Project Spotlight: ‘Christmas Lights', Finding Hope After Loss
Angie Loveday is a Costa Rican filmmaker and Seton Hall University grad with a degree in Broadcasting and Film program. She currently creates low/no budget short films and web series, published through the Romano Productions YouTube channel. She’s the director and writer behind, ‘Christmas Lights’, our latest project spotlight that explores grief, coping, and comfort. We’re so excited to share this short and Angie’s talent. She‘s been recognized as a finalist in the 2019 Huawei Short Film Festival in Costa Rica and her web series has gone on to win Best Thriller Screenplay at the Asia Web Awards. Angie is working hard to not only create her vision as a filmmaker but also pushing to promote filmmaking and productions in her native country where she feels it is an art that is often overlooked. Read on about Angie and watch her film below!
What inspired you to make this short?
Christmas Lights was inspired by a series of events I went through at the end of 2019. I experienced the loss of someone very close at the end of October. Having to go straightaway from that and into the Holiday Season was very difficult. On Christmas Day however, I visited some family members. I distinctly remember staring at the blinking decoration lights in their house and having a rush of memories from when I was little and we would spend a long time testing each and every lightbulb to try and fix the string lights. It made me very nostalgic and I couldn't let go of that image of the christmas lights blinking in the darkened room with an orange glow.
Where do you want your filmmaking career to go?
I want my filmmaking career to lead me down the path of fiction TV series writing and directing. Although the production scene in Costa Rica is very limited overall, there have been strong movements in feature films that have placed the country on the map. However, in the TV industry we have fallen far behind. It sounds ambitious, but I would love to be able to change that. I want to bring Costa Rican episodic content to a point where people will actually want to watch it. The country has the talent to pull it off, but it needs to be gathered and there needs to be a bigger push for it. I still have much more to learn before I can strive to work towards this goal but it is also why I'm greatly interested in web series and have been exploring that area. I think promoting the production of web series would be a great first step towards encouraging episodic content.
What tech did you use to create this? How long was production?
This short film was created using a Canon Rebel DSLR, a basic photography light kit, and lavalier mics that connect to a cell phone jack. It was all very simple, minimal budget equipment, that still turned out with great results. I think this really shows that the quality of a production is not determined by the quality of the equipment. The production itself was all completed in one day within four hours. We had a brief window of time since we needed darkness so that the lights would stand out more, while finishing in time before the night curfew (for pandemic control) that was in place at the time started.
What creative choices did you make in this short that you’re proud of?
I'm very proud of the choices in lighting and the use of the lights. It was such a central aspect to the story but something I'd never explored before. Typically, I would light in a way where I could see the subjects well, not really caring much about the mood or the ambience that they would create. I also tended to go more with natural light as much as possible. I remember setting up the lighting for the first shot, putting a lot more thought into the feel it would create, combining it with the prop lights, and as soon as I got back behind the camera to check how it looked I got chills since it was exactly what I was going for. It was nothing too complex but to me it was everything.
What theme did you want to explore most in this short?
With Christmas Lights, I intended to explore three main themes: grief, loneliness/isolation, and mental health. I also wanted to do it in a more subtle way. The two characters are just having a very honest, open discussion, but their words about the lights reveal a deeper problem. I considered those feelings to be things that anyone who struggles with mental health deals with at one point or another, to varying degrees. Factored in, was also the matter of timing. I conceptualized and wrote this story before the lockdowns started happening all around the world. Once November came around and the situation hadn't improved, I considered postponing production for another year because of the logistic difficulties it implied. On second thought, I realized that more people were struggling with loneliness and isolation than ever before, precisely because of the lockdowns. It suddenly became clear to me that it was THE TIME for this story to be released to the world. It had gone beyond a personal struggle and was quickly becoming a collective experience.
What did you learn while creating this short?
With the production of this short, I learned quite a bit about writing, which was unexpected. First, after making this script and seeing the reception it had at several festivals, before it was even made, I got a surge in confidence about my skills and abilities. I suddenly wanted to pursue a writing career a lot more actively than before. I used to think that I wrote just so that I could direct, but now I saw myself with the capacity for being a writer too. I also realized that the reason this story did a lot better than previous works and attempts was because of how personal it was. Looking back, I noticed the lack of emotion that previous works had, and going forward I decided to include more of those raw unfiltered feelings into my characters.
Why are women and non-binary specific creative communities important?
Everyone has a different story to tell and, even with similar stories, you have a different perspective. A lot of people think that your personal experiences don't have an impact on your work, but they really do. The experiences of women and non-binary people are completely different and are therefore going to have an influence on the perspective they bring into their creative work. If we want people of all kinds to identify with the work on screen and be able to see themselves on there, the creatives behind the work also need to be people of all kinds.
Do you have any POV to share on Latinx representation in Hollywood?
Latinx representation in Hollywood is still very scarce. It has improved for sure and it has started to diversify. There has been a push to eliminate just that one image of latinx that somehow people from 33 different countries, each with varying cultures and traditions even within themselves, must fit into. However, it's still not enough. There was one year I remember at the Academy Awards, right when latinx people started protesting the lack of representation, in which a lot of the wins were given to latinx or latinx-related projects, but that was the end of it. For true representation to happen, it needs to be consistent, and latinx creators need to have access to the same opportunities and for the same chances of being in the industry. However, most latinx representation in works that are not created by latinxs, still fall under the same stereotypes.
What else would you like to share?
I'm very proud of what I was capable of accomplishing with Christmas Lights. It was a project done with a total of 5 people involved, including the two actors. It has not achieved an incredible amount of views nor taken home all the awards but it has had a pretty good festival run and I love how it turned out. I hope that it is able to keep spreading and reach people who might be struggling to say in some way, there is hope at the end of the tunnel and you are never truly alone.
Keep up with Angie’s work!
https://www.instagram.com/romano.productions/
https://www.instagram.com/ang_lovestheday/
https://www.facebook.com/Romano-Productions-622980231476730/