In The Matrix, you could tell which "world" you're in by the general grade of color. When in the Matrix, everything had a greenish overtone, and when in the "real world" it was more blue. I really liked that use of color to be a part of the story telling process.
That's definitely the part of the movie i remember most, 16 years later: that feeling of flatness in the matrix that they emphasized by the green and black. You'll also notice, if you go back and watch it, that everything in the matrix is angular and well defined where as in the Nebuchadnezzar everything is curved and messy with pipes and wires leading to nowhere in every shot.
Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000) made heavy use of this, too, to distinguish different locales and parts of the story. The Mexico/Benicio Del Toro partions were heavy on gold/orange, burnt, sepia, while the Washington/Michael Douglas parts were blue, cool.
This. Their use of color grading is one of the things that made The Matrix have a very unique feel. The sound design is also worth paying attention to.
I also find that the lack of money forced the grittiness that was lacking in the second and third movies, and in a lot of high budget movies that attempt "edginess" like that.
In my opinion the pill scene [1] has everything that made The Matrix unique. The color, lightning, costumes, ambience (rain and thunder outside), surgical use of soundtrack and the dialogue itself. All the elements successfully contribute to give it that comicbook/cyberpunk feel.
In contrast, the sequels don't have such simple but striking scenes like that.
The 1984 version of 1984 had an intentional "washed out" appearance to reflect the grimness of the world it was showing - apparently done by a bleach bypass done to each print:
Interesting. Being partially colour blind I would have thought that the original was much greener, while the re-release is a lot bluer and bumped up the brightness contrast.
For example, most of the agent scenes in that comparison the left frame appears "greener" (but also more washed out in terms of brightness contrast) than the right.
I'm in the same boat: it's weird seeing the comments describing the blu-ray as "green-ray" and that things are SO GREEN when I literally can't see it. For those of you with decent color sight, was the original... more orange?
There was a bit of a green hue in places in the original, but not as pronounced as in the "green-ray" version.
When I first saw the blu-ray version I had to check my TV colour settings to make sure no-one had been fiddling with them (colour saturation, temp etc). It was quite jarring on the eyes, and that was even after three or four years of not having watched The Matrix. As a non colour blind viewer my reaction (after checking the TV settings etc) was, "yeesh".
The original looks more green-orange and flat. The blu-ray looks more green-blue and contrasted. The original feels 'warm' and the blu-ray feels 'cool.'
Ah, that explains it. I'm technically green deficient. Because of how colour vision works, green perception partially overlaps with red perception[0], so I tend to think of green as more of an "earth tone" (essentially brown).
Colloquially people with normal vision tend to say "green" when they refer to teal (i.e. green-blue or just generally green with some blue in it). Because I don't actually perceive the green part of the hue, the blue is much stronger for me.
I absolutely agree with the "warm" vs "cool" thing, though.
> Because I don't actually perceive the green part of the hue, the blue is much stronger for me.
Interesting. Yes that's the opposite the effect it has in me. Teal is a washed-out blue...
The original/DVD release of the Matrix did have a visually distinctive green tint in the scenes taking place inside the Matrix. But it felt soft, warm, and flat. It was also subdued in some scenes, such as the training dojo. The scenes in the real world lacked the filter and felt harsh, cold, and rigid by comparison. It was a great artistic choice.
The new blu-ray release (and the sequels) have the entire movie feel like the harsh, cold, rigid reality, and have heightened the contrast to make it worse :(
Ugh. I can see why they wanted to move more in the green/blue direction from the very red/monotone original, but it definitely looks like they went too far. Both sides of that comparison look pretty awful at times.
They also do this in a TV series called "Charlie Jade." In the show there are three known universes and each has its own distinct color and hue. You know which one you're looking at by the color change alone. It really helps keep the universes (and by extension, the timeline and story) straight.
I remember that the book "The Neverending Story" also employed a similar scheme: Red and green ink was used to distinguish between the book's two worlds.
