Light & Colour Research

Lighting and Colour was an important aspect of our film because we wanted to make sure that it communicated our genre. Our Genre is Mystery/Thriller.

On the set of our London location the lighting was naturally bright and we decided that would be bring a warm/colourful feel which we did not want since the setting had to reflect isolation that is almost depressing. Our film needed a cold essence/atmosphere also to reflect Leo's sad frame of mine whilst reminiscing about her family. To achieve this we knew this would be done during post production on the software: final cut pro. "Cold" colours were needed and according to our research blue and grey colours connoted cold/mysterious elements reinforcing the genre of our film to the audience and creating enigma. Blue colouring alluded to the genre (conforming to convetions of a Mystery Opening film) and signified Leo's sad state. (Tim Burton's "A Corpse Bride" illustrates the colours which we wanted to include, although the colours were a little too cold for our film it was useful to see the effects it created to the ambience of the film.) At the end our film, when colliding with Alex, the blue colouring lessened slightly to symbolise a sense of hope for finding her family. On the other hand too much blue colouring was undesired because after all our film had to display social realism and therefore had to look naturalistic.

However for our Flashback we wanted the colours to be warm and made sure that the home would be brightly lit with decorations, even adding candles to subtly create this effect. The warm decorations and bright light connote happiness signifying to the audience the fond memories Leo had in her childhood, that contrasts her present state.
Colour and lighting effects ambience...