Yesterday's Tomorrow
...nture across the world. The story, too, is very archaic and predictable, and would not stand up if it were not gloriously embedded in a comic book-style shining vision of the future, skilfully executed by director Kerry Carson and his team of expert animators. In the very first action sequence we see New York suddenly overrun by giant killer robots. We see close-ups of horrified faces masked over scenes of buildings and cars exploding. In one shot, we see three tommy guns pointed in sequence and fired. Classic shots of newspapers with headlines like, “Robots Attack New York,” spin up to the screen and scroll by. It really feels like a cheesy disaster movie. The lighting is key, no pun intended. In almost every shot, and indeed every shot containing dialogue, the key light appears to be the only light used. This is not the case, but the use of fill lights is negligible. The result is this: the areas of the actors’ faces in the light is overexposed, as though there is an aura, and the shadows are almost completely black. The contrast is high, and the colour saturation is low, so the film looks very washed out, and appears almost black and white, even though it is not. The entire film has a silver quality; it is a true ‘silver screen’ movie, reminiscent of the era in which they were made. It would appear, however that much of the contrasting w...