Grace Film Analysis

Colour has meaning, making the decision to use black and white was a step toward articulating a certain feeling for the audience. Gerald Mast in his discussion around monochrome photography notes that lack of colour is a vote for the visual beauty of necessity - one which focuses on shapes, forms, shadows and textures in a way the human eye, that sees everyday life in colour does not. (Brinkmann, 11), colour has a subconscious effect on its viewer and thus can be carefully selected to encourage interpretation of a certain kind. One of anxiety, claustrophobia and realism in ‘Grace’. Colour is a sensation, Rhodes and Leon argue, as opposed to a material existence - seeing particular colours enhances particular feelings in colour psychology,

Here I am talking specifically to a time where there was the option to use colour and that was commonplace, or at least easier than drawing over black and white film. Black and white cinema and photography on film was a practical choice, it was cheaper than using colour film , and generally there was a lower risk of over or under exposing the footage, the images could be printed more easily and required less light (Thompson). Directors and their works from Martin Scorsese’s ‘What’s a Nice girl like you Doing in a Place like This’ (Scorsese, 1963) to Jane Campion’s ‘A Girl’s own Story’ (Campion, 1986) established black and white as not only practical but a valid artistic decision and form of cinema. Due to this, selecting black and white has an association with being art and a part of many filmmakers’ careers at one point or another, ‘practical concerns became aesthetic preference (Thompson). I suppose inexplicitly I was trying to tie ‘Grace’ into this tradition, a chance to explore black and white, and I thought the decision might create empathy in the way that when any spectator looks at a piece of art, they either do not feel anything or they connect in someway, I hoped it was the