Lights Out
It is approximately four and a half
billion years old, has a core temperature of over fifteen million degrees and
generates almost four hundred billion billion megawatts of energy (mostly
light) every second (Arnett). It is the
sun and it plays a large role in the life on Earth. The movie Do the Right Thing takes
place on a hot, summer day in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in
In the movie Do the Right Thing,
heat plays a critical role in directing the plot of the movie; the heat helps
to build up tension between characters.
Spike Lee uses three methods of lighting to convey this, which are the
showing of heat in outside scenes, the showing of heat in inside scenes and the
use of light reflection. The first
method that Lee uses to express the extremely hot day is by showing the heat
present outside. In one scene near the
beginning of the movie, after Sal and his sons have just opened up the pizzeria,
the camera looks through Sal’s large window in front and out onto the
street. Everything outside is a bright
yellow color. The trees, the road, the
parked cars and the neighboring buildings all blend into each other because
their colors are the same; there is no contrast separating these things (Do
the Right Thing). Another outside
scene is one of Radio Raheem talking to some African-American teenagers on the
street. When the camera zooms in on
Radio Raheem, he, the sky and the top of a tree are all brighter than normal (Do
the Right Thing). This blending of
colors of lights in these scenes make the illusion that the sun’s rays are so
powerful that they cover up the natural colors of Bed-Stuy. It makes it seem like there is something
wrong with the television. At the end of
the film on the morning after the riot, the camera shows the rubble of Sal’s
Pizzeria, the surrounding buildings and the street corner, which are bathing in
orange sunlight to make the impression that that day was also going to be
awfully hot (Do the Right Thing).
A second way Lee expresses the
intense heat of the movie is by showing the heat present inside of homes and
buildings. In the beginning of the
movie, the viewers see Da Mayor waking up on the first morning. Da Mayor’s bedroom is colored orange, even
though most of the blinds are fully closed.
About an hour into the film, there is a scene of Mother Sister sitting
in her window fanning herself. Her face,
her hair and her drapes are all tinted orange from the sun (Do the Right
Thing). The tinting of color shows
the viewers that the sun’s rays are hot and powerful. The light coming into Mookie’s room in the
morning makes the air look cloudy and hazy.
Also, on Mookie’s first pizza delivery that day, as he is climbing the
flight of stairs,. the viewers see a skylight shining down, making the air
inside the building appear hazy as well (Do the Right Thing). This semi-opaqueness to the air shows the
viewers that because the air is so warm, more water vapor can diffuse into the
air and cause the air to become depressingly hazy and humid.
The final way Lee uses lighting to
illustrate a hot day is by reflecting light to show sweat glistening off of
many different characters. One example
of lights being reflected to show perspiration is in the racial slur
sequence. When Pino starts to rant and
rave, sweat is seen on his upper arms and on his cheeks. Another example is when Radio Raheem goes into
Sal’s and asks for two slices of pizza.
The camera does a close-up of Radio Raheem’s head and the sweat is
clearly seen because of the lighting (Do the Right Thing). This reflection of the lights off of the
perspiration illustrates to the viewer that everybody in the movie is extremely
hot.
Spike Lee uses lighting
realistically not only for temperature simulation but also for the time frame
of the film. Since this film takes
places over the course of one day, the movie should both accurately mimic a
real day and be continuous (not have any scenes look like they were filmed on another
day). The lighting in Do the Right
Thing simulates an actual day, having morning taking place at the beginning
of the movie, afternoon in the middle of the movie and evening near the end of
the movie. In the first few minutes of
the film, Sal and his sons drive to the pizzeria and open it up for
business. During this, the sun shines
directly on the shop. If the film does
follow a time frame, then at evening, Sal’s Famous Pizzeria should be in the
shadows. In fact, near the end of the
movie, Sal’s store is in the shadows.
The exact opposite must also be true for the Korean market, which is
located across the street from Sal’s Famous Pizzeria. In the morning, the market is dark and in the
evening, the market is bright from the setting sun. There is a scene in the latter half of the
film in which Vito is looking out from inside the pizzeria. He and the pizzeria are covered in darkness
but the Korean market is covered in sunlight.
Lee uses lighting techniques to keep
the lighting continuous throughout the entire film and maintain the fact that
the film took place over one, and only one, day. Since Lee wanted the movie to have sunny
weather for the whole day, the lighting must coincide with and be very bright
for all scenes shot during normal daylight hours. At no point in the movie does the outside
appear cloudy or rainy; the outdoors are always bright, except at night, and
this brightness makes the illusion that the sky is clear and it is sunny
throughout the day.
Due to the incredible use of lighting
by Spike Lee and his crew of Do the Right Thing, the viewer can actually
create a map of the block by using the rising and setting of the sun. The sun rises in the east and sets in the
west, so since the Korean market was dark in the morning and light in the
evening, it is on the east side of the street.
Because of this same principle, viewers can infer that Mother Sister’s
house is on the east side of the street as well. Sal’s Famous Pizzeria is on the west side of
the street facing the Korean market because the opposite occurred—the pizzeria
was light in the morning and dark in the evening. Since the corner men face the Korean market
and since they are never out of the sun during the day, they must be located on
the northeast corner of the intersection.
“One of the single most important
elements to a film’s visual appearance is lighting,” says Palmquist and
Serbinski, creators of a filmmaking website (“Scene 1”). Well, Spike Lee definitely understood the
importance of lighting and used the lighting to enhance the viewers’
senses. Even though lighting may seem
insignificant compared to high quality or well-known actors, it still can make
a film believable. So although the sun
in real life produces huge amounts of light and heat, a simple set of movie
lights can easily match or even beat it on the big screen.
Works Cited
Arnett, Bill.
“The Sun.” The Nine Planets: A
Multimedia Tour of the Solar System.
http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/sol.html.
Do the Right Thing. Dir.
Spike Lee. Writ. Spike Lee. Perf. Spike Lee and Danny Aiello. MCA Home Video, 1989.
Palmquist, Owen and Ted Serbinski. “Scene 1:
Enter Future Filmmakers.” ThinkQuest
Inc. 1999.
http://library.thinkquest.org/29285/filmmaking/st4.html.