On the cinematography in Barry Jenkins' Moonlight and what it's doing for the story.

James Laxton's cinematography in Moonlight was developed in direct response to the challenge of depicting dark skin in digital cinema, which has historically been optimized for lighter skin tones.

Laxton and Jenkins developed what they called the 'Moonlight palette': warm shadows, cool highlights, colors that don't default to the desaturated aesthetics that dominate contemporary prestige cinema. They tested extensively with dark-skinned performers and calibrated every lighting setup to make sure that the faces of their actors were as visible as possible in every register.

The result is a film that looks unlike almost any other mainstream American film. The colors are specific to Miami — the turquoise of the Atlantic, the amber of streetlights, the deep green of the vegetation — and they're in constant dialogue with the emotional register of each section.

The choice to shoot handheld in Section 1 (childhood), more steadicam in Section 2 (adolescence), and more locked-down in Section 3 (adulthood) is also a formal argument: the camera's relationship to stability reflects the protagonist's relationship to identity at each stage of his life.