Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
(Edgar Wright, 2010)

IMDB

The film has been interpreted from a comic book and hence has a lot of graphic influence. Parts are narrated and subtitled like a comic and characters are introduced with on screen with their name, age and bio. As the music plays, graphic lightning bolts fire in time with the beat and the room's perspective becomes dramatically altered to accentuate the impact- as if the music is blowing you away, literally.

Throughout the fight sequences, comic/ graphic style text appears on screen upon impact, for example wham! And kapow! The screen also freezes and the scene becomes illustrated/ animated during the final knockout.

500 Days of Summer

(Marc Webb, 2009)

IMDB

We are introduced to the main characters, Tom and Summer, via a montage of childhood home videos, showing them developing their interests and personalities. The film constantly flashes back and forth between the 500 days of their relationship, the colours reflecting the tone in that stage of their time together.

Tom dresses in greys and pale colours whilst Summer wears pale blues and yellows. Her apartment is decorated with patterns and “ditsy”, pale furniture, whilst Tom's apartment is furnished with dark wood. When he's in a relationship with Summer, the whole filter of the film is brighter and warmer, whereas everything gets colder and pale when she leaves and Tom feels miserable.

During the film they visit an IKEA, which is exactly like every other IKEA you've ever visited in your life! Homely and a little quirky. The morning after Tom and Summer spend their first night together, everything is noticeably brighter. There's an upbeat song playing, the sun is shining, everyone smiles and walks with rhythm. The people in the park are all in sky blue clothing and form into a synchronised dance, only accentuating Tom's happiness. As he enters the elevator everything is bright, the lift door closes and it re-opens ahead in time, where the relationship has gone dark and cold, along with the tone of the film.

In the expectation vs. reality scene, the screen is split and narrated, there's no audible dialogue. The scenes start the same and reality plays out slightly behind Tom's expectations. The expectation side is bright and warming, intimate, whereas reality is more sterile and cool.

The scene takes place on a rooftop garden with pastel shades and lantern hanging lights of pinks and pale blues. Reality and expectation become one single screen as the camera pans and focuses on Summer showing somebody her engagement ring. A great realisation of emotion comes over Tom and the colour in his face fades. As he flees the scene and runs down the street, the colour begins to drain and the shot becomes illustrated and the scenery is erased until all that remains is the slumped silhouette of Tom, alone.

An Education

(Lone Scherfig, 2009)
IMDB

Set in 1961, in a middle-class London suburb we see a montage of girls practising etiquette, dancing, cooking and sport. The girls sit in a high-ceiling school room, with large windows through which they stare longingly. Jenny is a mousey, A+ student bound for Oxford. She dresses in browns and greens and lives by her Father's rules and ambitions for her. Her home is nice but dowdy, pale blues and patterned curtains.

A charming older man enters Jenny's life in a classic, maroon Bristol. He offers her excitement and colour, takes her to luxurious places and buys her quality gifts. Jenny is cultured above her age and enjoys fine music. David takes her to the theatre which is so extremely different from her pale, home life. The interior is decorated with luxurious golds and reds. They drink from crystal glasses and the singer stands amongst red velvet drapes, wearing a sequinned fish-tail dress.

David's friend lives in luxury, his apartment is furnished with white sofas, classic upholstered chairs, dark wood furniture and crystal ornaments and collectables. The exterior architecture is white, art deco style.

In France, Jenny lives like she has always desired. They dance in the street, browse book stalls of French literature and drink wine on the riverside. Paris is much brighter than home, so much more colour. Jenny dresses glamorously, with big sunglasses. She walks on the wall of the riverbank, high heels in hand.

Bunny and The Bull

(Paul King, 2009)
IMDB

The house is a set of clutter and random collected items. Rooms are filled from top to bottom with boxes and boxes of organised and arranged junk, filed and stored precisely. The collections include stamps, drinking straws 1995 to 1996 and crossword cut-outs. The kitchen cupboard is filled with ready meals, labelled by day. All surfaces house piles of videotapes, folders and files.

The walls are also covered with clutter, one wall houses a variation of different clocks.

In a flashback, the scenery becomes illustrated and 2D. Chairs, tables and surroundings are drawn cut-outs, drawn fish swim in the fish tank. Landscapes are created from newspaper and on a visit to the shoe museum(!) the whole scene is filmed in front of a green screen. The surroundings of each scene are made from familiar objects, seen previously in the house- reality.

The sets are very handmade, some even noticeably and purposefully spill off from their rostra. The materials that the sets and props are made from are very recognisable, for example a floor in one case is created from black bin liners. A large pile of newspapers appear as the leg of a road bridge and there's a miniature fairground created from the the cogs and wheels within a cuckoo clock. Other rooms are created using illuminated beer crates and stacks of books too.

The Third Man

(Carol Reed, 1949)

IMDB

Shot in a mixture of studio sets and on location, the film is known for it's music creating a part of the narrative. Set in post war Vienna, the streets are filled with rubble and reminders of war. It features fine design and important photography and revolves around a complex narrative of espionage/ thriller.

The famous zither music repeats throughout, complimenting the fine interiors of Vienna's crumbling streets. Anna resides in a once lavish apartment, furnished with a brass bed and several potted plants. On the wall are dust marks where pictures had been hung. There's also a stylish spiral staircase.

