Think Lovely Thoughts

Director | Stephen Snavely

Think Lovely Thoughts

Think Lovely Thoughts is a short film directed by Stephen Snavely and shot entirely in Los Angeles, with me as director of photography. Drawn directly from Snavely's own experience of living with anxiety, depression, and panic, and borrowing its title from the line in Peter Pan that lets children take flight, the film asks what happens to a person who can no longer summon a single lovely thought. It follows a young father struggling to hold his family, and his grip on reality, together while his own mind turns against him, a deeply personal portrait of mental illness that still reaches toward hope. Roy Williams Jr. leads as John, alongside Dayana Rincon, Adia Bell, and Livvy Stevens.

We treated anxiety itself as a character. Lighting cues, color, and movement became the language of his internal state, shifting with every swing between calm and crisis. Deep reds bleed into the moments of panic, steel blues hold the cold distance of depression, and silhouettes and near-darkness let dread live in the spaces we chose not to light. When an attack takes hold, the camera destabilizes with it, shaking, searching, and falling out of balance so the viewer feels the floor tilt the way the character does.

In its review, Reel2Reel Talk wrote that “the strong narrative of Think Lovely Thoughts is enhanced by great cinematography and sound design, the music and really solid performances from the cast of 4." The result is an intimate, expressionistic piece where color and motion carry the emotion, and where, by the final frames, the storm breaks toward light. Reel 2 Reel Talk

All of this was built on almost nothing: a zero-budget production and a minimal lighting package that forced every effect to be earned in-camera. We shot on a RED Komodo with Cooke Panchro/i Classic primes, lenses prized for their soft, characterful skin tones and vintage falloff, which kept even the harshest moments human.