Colour is one of the most important tools for a DOP and not merely because you can do beautiful things with it. For more fundamentally is its power as a communications tool. Colour affects the viewer in the same way that music or dance does: it reaches people at a gut emotional level. For this reason, it can be a powerful tool in creating visual subtext.
There are three aspects of colour that we must understand as cinematographers:
- Basic colour theory
- Controlling colour in the camera and in lighting
- Visual story telling
To understand how colour can be used as an intrinsic filming tool it is good to examine films where colour has been used for more than just it's beauty. Take for instance, the 1999 film, “The Matrix” – directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski.
There is a subtle use of colour as a visual cue for the location. When Neo and Morpheous talk inside the Matrix – there’s a sickly green cast to everything – reminiscent of the old green monochrome computer monitors. When out of the Matrix, the colours are more natural.
The colour here works in more than one way:
1) As a basic device to make sure the audience isn’t confused. In a movie where some scenes cut back and forth dozens of times between characters inside the Matrix and characters in the “real world,” there absolutely needs to be an understood signal to clearly place the audience.
2) The colour palette works on an emotional level. By setting up Neo’s normal existence as a sickly green, we understand the freshness that the real world offers.
From the same year we can compare that to this opening scene from Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty”:
When American Beauty is critiqued, the colour red and its symbolism is always brought up. The way Ball uses it, it refers to a concept: the life force, which, by nature, tries to defy the suppressiveness of suburban life. That's why, the first time we meet Annette Bening, she's cutting red roses. She's cutting the life force. For Kevin Spacey, the life force which suburbia can't repress is sex. And so, in his fantasies, Mena Suvari, his object of lust, floats on a bed of red rose petals, or soaks in a tub covered in roses. In their final, near-sexual encounter, a vase of red roses is evident.
However, something to notice is that red isn't the only colour shown during the film. In fact Red, White and Blue are all extremely prominent and clever composed throughout.
These are the colours of the American flag and are seen prominently around the Burnham home. They symbolise that the Burnham family are living the "American Dream'.
Compare those bold primary colour scheme to the earthy tones of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 film Amelie.
Jeunet uses a rich warm palette of Greens, yellows and reds – a signature colour palette of his that gives his films a sort of grotesque yet magical warmth to them. Blue is used sparingly, and when it is it’s a bold contrast to the established earthy tones.
These three films, coming out just a few years apart, represent just a small part of of the creative use of colour filmmakers employed coming out of the 1990s and into the new millennium.
Colour Palettes:
Below is a visual digital scrapbook of colour palettes from famous films that i can use as reference when searching for visual style and colour of my own to create an identity for the film i will be working on.
The importance of the colour palette:
To pick out a very common example of a director who has built up his own "style" when it comes to colour palettes it's good to examine Wes Anderson. Just by watching a single frame of ‘The Great Budapest Hotel’ you can tell that it’s a Wes Anderson movie. This is because of its symmetrical compositions, saturated colour pallet and typically 70’s styling. "Wes Anderson's colour palettes are integral to his cinematic ‘world-building’. His eye for art direction and fantastic attention to detail creates the appropriate space and tone for his characters to exist in – and for the viewer to lose themselves in. They ultimately become their own visual language, the way character themes are elaborated in cinematic scores, allowing an immersive visual experience whether the sound is on or not." Every film has its own way of telling its story. The colour palette helps the director to enhance the emotional aspect of the film and helps viewers to respond to it. The role of a colour palette starts from the visual interpretation of the script that makes the film look real to taking on a subtle character of its own. The mood or the feeling created by the colour palette stays with the viewer even after the film has ended. Choosing the colour palette for the film begins from the preproduction stage with the production designer, director and the art department and then the minds of cinematographer and the colourist takes place. These minds decide on how the set are going to be, the costume design, lights, how the film will read its colours, the effect and overall feeling of the film.
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