Heathers (1988) by Michael Lehmann

Heathers is a cult classic from the 80s following a girl, played by Winona Ryder, who attempts to integrate herself into the popular group at school, a clique of three girls all with the same name- Heather. The main character ends up falling for the school bad boy and quickly learns a thing or two about getting away with murder.

The lighting throughout this movie was relatively normal, outdoor sunlight. There are scenes at night, which usually take place under a florescent light, often times because they are inside. There is a scene where a red transparency is used over some of the lights, when Veronica (the main character) is having a dream about the second Heather's funeral and is confronted by the first Heather. The red transparency was used for a few reasons, one being that Heather one always chose to be red whenever they were playing croquet, and another reason was to add to the strange factor of Veronica dreaming about the funeral - so that we would know it wasn't real. There is also a tungsten blue tint to a few scenes, most notably when Veronica is trying to stop J.D from killing the second Heather, which is a dream, and when J.D and Veronica are outside post-sex by the croquet set up. Veronica typically chose to be blue during the croquet matches and I think that choosing to use blue as a tint was a good idea to show Veronica's choices within the story.

Light shift

There are a lot of groupings of threes in shots, especially of the Heathers often times with Veronica in a separate shot despite interacting with the three Veronicas. I think this helps to get across Veronica's alienation from the Heathers, and how deeply different she was from them. This grouping of three also happens when she sits down to eat lunch with her parents and she sits in between them on the patio.

This is the second part of the opening scene, after you see the legs of the Heathers, you see Veronica in the ground.

Michael does a lot with croppings, cropping of the body usually to show the upper half or the lower half. This is evident in the opening scene with the three Heathers walking out in the sun, and then it switches and we see their lower legs as they begin playing croquet. This same cropping, minus the feet, happens when Veronica is walking through the halls at school and when the Heathers convince Veronica to write a fake love letter for laughs.

He pans across the body in a few scenes, most notably after J.D. and Veronica have sex for the first time, outside by the croquet set up. The scene begins as it pans across the clothes strewn about and ends up traveling from their legs up to their faces- however, the entire time you hear their voices which seem almost disembodied at the time, until the camera settles on the couple.

Whenever there is a character chasing another character, the camera remains stationary as the characters run through the frames.

He also uses repetition of action within the piece, most notably the consistency with which Veronica sits down with her parents in the same way out on the patio- it almost appears that it is the exact scene from before, even her parents ask similar questions, but Veronica's excuse for leaving early changes each time. The croquet set pops up a few times throughout the film, because each girl has her own signifying color - and in some ways personifies the competitive feelings they have toward one another. They also repeat part of the opening scene, where it flashes to Heather's feet as she hits the ball, except this time it's Veronica and a childhood friend of hers. A girl that Veronica tries to reconnect with after she begins to realize how useless it is to try to belong to the clique of Heathers.