Major Pre-Production: Cinematography Style - Colours

   The use of colour can affect the mood conveyed to the audience. Some film critics have mentioned that you can tell what genre a film is based on the colours used in the film, trailers, posters etc, which is also known as the colour treatment. Warm red tones can signify the film is of the romance genre, blue cold tones for horrors, florescent greens for science fiction just to name a few. Common colours used in big hollywood blockbuster films at the moment are blue and orange. One leading theory suggests that the popularity for the use of blue and orange is because of the fact actors, when coloured with orange, pops and stands out against a blue tinted background. Humans skin colour naturally are in the orange area of colour, and the complementary colour of orange is blue.

   Colours also have meanings behind them that we can associate with emotions. A good film example of this is the Pixar film 'Inside Out', where the characters that are representations of emotions are colours that reflect this e.g. Anger is Red, Joy is Yellow. Below is a list of colours and the emotions that they have been known to convey.

Red - Love, Anger
Pink - Femininity, Disgust
Orange - Warmth
Purple - Royalty
Blue - Peace, Sadness
Green - Health
Yellow - Joy
White - Purity, Emptiness
Black - Aggression, Death


   Looking into this, I have got a rough idea on colours I would like to use for my film. My first choice of colours are going to be green and blue primarily, as well as some use of black and white as well. I have chosen these colours as green is used in science fiction a lot, as well as the fact it can relate to health, fear, and trust. I have decided on blue as well as it signifies sadness and can be associated with medicine and doctors as well. I got some of these thoughts from the 'Wheel of Emotions' created by Robert Plutchik (Image of wheel below), a Professor who focused his studies on emotions and create d the Psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotion, which is one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses. Plutchik's 'Wheel of Emotions' shows the emotion different colours give off, and what different shades of them represent. I need to look further into them and decide on specific shades that will be used in the film.