Director Study Gullermo Deltoro

Del toro's use of conventions in HIs movies...

Colour:

Cronos

Guillermo Del Toro uses a lot of colour in his films to portray moods and emotions in his scenes. He mainly uses red and blue in these cases, but always uses them in different ways. In Cronos directed by Del Toro, Del Toro used the blue and red colours together in one scene. Jesus Grist (the protagonist) is woken up in the night and goes down to the kitchen to get a drink. The whole kitchen is lit up with blue lighting and it is very intense. After Gris has drunk the water he looks at everything else in the fridge and he see's a platter full of bright red raw steak. Del Toro has used the red colouring of the steak to show that it is uncooked and raw looking. In the next shot you see from a side on angle Gris looking at the steak. His whole face is lit up with red lighting and the rest of the room is still blue. This shows us that he is blood thirsty and greedy for the steak. The strong lighting suggests that Gris is changing, the red standing for temptation and the blue lighting showing innocence. The red light on Gris's face when he is looking at the steak tells us that he is falling into temptation, he is becoming consumed by the hunger and blood thirst.

Hell Boy

Hell Boy Del Toro uses colour on his characters Hell Boy and Prince Nuada in contrast. Prince Nuada has pale white skin, white hair and yellow eyes. Hell Boy has red skin, black hair and yellow eyes. Prince Nuada's white skin show us that he is a pure being. He is from a time before the humans came to earth and polluted it.The white could also stand for innocence. Not the innocence of Prince Nuada, but for nature, and other pure beings. Prince Nuada is portrayed as such a pure being because of the colour of his skin and hair, but he has been corrupted by humanity and turned against them because of it. This is a reflection of how humans treat the earth these days, polluting it and destroying it with man made Structures. Hell Boy's red skin is a symbol of greed, hunger, temptation and the obvious one evil. This is a portrayal of the society we live in today. Consumed by greed, humanity is destroying the earth that nature had built up for many years before humans had arrived. By giving Hell Boy red skin Del Toro has made the humans the enemy, the ones that need to be destroyed in order to keep peace. Hell Boy strives to be a part of this society, but really it's this society that's tearing Hell Boy and Prince Nuada's World apart. Hell Boy and Prince Nuada however are linked by the colour of their eyes. They are both yellow, showing that they are both capable of good and evil.

Pans Labyrinth

In pans Labyrinth Del Toro uses stylized colour tones to show the difference between Ofelia's fantasy world and her reality. In her reality, all the colours are dark and gloomy, mainly made up of blues and dark hues. This is to show how cold and unwelcoming her reality is. It represents the way Ofelia feels towards Vidal and her Mother. She creates her fantasy world to escape this reality, and that is why her fantasy world has the contrasting colours of orange and yellow. Her fantasy world is brighter than in reality, and made up of warm and happy colours. Like in the pale mans lair, when Ofelia enters the hall is a glowing orange, showing that it is warm, and she feels at home here, even though there is pending danger Ofelia still feels safe, and happy here.

Lighting:

Hell Boy

In Hell Boy 2 directed by Guillermo Del Toro, Del Toro's use of lighting is very creative. In one scene (when the nature God is unleashed by Prince Nuada in the city) Del Toro uses, flashing lights and spot lights to create a sense of emergency. Because this scene is shot at night, there is no natural night to light up the action that is going on, so Del Toro has to use Artificial lighting to do this. Having the spot lights, and a blue-ish over light on the scene makes It look more realistic and adds urgency to the action going on. The spot lights in this scene instead of being focused on the Nature God are focused on Hell Boy, when he is climbing the building trying to shoot the monster. This shows us that even though Hell Boy is just trying to help the society he feels he needs to be accepted into, they just think of him as a monster, something that is just as frightening as the Nature God destroying the City.

Pans Labyrinth

In the scene where Ofelia first see's the bug which she thinks is a fairy, Del Toro castes a faint blue tinge on the lighting. This scene is at night time, and at first when Ofelia is still in the bedroom there is very little lighting, a lot of the images are thrown into shadow. The parts of the images you can see are very bright and are lit up by what appears to be the moon shine. When Ofelia wanders outside following the "fairy" in to the labyrinth the lighting is still a pale blue, but it is