Fears of the Dark: Mood, Tone and Atmosphere

Fears of The Dark is an animated french anthology film consisting of various collaborations with animators from all over the world exploring the concept of fear in different cultures and to different people. As with all anthology films, the film consists of numerous short films, each one different in it's approach, but consistent with a common theme of everyday fears. From traditional pencil animation, to clean digital lines, the film showcases numerous different styles of animation, giving each short film a different and distinctive mood and tone.

The opening prologue depicts a gloomy victorian landscape beautifully rendered in black and white pencils, giving the scene a rough texture and unwelcoming atmosphere before minutes later we are thrust into a story of body horror rendered in crispy clean and almost sterile 3D black and white animation. The constant shifting in style lends an air of unpredictability to the film which the filmmakers use to convey a constant sense of dread throughout the duration. There is barely any colour in the film, with the art style in each short film focussing more on mood and atmosphere through various styles of gloomy black and white animation, which works in instilling a dark and fearful tone.

As somebody whose work up until this point has often strayed away from using much colour, Fears of The Dark shows how many different styles can be adopted with this approach. Tone, texture and mood can all be conveyed without the need for colour and lend work a sense of dread and fear which can be effective in manipulating an audience's fears. Personally I really like the opening segment with it's rough textures and expressive pencil strokes as I feel the looseness lends to the unpredictability and gives the animation a sense of flow absent from many of the other segments in the film, not to say that they were not effective. The clean, defined linework I feel lends a sense of unease to the body horror particularly, as it seems at odds with the subject matter. Horror is in the uncanny and is something you can't always put your finger on and as someone with more than a passing interest in the genre Fears of The Dark provided me with a lot of inspiration.