Colour Picture is a film told through emotional atmosphere and visual language. It’s psychologically driven and intentionally contained — where colour, silence, and camera placement do as much storytelling as the script itself.
This page offers insight into how we’re crafting that mood.
Emotional Grammar Through Colour
Each major character in Colour Picture is tied to a dominant colour — not as an aesthetic flourish, but as a narrative device.
These colours appear in clothing, lighting, set design, and framing — shaping the emotional subtext of each scene.
Pink – Control, performance, emotional manipulation (Michelle – the mother)
Green – Envy, exclusion, hunger to be seen (Abigail – one sister)
Blue – Anxious silence, withdrawal, erasure (Quinn – the other sister)
Red – Passion, shame, barely contained rage (Mia – Hunter’s wife)
The "detective" remains visually neutral — disrupting the emotional landscape rather than embodying it.
Inspired by La La Land, our use of colour is expressive and symbolic, not realistic — but in a film with muted tones, each hue stands out more sharply.
Tone & Style
The visual language of Colour Picture is restrained and deliberate. It’s designed to create intimacy, tension, and unease — without spectacle.
Long, still takes that allow emotional buildup
Framing that traps or isolates characters in space
Natural light + practical fixtures for rawness
Colour-coded visual environments to reflect emotional states
Minimal, slow pacing to reflect psychological interiority
Silence is as present as dialogue — and often more telling.
Narrative & Stylistic References
While this is a low-budget Canadian indie, the film’s structure, tone, and visual ambition draw on larger cinematic influences:
Citizen Kane – The use of interviews and shifting perspectives to reconstruct a fractured narrative
La La Land – Expressive, symbolic colour as emotional storytelling
Whiplash – Tight, character-driven tension with emotional precision
Aftersun – Subtle exploration of memory, mood, and ambiguity
Krisha – Family chaos contained in one location, told with raw immediacy
These references shape how we approach storytelling: fragmented, intimate, emotionally charged, and formally intentional — regardless of budget.
Coming Soon:
Our visual tone board
Colour palette maps
Lighting diagrams
Sample compositions
Test footage and frame stills
