Intro to Color

 Color

Using color in film is something that I have been looking into because of my film approach, which involves establishing the tone. I think that color can be used to accomplish a certain aesthetic, but in more intricate pieces, it is used as a contributing factor to tone. Upon doing research (This website helped break down all aspects of color) I found that color is composed of three main parts: hue, saturation and brightness. 

Hue:

- actual color itself

-separated into primary (red, blue, yellow) & secondary (green, orange, purple) made by mixing primary & on the wheel tertiary colors (mixing primary and secondary, red-orange)

Saturation:

- intensity of color (amount of grey mixed into color)

Brightness/ Value: 

- darkness/lightness of color

I hope you enjoy these extravagant colors as much as I enjoyed picking them 😉 One must pick a color palette to include in their film that offers balance, some include the analogous color palette or the complementary color palette which is opposite colors on the wheel which represent conflict. In addition, there are also certain colors that stand alone to showcase something important, for example the discordant color that is the using of a color against a white or neutral background that allows an object to jump out, catch attention.

Analyze/ Review:

After learning about all these aspects of color, I went on Youtube to see the importance of color in some films that are visually inspiring my film opening, like Joker. I watched a video where the DP of Joker explained the use of color on the film. I noticed the redundancy of the orange and blue tones, which related back to the complementary color palette I learned about. In the video, it also said to shoot at dusk to get this lighting and color more precisely, which I will keep in mind for shooting the NYC montage (I am going to NYC during spring break!) I think using contrasting colors is a cool idea that I want to try to play around with, but to do this I need to know how to color grade after color correcting. So, for my future research, I will go into video tutorials on how to color grade on Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as try to use random footage to play around.

 here is the video:

 

More Joker cinematography: