One thing I love about making a movie is being able to craft the way the world looks. It’s not easy to build a big, expensive set on an indie budget – I found this out while making SOUL KILLER. It’s better to start with an already great looking location and spruce it up. We managed to do that with our shoot in Blarney Castle – a genuine castle in the middle of California (more on that another time).
But another way to craft the look of the movie is through color. For SOUL KILLER, the primary colors are an icy blue – to symbolize the otherworldly feel of astral projection, and a light purple – that symbolizes Natalie (Kelly Chambers) more or less. If you watch the movie, you’ll see those colors crop up a few times in interesting ways.
Horror movies are a great genre to really push style. FRIDAY THE 13th has its blood red. HALLOWEEN has its pumpkin orange. So, SOUL KILLER has the icy blue.
Another creative decision made when filming SOUL KILLER was to film it in a naturalistic style. My favorite time period for movies is the late 70’s and early 80’s. You had the gritty realism of the 1970’s mixed with the emerging dawn of the modern day special effects blockbuster. So, all the flesh tones are accurate in SOUL KILLER – we didn’t push them into orange territory (which happens today on a surprising number of big movies).
Films are stories that tell an audience how people should treat each other (either consciously by the filmmaker or not). Put another way, as a filmmaker you have a right and responsibility to tell an audience what you feel are the meat and potatoes of this world. Like any good chef – you want your “meal” to look good – and coming up with a good color scheme for your movie at the beginning of the process can help do just that!