THE STORY 

COLOURS follows best friends Clay and Dalia leading up to the highly anticipated party of the summer. The two depend on their routines and friendship to balance out their dysfunctional home life. Dalia's sense of self is shaken when she witnesses her mother bleaching her skin. Now, she notices the microaggressions of colorism all around her, even in Clay. She begins to question everything she once believed in, including herself while Clay's desperate searching for independence consumes. 

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The audience is immediately introduced to the toxic environment of our characters and their relationship with that environment. We then meet Dalia shortly when she offers Clay the keys to her car and they drive away. Dalia allowing Clay to sit in the driver's seat of her car is a metaphor for her giving others the power to control her. We settle into the meat of the story as the two introduce us to other characters who challenge their identity. 

There's RJ Clay's more confident and charismatic friend, who has his own answerss for independence and  Clay a tempting solution to do the same in order to establish his independence. 

Anthony is Dalia’s extremely possessive and dangerous boyfriend, you can see it in his demeanor. He wants Dalia all to himself and is willing to stop ANYONE who threatens that. 

Every character in this story plays a unique and important part in Clay and Dalia's development. The two think they know everything about each other, but there are some things even they can’t bring themselves to share. Secrets and lies are brought to the surface, making them question each other and themselves.  

A Note From The Director: Capturing The Horror We Normalize

COLOURS was inspired by my trip back home to Ghana in 2018 where I witnessed a multitude of billboards and commercials advertising skin-lightening creams and oils. “There is a generation of people, my generation who’ve begun bleaching. Maybe as a way to climb the social and economic ladder or maybe something else, I don't know but now it's become as normal as eating” said an aunt of mine after intense inquiries. This, in addition to the workshops I lead about identity with the court involved youth I work and ongoing discussions about how our environment influences our development, birthed the narrative of COLOURS. 

We all have trauma we have to live with. At some point in our lives many of us have rationalized that trauma to be a normal part of life, a result of our environment. I aim to tell a story of how we as a society begin to normalize trauma, the ripple effects of it and how far it reaches into the lives of our loved ones. We want to explore not just the action but how one person's pain affects us all, even in the slightest.  

I became obsessed with understanding how we rationalize our experiences. I began to re-assess factors in my own life and question the things I’ve long accepted to be “normal”. At this moment I knew this was a story worth exploring, “the timeline of trauma” from inception - the moment we first experience the event, to its effects on us in adulthood. I wanted to craft a narrative that gave a glimpse into the world we come from, both as a First Generation America and as Youth growing up in The Bronx. 

Together with our Cinematographer Harrison Kraft, we began to conceptualize a visual style that added a hint of suspense to emphasize the unease we all feel at first encounter with anything traumatizing. 

MOOD BOARDS

We've compiled reference photos from all over to help us visualize every scene before shooting. 

USE OF FUNDS:

Prodution & Production Design

Cast & Crew

Food & Water

Editing

Color grading and correction

Post Production 

Music Composition 

City Permits & Location Fees

Sound effects and Sound mix

Marketing and Film Festival expenses

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