Colour - RED

For our session, we discussed the importance and connotations of colour within film making. Different colours have different meaning, whereas some merely pose enigma's to the audience, to add tension or mystery. Within the lesson, we looked at examples from Patti Bellantoni's 'If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die'

Firstly, we looked at the colour RED. There are many different reds used within film. The usual connotations, as an audience member, that comes to mind is murder, romance and danger. However, Bellantoni explains that there are many more, and provides examples of how these colours are used within specific films.

However, there are many different uses for the colour, and depending on how it's portrayed, what it means:

POWER: The Wizard of Oz, for example Dorothy's shoes give her the strength and power to control where she goes, she can magically go home by clicking the heels of her shoes together, and the witch has no power (to destroy) against them. 

LUST: Red that implies lust within a scene, for example in Shakespeare in Love.

DEFIANT: showing resistance, strength of defiance. For example, Rebel Without a Cause where the character Jim Stark is a new kid in town and is known for causing trouble, the reason his family moved before. In the new town, he hopes to find the love he didn't receive from his middle-class family. He must prove himself to his peers in switchblade knife fights and games in which cars race toward the end of a cliff.

ANXIOUS: Use of tension, scare. In The Sixth Sense the colour red cleverly, as the director opted to use the colour red as visual cue to the audience. He carefully made sure that there was little or no red within the majority of the movie's scenes, however, when dead people are present, we then see red. It's clever and takes a while for the audience to pick up on. But it's one of the earliest and most clear ways that the surprise ending is foreshadowed. 

ANGER: To express 'mad' feelings within the film. This is one of the simple emotional uses of colour within the film industry today. One thing I noticed in 'American Beauty'  is that whenever anger is expressed in the home, there are red flowers in shot.

ROMANCE: One of the simpliest red potraits. The idea of the colour red meaning love, romance. For example in Love Actually, the red corresponds to both the Christmas theme and the romance theme.