My pilot question is, “How filmmakers use colour as a means to direct the

narrative and our emotions in films”. From this I intend to look into the visual culture and cinematography within them, and how colour is used as a practice using these elements by filmmakers to convey the narrative and our emotions.

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Therefore throughout this presentation I will discuss the different elements of colour in image manipulation, by looking at the earliest forms of colour being used as a practice in films. I will also be looking at theorist and creative influences that helped me construct and link theory to my practical piece, in which I will then evaluate.

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But to understand the link between colour and films I first researched into how

this method is applied by film makers. From this research I found Robert Plutchiks Colour Wheel that illustrates the relationship among colours with

emotions. This is a rule book that is followed by many colourists, to manipulate

and direct the emotions and narrative with the audience in films. For example,

we may associate warm and red tones with romantic movies, desaturated

colours for apocalyptic films, blue and cold tones for horrors, harassing green

for sci-fi, and statured red tones for comedies. These are all elements of colour

grading that can be seen on Plutchik wheel of emotions, which illustrates the use of colours that show when we are happy, sad or angry. A method that has been used for decades by film makers to allow us the audience to connect more to the visuals and atmosphere within the film experience.

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Some of the most modern examples that has applied this practice in media to describe the use of colour with our emotions, can be seen with Aura photography.This is a method that shows colours radiating from the human body to show the emotions of how that person is feeling. Another example can be seen with Emoji’s, which are commonly used across social media sites to show feeling through the use of pictures.

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The process of enhancing the colour of emotion through the use of image manipulation, varies between many different methods, either electronically, photo chemically or digitally. It is a practice that has evolved rapidly overtime, dating backto the era of silent films, to enhance certain scenes or the entire film. Back then filmmakers could only achieve this practice through the use of filters, toning, tinting or altering the colours frame by frame. Tinting is when colours are applied by hand to individual frames of a film, to colour in the lighter areas within that frame. In toning, it works similarly but has and opposite effect, using coloured solutions to bath entire shots. Hand colouring is a method that is very time consuming and expensive, as each scene alters specific colours frame by frame. An example of this can be seen in the short film of Annabelle’s Serpentine Dance (1895) which is an early representation of this method being applied and used to illustrate each emotion performed through the use of different colours.

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Digital grading is one of the most modern methods used today by filmmakers to colourise images. It is a technique that is used within editing software, that can apply or make drastic changes to footage, turning day into night or using subtle colour in areas that need lifted to make it clearer to the audience. O Brother, Where art thou was one of the first film to be entirely colour graded using this practice. In doing so it added a yellowish warm colour tone to the film, to help make the audience and the film feel like it was in the dirty thirty’s. The use of colour grading is and effective tool in the film industry, it helps enhance the narrative and portray how we feel through the use of colours.

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Malkiewicz and Mullen state, “Colours can draw attention and should be used carefully to direct the eye to different parts of the frame.” By manipulating the controllable elements within Cinematography, such as, image quality, colours, lighting and composition, they are able to evoke the atmosphere, the narrative and visuals to steer its audience to different parts of the frame using these methods.

The film Matrix is a good example that shows the use of colour being used as a means to convey the narrative, by using a green tint to help illustrate the opposing realities. Showing the audience that the character is in the Matrix. Whereas when the character is in the real world a tinted blue shade is used as a means to help in separating one world from the other, as a means to not confuse the audience.

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Theorist Josef Albers quotes, “In order to use colour effectively it is necessary to recognize that colour deceives continually.” The use of the colour red appearing symbolically in the film Sixth Sense, is used as a means to symbolise the connection with the world of the dead. Elements the director used as a core factor of design and visual storytelling, to convey the narrative and to connote emotional moments and situations using the colour red within the film. By using this technique throughout, as a means to symbolise to the audience that the character Dr.Malcolm, played by Bruce willies was in fact dead, but the audience however was led to believe that the character was alive.

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With the research I gathered I focused on using and intentional colour palette to distinguish different scenes throughout the video clip, like in the film Matrix. I also used the colour red as a means to signal emotional moments and situations symbolically as a core factor to telling the narrative visually to the viewer, as the director did with Sixth Sense.

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As to conclude, I felt that my researched demonstrated in my practical piece of how important the use of colour can be. As Albers quoted, “In order to use colour

effectively it is necessary to recognize that colour deceives continually.”

Looking back at the film sixth sense, it shows us how deceiving colour can be to the audience, using the colour red symbolically as a core factor to telling the narrative and conveying the emotions visually to the viewer from a different perspective. Showing us how important all these elements can be within films.

Using all these elements of research within my project I was happy with the outcome,showing a narrated sequence using the desired colour palette to show one world from the other and the colour red to symbolise loss to the audience. If I had more time to work on this project, I would have used better software to polish the practical piece out more. I also might have taken a different route and designed the project into a hypertext fiction as a means to elaborate on my research better.

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