I've always wondered if part of the reason for the blue/green shift beyond storytelling was due to blue/green screens used heavily throughout the movie.
I would imagine it helps smooth some rough edges during the compositing phase when the overall grade matches the color key.
Another example of this is the the show Fringe, which used a tint (blue or red) to indicate information about where a scene took place. (Keeping it a little vague to not include spoilers.)
I work at Priceonomics, so maybe I can shed light on our motivations.
We make the kind of content we love and we sell products so that we can afford to make more of that content. The two products we actually sell (data crawling for companies and books for people) aren't particularly well-suited toward SEO (though our original idea, a Price Guide which we killed years ago, was).
Anyhow, we're a content site that's trying to get by without using ads. I think most of our regular readers appreciate we're trying to pay the bills by selling things instead using ads. We'd like to avoid jamming our site with advertising if that's possible.
Using a web search engine is asking for rankings based on web structure, not rankings based on product quality.
You might think it's bad to take advantage of that, but refraining from doing so doesn't likely yield a fair product quality ranking, just some different unfair rating.
Ironically, teal and orange reached its peak with tranformers. With the rise of RED cameras (which have useless colour reproduction) we've gone the opposite way, low contrast, lots of grain.
Fun fact, virtually any special effects movie that you've seen since 2000, all the film grain you see, is faked. So the people who bemoan the loss of grain with the move to digital need to reassess what they are saying:
I am the guy who did that paint shot you linked to above.
I think you might have mis-understood a part of my post. We don't replace all of the film grain. We go to great lengths to try and maintain as much of the original grain as possible. We certainly add grain to anything we add to a shot but we go to great lengths to match the grain we add to the original grain.
In the example you linked to, I did completely remove the grain from the image before I started to paint out the wire (the painting softens and blurs the grain). But I then took only the areas of the image that I changed with the painting, and but that over the original image, with the original grain on. I then only added 'fake' grain to the areas that I had painted.
The grain that we do add to the visual effects isn't usually 'fake' either. The visual effect supervisor usually takes the cameras that production was using on set and shoots grain samples on the same film stock. We then add these samples back to our VFX work so they match the original footage.
We all so have to do exactly the same with footage that comes from digital cameras but this is more 'noise' than grain. And if the footage came from a compressed source like a GoPro we have to match compression artifacts.
I'm curious about what the makes the colour reproduction useless. Based on the low contrast comment, I'm guessing it has to do with the log color space?
It's true to a point, the RED isn't the best camera at reproducing colours. But then again most of the time you're going to be filming in RAW so it doesn't really matter as much since you get a flat image in post that you can grade.
An advantage the RED cameras have say over a Alexa is that they can film in 4k,5k,6k (Alexa only shoots in 2k). So that you can get a sharper image by editing in 6k, and then exporting in 4k or 1080p.
If you look at video cams for projects that need to be finished quickly, of course your not going to choose a RED. Canon Cinema Cameras (c100, c300) have the best colour science out of everyone (Sony and Panasonic are known to have pretty average colour reproduction). The only downfall with Canon cameras is that they use crappy codes and compression so when you start pushing to extreme looks, you'll get alot of noise and loose sharpness in your footage.
I use Blackmagic cameras, which aren't know for their colours either, but they own the industry standard grading software (DaVinci), so it is quite easy to get your footage balanced before you do a grade.
One movie that seemed to play with color to a fantastic effect is Traffic - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/
I noticed when it came out that color played a subtle role in setting the mood of each scene and aspect. For instance, near the border towns and where where the "hot zone" of illegal drug traffic occurred, it was more yellow/orange tinted. Then when you head back to the suburbs and see privileged kids doing drugs in their large homes, the color was much more blue and lighting was much softer. I wish that more movies would employ tricks like this without using a "template"...
edit: looked on IMDB and it looks like 3 different films stocks were used:
To achieve a distinctive look for each different vignette in the story, Steven Soderbergh used three different film stocks (and post-production techniques), each with their own color treatment and grain for the print. The "Wakefield" story features a colder, bluer tone to match the sad, depressive emotion. The "Ayala" story is bright, shiny, and saturated in primary colors, especially red, to match the glitzy surface of Helena's life. The "Mexican" story appears grainy, rough, and hot to go with the rugged Mexican landscape and congested cities.
