Notes about colour

Although, in terms of the narrative, the woods scene immediately follows the sequence with Gary walking through the streets, we chose to use different-coloured clothes for the two scenes:

The contrast between the orange t-shirt Gary is wearing in the city scene and the pale blue shirt in the woods scene reflects the contrast in mood between the scenes.

While orange is typically interpreted as emodying energy, and often aggression, light blue generally is seen as having calming connotations.

As Patti Bellatoni writes in If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die:

Year after year, our color investigations show that in a blue environment, people become passive and introspective. [pg. 82]

This is in keeping with the narrative of our film - Gary wants to be passive, but (as in the street scene in which he's wearing orange) is forced to be constantly on-edge by his paranoia. In terms of introspectivity, Gary has entered a mental retreat, as he struggles to find his inner peace.

Following the theoretical analysis further:

In the presence of a paler, cooler blue, they wanted to be quiet and still. [pg. 83]

Similarly, in our film, Gary seeks peace and quiet in this mental retreat, contrasting with the busy, loud and obnoxious atmosphere of the city.

The contrast between the blue of his shirt and the orange-brown of his trousers is also a natural contrast, as we can see by looking at a colour wheel - blue and orange are naturally in opposition, and this contrast is particularly common at the moment for colour grading - shadows are typically pushed towards the blue-green end of the spectrum, while the mid-range is typically pulled more towards skin tone, as we can see in typical modern Hollywood cinema, such as the Transformers films: