I was Director of Photography, Camera Operator, Gaffer (meaning that I controlled the lighting), and Co-Director for the Frankenstein adaptation short film. My goal for the project was to use the emotional effects of aesthetics to control and twist the audience’s attitudes towards the characters of Frankenstein and the Monster.
Before we start, here are my two beliefs about the effects of aesthetics:
1. We subconsciously connect beauty to goodness. This is because we experience an instinctual and physical rush of appreciation for the beautiful, and this rush is independent of the intellectual parts of our brain. So, unless we get ourselves to intellectually critique that rush by reminding ourselves of the intellectual factors that prevent a beautiful thing from being good, we are left with an overall appreciation for the beautiful.
2. An intangible wall arises that distances us from the ugliness that we see. Because the ugly does not visually appeal to us, we subconsciously separate ourselves from it: we push it away. Similarly to my first belief, this response is instinctual and thus independent of intellectual thought. Unless we intellectually acknowledge this response, it has the power to subconsciously lower our overall opinion of the ugly.
Because I think that light is the most important aspect of aesthetics (meaning that it has the most control over whether something is “beautiful” or “ugly”), I focused on light for this project.
I made Frankenstein (and the visual elements in his shots) attractive so that the audience would be subconsciously drawn to his character and thus make the assumption that he is “good.” I stylized Frankenstein’s establishing shot to instantly attract the audience to his character. Compositionally, I made use of lines that draw our eye in to his face. I did the same with light; I made the light on his face brighter than any other light in the shot, which again draws us in to his face. When we arrive at his face, we see that the light on his face is soft, white, and flattering. This makes us subconsciously feel positively about him. For his close-ups, I continued to use the white Chinese lantern because white, soft light flatters the subject. To make these shots beautiful, I lit the fence in such a way that copies the shape of his head, so that when he leans into the light, he fits snugly in the frame. This attracts us to the shot, and accordingly, to Frankenstein. I used shallow depth of field to make the street behind him turn into a soft, gentle mix of oranges and blacks that emulates a romantic painting. Our eye likes the combination of opposite colors, so the orange background, the teal fence, and the Monster’s orange neck create a color palette that satisfies the eye.
Conversely, I lit the monster as unattractively as possible. On the right side of his face, I used hard, yellow light to harshen the lines of his face and make his skin tone artificially yellow. On the left side of his face, I lit him from the bottom. This is unnatural to us because we are used to seeing light come from above (the sun). The combination of these two light sources makes him look ugly because it creates a shadow between his cheeks and eyes.
To summarize, I started off by making Frankenstein look attractive and the monster unattractive to attract us to the former and distance us from the latter. I wanted to make the audience experience the outlook that the society in Shelly’s Frankenstein had towards the attractive and the ugly: the assumption that the beautiful are good and the ugly are bad.
Next, I skewed these reactions to make the audience question their attitudes towards the characters.
When Frankenstein tells the monster that he is not of his (meaning human) blood, Frankenstein leans forward into the ugly hard, yellow light that lights the Monster. This makes the audience feel slightly disgusted by Frankenstein. Hopefully, feeling disgusted by Frankenstein will make the audience question the validity of this statement because its validity hinges on the Monster being lower than Frankenstein. After he says this, I gradually moved him farther back so that he stepped into unnatural and unattractive light from the bottom. I hoped that making the audience disgusted by Frankenstein would make them question the initial assumption that he is good: that he is of a different blood than the monster.
At the end, I switched the positions of the two characters: I put Frankenstein into the Monster’s light and the Monster into Frankenstein’s to reverse the audience’s reactions toward the two characters and ask them to redefine their assumptions about the goodness/badness of the characters.
When the monster merely pokes Frankenstein, I shot a wide shot that uses shadows to distort this benign poke into looking like a huge attack. No violence actually occurs but I made Frankenstein’s shadow look tiny and the Monster’s look huge to make it seem like the latter is vicious and inhumane and the former is innocent and defenseless. For the closing shot, I made them re-question this assumption by having Frankenstein cast a huge shadow as he exited the shot.
I would like to concede that because this is about the effect of art, I do not expect it to be a logically perfect argument. Talking about the effect of art can never be concrete or exact because it relies on the emotional responses of the audience. When I make art, I do so on the basis of what would best emotionally affect me. It is not correct to assume that my emotional responses equal those of the audience, but doing so is the only option that I have because my emotional responses are all that I know. I have to do what affects me and hope that it affects some other people similarly.
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