Side-note: Soderbergh's editing is absolutely fantastic and original too (see: The Limey, Out of Sight). Fine, fine film-maker, one of the few to be able to cross from pure art film to Hollywood blockbuster and back again through everything in between with ease. It will be interesting to see where his "retirement" takes him.
> There's no specific colour decision-making process where we sit in a room and say, 'We're only going to use complementary colours to try and move the audience in a particular direction – and only use those combinations.'
A lot of production designers would strongly disagree with this statement. The color palette of a film is very much a part of the decision-making process (pre-production as well as post-production), and it's used primarily to "move the audience" in one way or another, as per the film's theme and story elements.
It may just be that the colors within a chosen palette are often classified as either "warm" or "cool" - orange and blue being the most obvious manifestations of those classifications - so we tend to see a lot of them. Without contrast (literal and figurative), a film simply doesn't say anything. Warm and cool colors go a long way in helping the audience feel positively or negatively about certain story elements.
Right. There are also those color houses that standardize more or less the worlds palette for the next few years. It is not an accident that we all had avocado refrigerators and green minivans. It is a truly big brother industry.
Upon re-reading this quote and its source article, I believe he was probably referring to moviemaking at a more meta level; i.e., there's no decision-making process wherein all (or many) filmmakers discuss and agree upon a narrow choice of colors to use across all of their films. As the quote continues, "[e]very film has its own look."
I inferred "we" as meaning a single production team. It makes much more sense if "we" refers to filmmakers as a whole.
Funny to see Amelie there as a counter-example - it's pretty much my favourite movie, and one of the things I love about it is the autumnal quality of the light. Normally I wouldn't notice that kind of thing at all, perhaps it's the contrast with all the orange-and-blues (or maybe just the exceptional loveliness of the film itself)
On the director's commentary, at 21:50, he talks about pushing the digital grading and that "sometimes it's a little bit too much." (But obviously he didn't tone it back!)
The teal-and-orange plague followed from DI[0]. Amélie predates the widespread use of DI, and DI's later compromission by the TaO plague. So it probably isn't the contrast, most of the movies from the time (and before it) would have similar non-TaO palettes (unless they were specifically going for it, as in Blade Runner)
It was DI'd, but it was created at the beginnings of DI. What I tried to express is that the excesses of a new format/technique/… don't instantly follow its introduction, there's a lag until a herd decides that's something to do. Same as the loudness wars: the Red Book was published in 1982 but excessive compressions started in earnest in the early-to-mid 90s blossoming into low single-digit dBFS by the end of the 90s-early 00s.
Amelie uses a lot of red and green. Jean-Pierre Jeunet made "City of Lost Children" which also has a strong red green palette. He also directed "Delicatessen" that used a chemical process to give the film a gold glow.
One of the most interesting exceptions I've seen on this convention was the 2011 movie Limitless(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219289/). They still used the orange-blue complement, but switched saturation between them, sometimes every scene. It was used as an indicator of how the protagonist views the world: bright and with an orange saturation for when he is on NZT, dull and blue when he isn't. I thought it was a great way of deconstructing this particular trope.
To join in, I too loved the use of color in Limitless. I personally associate vibrant autumnal colors with clarity, not sharp blues, so when the characters go on NZT, it feels fuller, not just sharper. It looks like something a person would actually want, as opposed to losing one's humanity in a soul-crushing washed-out green or blue usually seen in sci-fi.
