Identity

Identity was all about environments. From the off I noticed the colour palette straight away, which is becoming something I’m always noticing straight away in all the movies I watch now. It was very dark as per usual with any film, I think it’s a big cliché to be honest but every film I watch seems to have darkness everywhere, even in games everything is dark, it’s probably to add a more dramatic atmosphere but I get kind of fed up with seeing it over and over again however this film is set all in one night so I’ll let the concept off with this one... Without getting too much into that though the colours used were again limited. Different tones of green, red, yellows here and there and blue were all the colours I noticed mostly. Another thing was looking at the greens in particular; they varied from a darker green to a higher saturated green in different scenes giving a varying contrast all the time which was interesting. I thought that these colours tend to draw my eyes straight to them more rather than focusing on the characters and what they were saying or their facial expressions as with it being a horror movie the actions of the characters are important to how the story unfolds I think.  Though being an Art student I tend to focus on what the aesthetics look like for example different shots and camera angles etc more than the story itself.

 

The environment was very limited, the whole film is in just one place and it all takes place in one night. The story and script have an effect on the Art direction I think in terms of it being all set in one motel in one night, it’s constantly pitch black outside and all around and it’s flooding around them therefore the characters cannot physically get away from the motel because of the constant rain and the danger of it and so they are forced to stay in the same place the entire film, there in which it asks the questions to the Art director of what can they achieve with this? The Artists are basically limited to the scenery; there are only so many rooms they can work with so it has to be well planned out. I guess the script to the story will help them realise what rooms are needed and what parts of the set will be used by the characters and what purpose they are used for. So based on that it kind of all boils down to reading and working with the writers (I think) closely to describe what will be going on in each individual scene and then from that work out what is required and how they are going to shoot each scene.

 

I remember the scene where the injured woman is lying in bed, you see that room quite a lot for a while but afterwards we start to see more of the set. It’s as if they don’t have a lot to work with so they were trying to make scenes last quite a long time in one area and then build it up to seeing more and revealing more to the story as time goes on (again I think). The scene where the woman is hit by the car is quite a long scene, as it repeats it over twice. When I heard that it was a horror movie and people started to get killed, at the scene with the young boy in the car and his mother outside gets hit by a passing car at the start of the film, I immediately assumed that they boy was the cause of her death and knew it was going to be him from the start and I was spot on. Maybe I’ve seen too many cliché horror movies? With most of them you know who it is from the start and this was one of them. In terms of environment it’s great, Art direction good, story good too but it was quite predictable to be honest (and again this is what I personally think!).