Lighting and Colour 

Was meant to be published on 22nd (when wrote)

Lighting and colour can be used as visual tools to show and show meaning, also to create a sense of depth. These help to establish mood and atmosphere and can highlight and define certain objects and characters.

From my research into thriller movie openings I have found that many thrillers start with a sense of anonymity, this is too make the audience ask questions. This links too lighting and colour as much of this anonymity is created by using back lighting and low key lighting. This makes it hard to see what the characters look like and what the setting is. In the openings of thrillers I have also noticed that there is mainly cold colouring throughout each thriller movie and there is a limited colour palette to blacks, greys, blues and whites, creating a depressing colourless world of the characters. However some movies openings were very bright and cheerful and later in the movie the colour temperature changed to colder and darker.

In our thriller opening we will have a design which wraps the story into a confusing plot which makes the audience ask questions. At the beginning of our plot the protagonist is strapped to a chair and is being electrocuted by two men. In this scene as its a torture scene the lighting should be high key pointing at the protagonist acting as key light, while the character 'investigator' who is torturing him has the light as back light making him anonymous and a mystery to the audience. I feel that the colour palette for this scene should be white and bland which will help establish the protagonists little emotion from feeling faint and in extreme pain for the electrocuting. The high key lighting will create the white background we are looking for and will look great with a very shallow depth of field, which will also help emphasize the protagonists little emotion.

In the next scene we (the character are in a coluorful and lit bar. We start with a POV shot from him drinking his beer. This will show us an establishing shot from his POV showing us the colour of the scene and comfortable lighting like in a bar. The colour temperature will be warm, using bright oranges and reds, commonly found in pubs and bars. The other characters in the scene are friends of Rick, the protagonist, meaning that having them be anonymous would feel unnatural and look strange. This means that there will be Source light which is also acting as key light. This will suggest that the scene is calm and welcoming  

Finally is the scene with the shovel in the woods. When I had this scene described to me I instantly had the idea that it would make more sense to have it at night and look more mysterious and powerful. I pictured the lighting in the scene to be back lighting which is being shone up a bank, out of shot creating a silhouette of the character, setting and prop (shovel). Even though this scene will only be a very short 0-10 secs, it will need as much attention to detail as the other scenes and settings. I was thinking of having the lighting more effective by having a heavy artificial haze/fog which will reflect the light making the outline of the character and props more apparent while simultaneously giving the eerie silent hill theme which is will suggest death.