Recently when watching stuff on Netflix I found myself amazed at how ridiculously orange and teal movies were getting. Even the pilot episode of House was ridiculously Orange'n'Teal.
Then I twigged it was because I was running F.Lux.
One thing that isn't mentioned is that realism doesn't seem "cinematic." It's just like people not liking high frame rate because of the "soap opera effect," or even some people's preference for black and white. Visible grain, non-subtle bokeh effects and lens flare, etc are other things that aren't realistic per se, but for some reason they make it seem less "cheap" and bring more emotional weight than a more perfectly realistic image.
I think these sorts of forced palettes do the same thing. Maybe a different color combination will become trendy at some point, but for now, orange/blue is a pretty safe bet that it will achieve the emotional effect, without it just looking weird.
I was just about to post this link as well. Glad someone else had the same thought. Cracked, while an absurd humor site on the surface, is one of the most reliable resources of new-perspective intellectual stimulation on the web, IMO.
A fun read, but I'm not convinced the reason for all the orange and blue is rooted in trendiness, as the article makes it seem. It suggests that this color combination "might not be naturalistic", but in my experience with light, color, and art, that statement couldn't be further from the truth.
Look around, in light, orange and blue hues dominante our world. Sunlight, moonlight, street lights, sky, incandescents, the glow of lcds screens, etc - blue and orange everywhere. If you take notice, you will realize this is true.
As the article points out, in art, when wanting to create vibrancy and visual interest, one of the best tools in our arsenal is the use of complementary colors.
No other compliments are even close to occurring as frequently in the lighting of our natural world. This, I believe, is the true reason for its abundant use in cinema.
Of all the compliments, orange and blue is just the most natural.
While working at a tv distribution company about 8 years ago, I used to design these promotional one-pagers for various shows. After a while I noticed all of my designs were mostly blue and orange (or at least the main components of the design were). Then I started consciously trying to use other colour arrangements but orange-blue just always sort of looked best. I celebrated any time i managed to get a good looking poster/one-pager without relying on the orange-blue complementary contrast.
I wonder if women might have an advantage here due to many men being red-green colour blind to some extent.
One argument in favor of using orange-blue as opposed to other contrasting colors, is that humans associate blue with darkness and depth. Our eyes and mind, too, perceive blue at a lower resolution as other colors (We perceive green with the greatest fidelity).
Colorizing the screen in orange and blue, then, imposes a hierarchy on the objects in the screen. Whereever the orange-blue scheme is used, the blue depicts the background and the orange depicts the action.
This adds to the illusion of depth, which is extremely important especially for Hollywood action films, as they need to feel big and grand amid fast-paced movement and short takes. Where objects flash across the screen in split seconds, the orange-blue contrast can provide a natural vocabulary to re-orient the viewer as to what is happening in the 3D space depicted by the 2D screen.
I would guess that the blue-green colorscheme is overrepresented in action films and especially in action sequences, and underrepresented in say, comedy and romance films.
Danny Boyle's Sunshine [0] also made good use of colour - the interior of the ship had no reference to red, orange or yellow to make the appearance of the sun more striking.
An interesting persuasive technique here: When they linked to "some filmmakers" not using this scheme my guess before clicking was it would be to a scene in The Grand Budapest Hotel. I've never thought about color in film before so this didn't feel like it should be an easy guess unless the article is correct about how pervasive orange/blue is, so when it loaded and it was correct it added a lot of emotional force to the argument. Though I suspect it is actually a pretty easy guess: they didn't choose a random film, they chose an extreme, recent, popular counterexample to their argument. I'd bet my mind was already thinking about that movie in the background while trying to come up with counterexamples, and they successfully turned this into enforcing their argument rather than the opposite.
