Colours Wednesday, 29 July 2009

Posted by Helen in Making of....
Tags: animation, characters, colour script, lighting, still frame
1 comment so far

Do you notice the colours when you’re watching a film?

You might not, but someone’s thought carefully about them. Not just the colour of costumes, props and sets, but the colour of the light and the overall colour balance of each shot.

Colours are used to give an atmosphere and to reflect mood. They can relate to characters. The overall colour will change throughout – there may be a colour arc that relates to the story arc or to a character’s arc. Pixar create “colour scripts” for each film – Lou Romano has posted a lot of his art for Up (warning, spoilers – be careful if you haven’t yet seen the film) including first pass colour scripts for Act I and a full colour script.

Now, in The Lost Book we had a different challenge. We didn’t know what the story would be, or who the characters would be, or what their stories would be. It meant we couldn’t plan colours or sketch a colour script. But, we still wanted to use colour as best we could.

In the first episode we set up some simple contrasts of colour and light. Dark colours and red were used when the book was stolen. Light colours, especially yellow, and bright light were used when Aileen was in a safe place. Tiny elements of purple/lilac were used to relate to the crime – the tag left on the lectern was purple and the bus set in the final shot, when Aileen discovers that all online copies of the book have also been stolen, features lilac as well as yellow.

We could build on this in episode 2. When Aileen’s talking to Kyle, she’s in a good place (yellows/light) but we’re not sure about Kyle (black). In the bookshop, someone bad has got at the books, so we’re using dark colours, reds and oranges.

By episode 3 we had a baddie – Otto Dafé. His name, with the reference to burning, fitted beautifully with the colour scheme we’d chosen for bad things, so we dressed him in black and made sure oranges and reds surrounded him. Even in episode 4, when he’s in the airport (a space we’ve made light and bright and full of greens – Kyle’s colour and another indication of a safe place) we darken the Otto shots by half-filling the screen with a black mobile phone, and adding orange/red tones in Otto’s books and in the seating in the background.

By episode 4 we also knew that Grazp Pharmaceuticals was responsible for the theft… so it turned out that their corporate colour was purple/lilac. This colour scheme segued into episode 5 where purples and blacks were used throughout – it wasn’t just the darkness that made this the darkest episode, everything about the tones used showed that the characters were in a tight spot.

But, we had a problem. Otto was no longer a bad guy, so his signature colours of red and orange couldn’t be used, and the link between him and those colours previously suddenly didn’t work so well. There wasn’t anything we could do about this, apart from reconceptualise orange/red as the colour range that meant books were in trouble.

The final episode showed a marked change in atmosphere. The scenes at the Sheep Heid Inn that frame the episode use bright light, yellows and greens. Both Aileen and Kyle are there, they’re safe and happy, no books are in danger. We used reds and purples in the early flashbacks, but gradually worked back through to yellows and greens as the mood lightened and the crime was solved.

Looking at all the stills, there’s quite a pleasing colour arc and the colours worked well to reflect the mood. But, Otto’s transition from baddie to goodie was very hard to handle!

(Oh, and on the subject of colours, this might amuse you as an insight into how obsessive we are about this sort of thing!)