Halde Energy wanted one street to switch its lights off for an hour on a Sunday evening. The campaign needed a film of the street doing it, not a chart about saving power.

The block on the corner had twelve windows facing the road, and every flat agreed to take part. We had one night, because the film had to be finished for the Friday before the switch-off.

Lighting twelve rooms from the inside

We couldn’t light the facade from outside. It’s four storeys up and the street had no room for a lift, so every room was lit from inside, with one fixture behind the curtain and the curtain doing the soft work.

Each floor ran the same way:

• One dimmer per panel, taped with the flat number.

• One runner per floor, with a radio on its own channel.

• One cue sheet, printed twice and kept on the stairs.

The white rooms

Eight flats got a LED panel at 5600K, dimmed to a quarter and pushed back to the far wall. From the pavement it reads as a lamp someone left on.

The red rooms

Four flats got the same panel behind a red gel. Through a curtain the colour turns warm, so we picked a deeper red than looked right indoors.

A word of warning

Gels pressed against a curtain get hot. We gave every one a hand’s width of air.

One night, in order

The schedule was built backwards from the switch-off, which had to happen while the neighbours were still out on the pavement.

Two cameras, one street

The A camera stayed on the pavement opposite on a 35 mm lens, locked off for the wides and on a slider for the slow push towards the last red room. The B camera went inside with the runner.

“The best moment was the one we didn’t plan. Flat nine switched off a second early and the whole street gasped.”

Teun Bakker, gaffer

We kept that take. It’s the moment the film is about.

What I’d do again

Label everything with the flat number, never the floor. And film the switch-off twice: the second time, the street knows what’s coming and looks up.

Watch Fenna Carmil