City of Lights
An Iraq war veteran returns to his home town of Aurora, IL where he now works as a police officer trying to solve the murder of a young girl.
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Tyler HummelDirectorMyself and Me, The Good, The Bad and the Nerdy, The Fox Valley Film Critics
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Erik MadarikKey Cast
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Kat EvansKey Cast
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Brannon SmithKey Cast
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Darrin HummelKey Cast
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Marta HaugKey Cast
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Adia Lay ClarkKey Cast
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Lexi GravisKey Cast
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Alan LayeKey Cast
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Dario FerdinandKey Cast
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Richard RoyeKey Cast
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Project Type:Feature
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Runtime:45 minutes 52 seconds
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Completion Date:March 10, 2017
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Production Budget:0 USD
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Shooting Format:DV
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Film Color:Black & White
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
Tyler Hummel is a recent graduate from Tribeca Flashpoint College in Chicago, a freelance sound effects editor and a producer for Fox Valley TV in Sugar Grove. To date he has written and director a total of three films including Myself and Me. He is also the host of the bi-monthly talk show The Fox Valley Film Critics on FVTV.
City of Lights was born of a moment of creativity I experienced one evening in the spring of 2016. Over the course of an evening I wrote more than 2/3rd of a feature length script. After some refinement I felt pleased with the material and decided to try and produce a film around it.
City of Lights is a film that was born of a series of circumstances at the time of it's conception. As a nascent and untrained screenwriter I approached the material with the desire to create a dramatic, small scale crime story set near my own hometown. Taking cues from films like Christopher Nolan's Following, I chose the Noir genre for it's thematic significance and style which was well suited to a no-budget feature. Noir is a genre defined by it's moral ambiguity and style, largely founded by a happy accident due to the lack of budget many films at the time lacked. Sets with singular points of lighting were easier and cheaper to set up and created a unique look to the genre. Similarly the moral tension of the post-war environment left the stories reflecting the country questioning it's morals and systems more than ever.
City of Lights borrows the style and themes and sets them against the confusion of the modern world. In an age of controversial politics, moral confusion and uncertainty ahead the film attempts to offer a small bit of redemption to be found amongst the chaos.