Would you be able to sleep in a room painted bright red? Might be hard, right? "I'm on no sleep.
No sleep! " You don`t know what it's like in their. Colors elicit emotions, and have a psychological effect on people.
So unless you're shooting in black and white, in which case definitely review our video on tone. This is the video for you. Because today we're going to show you how colors theory in film can be used to create mood.
But you can go beyond placing a blue tint over an entire sequence. You can determine specifically what type of blue you want. There are three factors in determining color.
They are Hue. . .
which is the color itself. Saturation: the intensity of the color. And brightness: how light or dark the color is.
With just Hue saturation and brightness, HSB for short, you can create a complex color scheme, rather simply. And go from being just another director, to being a true visual artist. First up, Hue.
Some movies choose an affinity of Hue. Utilizing a monochromatic color scheme. Those are just fancy ways of saying that a movie is mostly one color.
Or neighboring colors on a color wheel, also known as analogous colors. "The Matrix" is a classic example of a movie that mostly uses one color. That color - green.
Why? The movie takes place inside of a digital Matrix and we associate green with code. Plus the green and the Matrix has a certain sickly quality to it, reflecting the overall state of affairs in that world.
-Welcome to the desert of the real. -Next up is the S in HSB - saturation. This movie used a post-production process called bleach bypass which has a deeply desaturating affect.
The color is drained out of these images. It gives the world of the movie a cold, rude, gritty sort of look. It also becomes reminiscent of the faded photographs.
The black-and-white newsreels of the period itself. It takes us back in time. The final of the three is brightness.
Early in the series, we covered brightness in terms of a film's overall tone, but brightness can be used to affect individual colors as well. Sometimes a movie elects to use entirely bright colors. Particularly movies from the Technicolor era.
Back then, bright vivid colors were reason to see the movies alone. On the other hand, during darker scenes like this, you can almost forget that this movie was shot in color. Now, let's see what it's like when one movie does both.
-When the destiny of a great fortune is at stake, men's greed spreads like a poison in the bloodstream. It's using all darker colors. Contrast that with this scene where all the colors are bright.
In both instances, every element you see was chosen for its darker color, or lighter color to create a contrast within the film. -Wow. -So by utilizing Hue, saturation and brightness, you can precisely identify the right colors to create certain feelings in your audience.
Bright images often seem lively and exciting. Darker images often seem dramatic, and on it goes. But rules were made to be broken.
-I don't make the rules. -Okay, I'll make it as easy for you as I can. -You get to decide what the colors mean.
It's your movie. It's your world. And so, make it your color palette.
How do you make a violent red, the color of blood, feel like something else? In "Her", Spike Jonze uses red to connote love. He does it by associating the color with the lead - Theodore.
As he searches for love and ultimately finds it in his. . .
. operating system. -Hello.
I'm here. -Oh. -Black is for bad guys, like Darth Vader, right?
Well, sure, until it's for Batman. -I'm Batman. -You get to make your own rules.
Look at how Wes Anderson uses saturated colors to make otherwise mundane scenes about a family pop, almost like a comic book. While actual comic book films ground there high-concept plots in gritty, realistic tones. With the wealth of options post-production now provides, it's easier than ever to control the color palette.
Of course color grading can be an expensive, lengthy process, and it rarely can make up for project that lacked a thoughtful color design strategy in pre-production. Want to dive deeper? Check the link to grab our free film color theory ebook for more examples of color schemes.
And see, how some of your favorite films designed their color palettes to elicit powerful moods. See you in the next video.
