The director of Essex Boys uses a cold colour pallet and metaphorical locations to create a bleak atmosphere and establish the theme and characters in the film. I would like to use similar techniques in my own thriller opening to create meanings and connotations through the use of location and colour.
Colours:
The colours are desaturated to emphasise the bleakness of the location and the loneliness because it makes it look very empty. The lack of colour connotes the lack of morality and establishes the characters as morally corrupt.
Locations:
The Essex locations establish menace because the setting is very uninviting and alienated which connotes the characters as being dangerous outcasts. The locations are very urban and industrial which makes them seem soulless and bleak.
This shot uses dull, desaturated colours to portray the overcast industrial location. The characters are travelling into the bleakness of Essex and the neglected wasteland.
There are various locations in the film, including a fish market. The fish market works well because it is an everyday location that they have made look grim and cruel to create an intense atmosphere and show the ordinary characters' double lives as dangerous criminals.
This shot is another example of the way the director has used desaturated colours to establish menace as it reflects the abandoned area and makes it seem unsettling.
The estuary marshes connote moral emptiness as it is a metaphorical location for being isolated, suggesting that the character's morals don't exist. The bleak, subtle colours emphasise the emptiness.
This shot shows him in the distance on the other side of the car. It is metaphorical for him being the dirt on the car, created through the use of composition and dull colours. This establishes him as being a menace who's unwanted.
The chiaroscuro lighting creates a shadow on half of his face which connotes that he has an evil side and no morals.
The tunnel is also a metaphorical location because it suggests that the character is going into darkness and moral corruption, underneath Essex, travelling deeper into the deception. Showing their journey into the immoral landscape of Essex through the hellish underground.
The bars of diegetic light in the foreground of this shot foreshadow he's trapped or going to jail which establishes the crime theme and sense of entrapment.
