a little bit of Torchwood

So I checked out Torchwood recommended by winterspel . I’m glad I did – because I liked it very much. It felt a little like modern day Jules Verne – set in Cardiff.

( a little cut for short, spoilery talk about episode one - which is as far as I've watched. Yet! )

The series looks, at least to me, very British. Not only in the locations and such, but in its use of so much colour. It has struck me that a lot of American series, sci-fi like Battlestar Galactica, Shakespearean-Western like Deadwood or World War II like Band of Brothers saturate their colours, or hold their colour scheme to a chosen primary colour (BSG has blue and gray, Deadwood has dirt/sepia, Band of Brothers has green/grey).

British series I have seen recently (that would be the last year or so), like Bleak House, Foyle’s war, North and South and now Torchwood, seem in stead to intensify the colours. In Torchwood's case the yellow is very yellow, the blue strongly blue – and they place these colours in contrast to each other.
The obvious disclaimer to this is “Veronica Mars”, which at least in season one, had a stunning use of colour.

If I’m completely off here – please let me know. For the saturated colours are by no means a bad thing – I just find it interesting to analyse what grips series use to create a mood and a sense of coherency. In regards to that I was wondering if there were different traditions with colour, lighting etc in British and American series. (A Norwegian series is for instance always very easy to pinpoint – it’s the dark, smudgy looking one that has been made with a hand held camera and some old, borrowed equipment. ;) )

a little bit of Torchwood

So I checked out Torchwood recommended by winterspel . I’m glad I did – because I liked it very much. It felt a little like modern day Jules Verne – set in Cardiff.

( a little cut for short, spoilery talk about episode one - which is as far as I've watched. Yet! )

The series looks, at least to me, very British. Not only in the locations and such, but in its use of so much colour. It has struck me that a lot of American series, sci-fi like Battlestar Galactica, Shakespearean-Western like Deadwood or World War II like Band of Brothers saturate their colours, or hold their colour scheme to a chosen primary colour (BSG has blue and gray, Deadwood has dirt/sepia, Band of Brothers has green/grey).

British series I have seen recently (that would be the last year or so), like Bleak House, Foyle’s war, North and South and now Torchwood, seem in stead to intensify the colours. In Torchwood's case the yellow is very yellow, the blue strongly blue – and they place these colours in contrast to each other.
The obvious disclaimer to this is “Veronica Mars”, which at least in season one, had a stunning use of colour.

If I’m completely off here – please let me know. For the saturated colours are by no means a bad thing – I just find it interesting to analyse what grips series use to create a mood and a sense of coherency. In regards to that I was wondering if there were different traditions with colour, lighting etc in British and American series. (A Norwegian series is for instance always very easy to pinpoint – it’s the dark, smudgy looking one that has been made with a hand held camera and some old, borrowed equipment. ;) )