relates to the intersectionality of the film, as it challenges black masculinity. Similarly, my film will be intersectional is it challenges black femininity. I could somehow reflect this through the use of sound.

Sources:
http://www.indiewire.com/2016/10/moonlight-cinematography-color-barry-jenkins-james-laxton-alex-bickel-1201740402/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_(2016_film)#cite_note-LATimesTelluride-33