Director Research - Martin Scorsese (Film)

 Martin Scorsese is one of the most famous movie directors and I wanted to do more research into him because of his incredible use of colour.

A quick look through his Filmography shows his depth of knowledge and skill in the film industry. The now 74 year old has directed and produced many award winning films. The wolf of wall street, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver and Shutter Island to name a few.

He has a very interesting use of colour in his films and we can see that in the first few pictures a lot of his films use the colour red. It is tough to decide what exactly the red resembles, is it love, death or even hatred? Or possibly a mix of them and many more? I wanted to research further because whilst red is prominently used in his films so are other styles.




As we talked about Taxi Driver in a lecture I wanted to do some further research into possibly what Martin himself said about the use of red so prominently in his films.

He uses red in his films to show to show the emotional feelings and danger that revolve around his characters. The use of red as a colour because it can symobolise a warning, showing heightened emotions of the people we are seeing on our screens. It can also show the relationships between the characters we are watching, a red tint however could mean one of two things, pure love or possibly the opposite that it will end in death.



Here are two GIFS from taxi driver. The first shows the main character at the start of the film and the second is at the end. It could be seen as foreshadowing, that we are told right at the start that this story will only go one way, towards a blood bath.

In particular the first GIF shows that the main character is not happy and with the red tint it gives him power, and that shows us that something will now inevitably happen.


I found a great videos showing the majority of the uses of the colour red in his films. I did not create the video but have re-uploaded it to my channel to make sure I have it here.

It shows in a large array of genres his use of the colour red, as either a tint or on a character or prop. Red is a very powerful colour because it can display a large variety of emotions.

I found a great quote whilst I was researching into the colour red "red is associated with passion and violence, blue with coolness and melancholy"





Scorsese's love of the colour started with "The Red Shoes (1948)". He said the colour was not realistic but gave the characters in the film extra emphasis. He also goes on to say that the use of Red in "The Red Shoes" exhibits sexual power and artistic passion. This is interesting because in a lot of Scorsese's films the colour red does mean death and violence but his initial inspiration for using the colour was for the near opposite reason in love.


Whilst it was very interesting to look into the colour red I wanted to balance it out by looking at the
colour pallets from some of his other films that red might not have been so prominent and to establish if he had any other colours that seemed to repeat themselves, or possibly if the majority of his films used are bright or softer, darker colours.


I have found a few colour pallets from some of his other films which show that, at least in these particular scenes darker and subtle colours are often used.

The Aviator

Blue is most prominent here, but red is also used in the darker areas. But this out of all the pallets I found stuck out as it is mostly blue which is unlike most his films.

Goodfellas

High contrast colours used, Bright greeny/yellow car, bright red tree and rich green grass.

Week Mean Streets, 1973

This does use a lot of darker colours but red is still most prominent.

Wolf on Wall Street

Quite natural but the colour of the dress lets the viewer know she is the love subject of the main character.

Taxi Driver

I wanted to include this because even though red was used a lot in this film this colour pallet shows that in this scene in particular it doesn't make an appearance. These colours give you a real 60's vibe.

Overall you can see that Scorsese does generally like to use darker colours in his film, but of course with a few exceptions. The dark colours do generally reflect the characters he has in his films, they are normally bad people and the darker colours make them feel more sinister, even though it's only really lighting or colour that is making the difference. However it does really effect the light we see the colours in (Good/Bad)

I really enjoyed researching further into Scorsese as he shows that lighting and colour shows how the characters we are looking at on screen are perceived. I have already got to work with the actors to make sure they are wearing the right clothes for the shoot (Dark/Gothic) because if they wore everyday clothes it would make us see the characters very differently. I am also still debating on whether to use natural or artificially enhanced lighting for my shoot because it would make a difference once again. I think this will have to be a quick decision I make on the day after testing a few shots in the real locations.

How this research will effect my film:

Costume design was always going to be important in my scene but I have emailed my actors and they have been very kind in looking through their clothes and sending me pictures of  what they thought would be suitable. As I don't have clothes like this myself it was incredibly helpful that Jessica (Who will be playing Sarah and Beth) was able to do this for me and these are the clothes she has picked out for the characters. As the same actor will play two characters Jessica has sent through one set for Sarah and one for Beth and they are visually exactly what I was looking for. And Jamie (Who plays Felix) will be sending me his costume design in the next few days.I

 I was unsure if not to use natural lighting or artificial in my shoot but I think it would be good to have the options. I have booked out the LED Lights incase. I think it is much more likely I will be using the lights on the second day as the light will fade on the end of the shoot so I might make sure there is light throughout and edit the lighting in the editing process so it can all look right.

Scorsese will also influence how I make my film look, will it be a darker scene with less colour and emotion, or will I make it high contrast like in the Goodfella's screenshot. I think personally I will make my scenes more dark than the ones in the actual scene. I will make sure that no bright colours are used as it would seen out of place and strange. To be fair in the actual scene we don't see many vibrant colours but it's something I'm going to have to be very particular about when I am filming, just to keep continuity in colours from shot to shot.