1. The Colour Palette of Film
Practical uses of colour in film
( material extracted from Jacqueline B. Frosts’ book
Cinematography for Directors)
2. Colour Aesthetics
• Colour Aesthetics may be approached from
these three directions.
• Impression (visually)
• Expression (emotionally)
• Construction (Symbolically)
3. • The Colour Palette is a subtle way to visually
enhance the emotional aspect of a film and
guide the viewer to respond to it viscerally.
• Understanding the basic components of
colour and how the audience responds to
these colours is essential in communicating
with a specific palette.
4. • The colour palette is the actual visual
character of the film being created for the
screen.
• Some films are grainy, de-saturated, others are
slick, saturated palette, or monochromatic,
while others have a brown dusty palette.
5. • The cinematographer’s job is to interpret the
screenplay in a visual form and guide the
viewer’s emotions through colour, light,
composition and movement.
• It is important that both the director and
cinematographer understand the thematic
elements of the story and how to enhance it
through colour and light.
6. • The colour palette begins a direct visual
interpretation of the script that makes it a
reality on film, where it then takes on a subtle
character of its own.
• The colour palette can convey a mood or
feeling that stays with the viewer after the
film has ended.
7. Elements of the Colour Palette
• cinematography, which includes
• film stock, filters, gels, and lights that are
either tungsten or daylight balanced along
with mixing of colour temperature and
exposure to achieve a specific look.
8. • The production designer creates the
background and sets.
• The wardrobe person selects the costumes.
• The colours selected should have an aesthetic
or thematic basis that is underscoring the
mood or theme of the story or the emotional
state of a character.
9. Hours
• The film the Hours, by Stephen Daldry and
photographed by Seamus McGarvey BSC.
• Contains three separate color palettes used to
delineate the three main characters and their
separate story lines, which take place in
different time periods.
10. Hours
• Virgina Woolf played by Nicole Kidman set in
England between 1923 and 1941.
• “Tiffen Antique suede filter in combination with
classic soft, to effect the prewar setting. The Antique
suede has a very slight sepia quality. It tends to pull
back the colours and put a nicotine gauze over
everything.’
• Seamus McGarvey
12. Julianne Moore
• Julianne Moore’s character was given a more
yellow hue for her life that takes place in the
1950s in Los Angeles.
• “I wanted to give this section a pastel feel without
any strong black, almost as if it were hand-tinted or
aged.”
• Seamus McGarvey
14. Meryl Streep
• The present day story of Meryl Streep takes
place in New York city in the winter and has
been given the cold blue hue of winter as she
cares for her dying friend.
• “For me, this section of the film acts as an emotional
and visual hinge. Because it’s contemporary it
requires a sense of veracity.”
• Seamus McGarvey
16. Seamus McGarvey
• “The three colours intertwine perfectly to
separate the storyline while subtly providing
the emotional states of the characters’ lives
and their environments.”
• Seamus McGarvey, American Cinmatographer, January 2003,
27
17. Janusz Kaminski
• Shot Munich for Steven Spielberg, he defined
each location with a specific colour and
texture to help orient the viewer.
• Each city had a different colour.
• Beirut was blue-green,
• Rome was slightly warmer,
• Paris was less saturated, and
• New York was grainy.
20. Traffic – Steven Soderberg
(Using colour to represent different story lines in a film)
21. Traffic
• In Traffic Steven Soderberg uses a common
complementary colour scheme, blue/orange.
• Mexico is orange and Ohio is blue.
• Foregrounds are blue and backgrounds are
orange.
• Front light is blue and backlight is orange.