The doctor's house is full of collectables and various beautiful and desirable statues and ornaments, and the walls are lined with mirrors and paintings.

The Man with the Golden Arm

(Otto Preminger, 1955)
IMDB

Six month clean heroin addict, Sinatra, arrives in the lower side of town, surrounded instantly by temptation, with signs for liquor, drugs, beer and girls. 

His girlfriend, Sash, is wheelchair bound, as a result of his actions under the influence of heroin. She waits for him each day in an attic bedsit, understandably a bit mad and paranoid. It soon becomes clear that Sash is pretending to be disabled in order to keep Frankie to herself and away from the, by comparison, glamorous Molly, a dancer with whom he has history. The attic room is dull and cluttered and doesn't offer much excitement.

Frankie occasionally visits a shop window, showing an ideal middle-class kitchen, accentuating his longing for a better quality of living, away from temptation. The temptation though is only emphasized by the soundtrack and the great, booming brass interludes as he injects again and again.

The Night of The Hunter

(Charles Laughton, 1955)
IMDB

The terrifying Robert Mitcham, a real life bad boy, plays the leading role of a preacher, complete with love and hate knuckle tattoos. Laughton experiments with a lot of different shots, including aerial/ above shots and even a with camera attached to the front of a car.

Mitcham appears terrifying and looming, a black figure at the end of the garden in the shadow of a single street lamp, accompanied by the booming, great music each time he appears. He speaks with musicality and authority, casting a shadow over any other characters within his scenes.

In the attic room scene, there's a single bedside lamp that provides little light. The light from the single window casts across the set and the mother lies in bed, within the white light. The preacher casts a looming shadow over her and the room plunges into darkness as he stabs her. Later her body sits upright in a white car at the bottom of the river. Her hair blows with the current of the water, in synchronisation with the underwater reeds.

The preacher later appears haunting as a silhouette on the hill at dusk, chasing the children from their homes. And the children appear drifting downstream in a rowing boat, silhouetted against the the dark riverbank.

La' Belle et La' Bête

(Jean Cocteau, 1946)
IMDB

This was created partly, as a morale booster for France, following the war. The film is heavily stylised and instantly recognisable to those aware of Cocteau. Cocteau uses lots of shot framing as well as plenty of experimentation with focus.

In the Beast's castle, parts of the set are living. The candlesticks on the wall are simply oval-framed, silver-painted human arms, that move when passed. The stone heads in the fireplace are also real, painted human faces that silently react to the main action within the scene. Hands appear from within the table to serve food, doors and gates open themselves, and grand shadows provide mysterious hiding places, within which the beast sinks quietly into.

Last Night
(Massy Tadjedin, 2010)
IMDB

Set in Manhattan, the main set in the film is a modern apartment, overlooking the city. The furnishings are very clean-cut and smooth, solid wood and slate surfaces. The main characters are a young married couple who, money-wise, are comfortable. The palette mainly consists of grey, stone and whites. Within scenes in which the couple face temptation, the colours are subtly richer. For example, Joanna wears violet lingerie and shoes and goes to a party where the main colours are tones of deep reds and black, symbolic for lust and temptation. Michael finds himself amid a cooler palette of turquoise and blues (around a swimming pool), possibly as a reference to his coldness towards his marriage, but also his tentativeness towards cheating on his wife.

Submarine

(Richard Ayoade, 2010)

IMDB

Set in a Welsh, 70's seaside town, Submarine is a “coming of age” story of Oliver Tate, who whilst trying to get a girlfriend, is also trying to save his parents' marriage. His bedroom is tidy, although it's a sort of organised chaos. An attic bedroom, with dark wood beams break up the sloping ceiling, painted to resemble a light blue sky with clouds. The room has a blue painted bed, surrounded by Polaroid pictures and postcards, the room is “cluttered” with boxes of comics and records and books. Plane models hang from the roof, along with a medical skeleton model.

The space seems childish yet it hints at maturity, with clothes hanging on an exposed rail and with features like a record player and a typewriter, all viewed on screen with mature and literate narration.

Abandonment is a running theme throughout, not only in the narrative, but in the scenery as well. So as not to appear “romantic”, the couple spend time together in very still, abandoned places, including a deserted industrial estate and a closed fairground. Together, Jordana and Oliver fill these dark places with light, more accurately fire. Matches, flares, bonfires and fireworks.

The entire palette for this film is an array of blues and greys, with Jordana, the object of Oliver Tate's affections, wearing a bright red coat, a seemingly flamboyant choice in this cold, welsh, seafront town. Jordana provides the excitement and colour in the otherwise very dull (nevertheless beautiful) tone of the picture.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy

(Nigel Coan, 2012)

WIKI

From the childlike imagination of Noel Fielding, comes the mixture of live action and animation that is, Luxury Comedy. The sets are created from what looks like the contents of a child's craft set; reflective card, glitter, felt tip pens, crayon, sparkly fabrics, sequins, feathers, etc. It's an extravagant mixture of exaggerated textures and surfaces, for example, creases are painted onto fabrics. It is psychedelic and over the top and props are created from the most normal of objects, making them very abnormal in the process. Beards created from pencil crayons, facial features made from plastic cups. Make up and face paint are used in an exaggerated manner too. The whole feel of the programme is colourful and bizarre, a neon, geometric world.