Lighting Childhood on Screen a Visual Analysis of Natural and Artificial Light in Contemporary Cinema

Abstract

Light in cinema is both a material condition of image-making and a narrative resource through which viewers interpret space, emotion, character, and social reality. This article examines how natural and artificial illumination contribute to the representation of childhood in three contemporary films: The Florida Project (Baker, 2017), Room (Abrahamson, 2015), and Petite Maman (Sciamma, 2021). Using a qualitative, interpretive comparative approach, it considers how lighting interacts with colour, framing, setting, and performance. The films offer contrasting visual environments: saturated exterior daylight and social exposure, restricted interior illumination and confinement, and restrained naturalistic light and intimacy. Drawing on scholarship on cinematic lighting, visual methodology, and childhood in film, the article argues that lighting helps shape how childhood becomes visible on screen. It may suggest freedom and exposure, enclosure and vulnerability, or intimacy and reflective attention, depending on its narrative and spatial context. The article rejects a fixed opposition in which natural light is inherently truthful and artificial light inherently false; both can be modified and used expressively. It offers a lighting-centred framework for future scene-based research and does not claim audience-response findings or measurable causal effects.