Color and Film
August 8th, 2006
I spent a part of today reflecting on part of my review of last night’s film, The Illusionist. When Neil Burton (the director) was discussing the process he used to create the dark, period “dreamlike” emotion associated with the film, he hit upon what I feel was the most important part of the film’s atmosphere and emotion.
Last year when at the NCN convention (an international convention for caricature artists) in Las Vegas, one of the speakers discussed how he did studies on the master oil painters of the past 400 years. He spoke about how they were masters of light, color and how they affect each other. Well, the same holds true in film today.
So what would you suppose I did? I went back and watched several of my past works. Turns out that most of the work I felt was my most powerful used a strong color theme. These colors evoked certain colors. Blue, pink, green. They all had certain ‘feels.’
In fact, one commercial I just finished had two primary colors: red and white. This commercial was a strong, direct piece due to this. It was one car (red) against a white backdrop. The final shot included the car in front of a building (again, white on the white backdrop). This put most of the focus on the car and the message of the commercial. I can’t do it now, but I’ll post the commercial in the near future, after the client approves it and it airs.
If you’re going to be creating a video in the future, start thinking about the emotion you wish to evoke and what colors you feel best convey those emotions. Just like the browns and subtle colors in The Illusionist evoked a haunting, turn of the century era, we must do the same.
