Why is the room so light?

An award-winning post production house has generously offered to fit our spot in for color correction. While we wait to hear back on possible days and times, I've been going through the lighting references I collected during pre-production. We shared a lot of options with our DP, Sandra Valde, but what they all had in common was a flood of light. The goal was to create an ethereal feel to the environment. (I almost used "surreal" but that word is used so much...)

We wanted viewers to know that, while the characters are at a house party, it's not supposed to be realistic. The set design is highly stylized. The sofa and pillows tell us it's a living room, but it doesn't look like anyone's living room that we know. In order to suspend viewers' disbelief, we used an exaggerated amount of light so they know that the world is not real, so they know that it is a representation of real life.

This way audiences will hopefully not take the game and the card reveal at the end literally, but instead will recognize it as a visual metaphor. The game, the card and the blindfolds are all symbols. The game represents sexual encounters that we may have throughout our life. The card represents our health status. If we're wearing a blindfold by not getting tested, how can we know what we're passing around?

Can you tell which reference inspired our look?

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