Color theory is like a fractal. The closer you get the more detail there is. The Color Correction Handbook: Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema by Alexis Van Hurkman is a great book if you really want to geek out or are considering working in DI. Two particular topics come to mind. One is memory colors which describe the ideal colors people within a cultural group tend to think of when remembering common elements such as grass (greener) or brick (redder). The other is cultural preferences regarding saturation. Seems UK audiences like things a bit less saturated which I now understand is why all my British photography magazines "look washed out". In a the 90's there was a craze for bleach bypass and other alternative film processes. I'm pretty sure the 3 Kings dvd says not to adjust your tv.
Colours here really are washed out. A long time ago I was in Australia. My then gf bought a bedspread by an artist called Ken Done - lots of bright primary colours.
It looked great in Sydney.
In UK light - even in sunlight - most of the colour punch disappeared. It actually looked kind of grey and old. Disappointment...
So if supersaturate movie colours, they look surreal here.
But California really is teal and orange. The light is warm and intense, and LA gets a lot of clear blue sky. So I wonder if directors like TnO because it's a variation on natural Hollywood light.
Kubrick was always masterful with colour, and while he is probably best known for his fascination with red [1], it's actually the orange/blue contrast in "Eyes Wide Shut" that is most memorable for me.
Drive has some great usage of this type of cinematography if I recall correctly. I think the author may have ruined watching movies for me now though. :/
Overdone computer-enabled post-production colour manipulation is one of the (many) reasons I find it hard to watch a lot of film and television drama productions of this century.
I much prefer the result when the manipulation of colour is achieved through lighting on the set or location.
Two examples of films I think have fantastic use of colour in the lighting are Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Desperately Seeking Susan.
After I read that post it took something away from a lot of films for me, since it was hard to not notice. In this context, ignorance is bliss I say! I wish I could go back to not noticing.
I'm not totally opposed to the idea since there's an artistic goal behind it. Kinda like Instagram filters, which I admittedly used to oppose, but for Instagram's purpose, which isn't vying for National Geographic awards, they work well.
I see it as just another way of understanding a tool in a filmmakers box better. You can gain a deeper appreciation for a film by understanding how and why an element, be it sound, color, framing, or anything else, was chosen by the director and film crew.
There's a really good video that illustrates & describes this effect. It's targeted towards users of the color grading tools, but it's an interesting watch nonetheless.
Full Metal Jacket had it's moments of blue and orange, but I'd classify most scenes in the film as 'green'. Then again, Kubrick was known to be obsessive in regards to attention to detail, especially when it came to lighting and colour reproduction.
This is all a little bizarre, as these are my two favourite colours, especially in combination. As a teenager getting to paint my walls my own colours for the first time, I chose orange walls with blue trim. I had not idea it was so prevalent in movie-making!
When I shoot portraits of people with a flash I will sometimes use an orange gel to give people's skin a more human look. White flash tends to take that out of the final picture but the orange gel makes skin look more natural.
gold and blue, due to the price of the paint components, were hallmark of an expensive art painting through the history until very recently. Thus using those colors allows to exploit that association and puts your movie at perceived level of the old masterpieces.
That also correlates nicely with the fact that cheap or produced in other countries inferior color film (like in the USSR for example) didn't have good blue, was reddish-greenish instead, and thus this gold/blue of today also suggests associations with better quality.
Maybe somewhat ironically, this assumed association with quality without an associated real correlation with quality leads to crap trying to pass itself off as amazing stuff by using such techniques. This then leads to an association with crap rather than the quality they intended....
I wouldn't have thought that the demographic that enjoys Transformers would have much overlap with the demographic that's aware of more than one or two paintings of the old masters.
Probably a limitation of the color film stock at the time. Technicolor used a beam splitter and three strips of black-and-white film. It made super-vivid colors but was expensive. Single-strip color film rose to the top in the 50s and 60s with worse colors, but much cheaper and easier to shoot.
The Adventures of Robin Hood, the Errol Flynn movie from 1938, is an excellent example of three-strip Technicolor, and on blu-ray some scenes look like they were shot last week, not 80 years ago.
