use of colours in movies

[dtgs1980]

after seeing traffic & out of sight (and being very impressed), i noticed the clever use of colour that steven soderbergh is using in his movies...
Traffic uses different colours to differentiate between places, and Out Of Sight goes from bright to dark, as the time progresses.
although i thought it was effectively used in these films, what does everyone else think...? an effective way to enhance the look & feel of the film, or just style over substance?
dan
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"you think you're big-time...? you're gonna die big-time"

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dan

[deanl]

Hey there.

In Out Of Sight the movie was told in a series of flashbacks. So Soderbergh used different filters to give us an idea of whare abouts we are in the time line of the movie.

Out Of Sight is a fantastic movie.

In Traffic he did kind of the same thing. Because the story takes place in different places with different people he used filters to show us exactly where we are and who we are with strait away.

He is using colour to help him with the story telling. In my opinion he is doing a fine job.


P.S

Any soderbergh fans should check out King Of The Hill and Sex Lies and Video Tape to see the different kind of movies this guy can do. Shit. Even Kafka was cool.

Despin out.

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"Ive got bad feeling about this."

[dtgs1980]

yeh, i agree with you, but i was just interested in what everyone else thought...
erin brockovich and ocean's eleven were awesome... sex lies was a little over-rated though, and i thought the limey was just too arty-for-the-sake-of-being-arty though.
dan
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"tell him i'm fuckin coming"

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dan

[deanl]

Hey there.

I loved The Limey. It had some very cool editing ideas going on.

Despin out.

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"Ive got bad feeling about this."

[boffo01]

Re: the use of colour.

The best thing about playing with colour is it's a wonderfully subtle way to affect the moods of viewers. By infusing a scene with warm colours or draining them from it, you can alter the whole feel of a scene on a level that most people watching won't even realise. Okay....a lot of the stuff in Traffic wasn't that subtle, but Out of Sight was nicely done. It's a nice tool to get a handle on. It's one of those things, like good sound design, where the general filmgoer doesn't actually realise how it's influencing their perceptions because they aren't looking for it.

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[steven_craig]

i like the use of filters to induce emotion in the audience... my example is in the matrix - a green look (unbalanced fluroescent daylight film) - was used when we were in the matrix... then a fresh clean image - tungsten balanced film to give a blueish look - was used when we were on the nebucahnesser (the real world)... using these things very subtle changes can subcontiously familiarise the audience to the location of the action, physicalise what is internal and many other functions

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a carefull man tries to dodge the bullets, while a happy man takes a walk!

[steven_craig]

woddler - perhaps you can help me

that aside...

"ah [sigh] cheesy 80's cheap video FX"

-as a look of nostalgia come across stevens face he stares out of the window pull out of focus and do a wavy line transition to a shot in black and white of steven as a child playing with a chunky VHS camcorder-

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a carefull man tries to dodge the bullets, while a happy man takes a walk!

[seekaee]

Check out PERFORMANCE,it was decades ahead of what Stone did in JFK and Natural Born Killers.

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[The Woddler]

I agree with some of the comments, but Despin- the editing of The Limey ain't all that original (see Don't Look Now, or a few other Roeg films).

Also, the Matrix is a good example of the color thing- i think the green and black was trying to suggest old-school monocrome computer monitors. Quite impressive that it never ended up make the characters look seasick.

Classic colour effect- see the re-make of 'D.O.A.' (cool name/plot for a film, starring Dennis Quaid). As the poisoned central character starts to die, so the colour slowly bleaches out of the film. A bit brash and 80s, but still cool.

W


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[The Woddler]

also- I forgot: how about that bit at the end of Platoon where the airstrike is called in and everything goes black and white... that was cool

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