Teal and Orange in Hollywood movies

http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html

by thmzlt • 15 years ago

221 67 15 years ago

theabyssgazes.blogspot.com

tantalor• 15 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193657

djenryte• 15 years ago

Insightful article. Happy for the repost. Missed this the first time around.

relix• 15 years ago

Am I the only one who doesn't mind the blue/orange gradient? I don't get why everyone is going mental about it (this article and many like it have popped up frequently over the last few years). The article itself isn't even worth reading, filled with hyperboles like "...a monstrosity that would eventually lead to one of the worst films ever...". Especially the history lesson at the end is superfluous.

Ironically enough, the first thought I had when I visited his blog was "oh god no not another white text on black background site!". But I'm not going to write an article about the trend of light text on dark background, which would actually be a more valid complaint because it objectively reduces readability, while the orange+blue palette is just taste.

spuz• 15 years ago

I think you missed the slightly tongue-in-cheek tone of the post. The author is an indie filmmaker so it's his job to draw parallels between movies in order to highlight his probable above-average attention to detail in movies.

moultano• 15 years ago

> it objectively reduces readability

Would love to get some pointers for good reads on this. I've always felt the opposite.

vukk• 15 years ago

Yeah, I use Readability in Inverse mode myself so I can get my reading in dark background and light text.

To be fair, that is not white on black, it's very-light-grey on dark grey. Personally I find white #FFFFFF on black #000000 hard to read too, but very few sites use such colors.

Light grey on black, which this blog uses, seems perfectly fine for me.

Might there be differences of opinion because of differences in monitors? I'm using Eizo S-PVA, so I might have it better than those with cheaper LCD monitors.

derleth2• 15 years ago

> it objectively reduces readability

I would love to see a peer-reviewed study saying this.

pwg• 15 years ago

Ironic value of complaining about the ugliness of Hollywood movie color schemes while utilizing an absolutely putrid color scheme on the blog itself: priceless.

Physician, heal thyself.

ugh5• 15 years ago

Can we please stop this?

You are not making a valid argument, not in any way, shape or form. It’s pure, irrelevant bullshit.

It’s possible to be completely unable to color grade yet still notice trends and write that you think they are horrible.

But you are not even talking about the author’s ability to color grade, you are talking about fucking web design which is a tenuously related field at best. It just makes no sense at all.

Critics do not have to be good at what they criticize in order to be good critics. Would Roger Ebert be a good director?

It’s astonishing really, a complete non-sequitur.

foobarbazoo• 15 years ago

The author is a colorist.

waterlesscloud• 15 years ago

He's not talking about "web design", he's talking about the color scheme that this particular blogger has chosen for his site.

It's not a "complete non-sequitur" to connect the color selection criticism skills of the author to his own color selections.

Colors, not "web design".

Are they the same? No. Are they wholly unrelated? No.

joshuamerrill4• 15 years ago

ejs• 15 years ago

It is pretty common in any form of art or photography to use color balance to convey a mood.

The eye is pretty good at dealing with these things, does the author get frightened and angry when the setting sun makes things appear orange?

swah• 15 years ago

In the the article he says that both effects (nighty blue and sunset red) can't happen at the same time IRL...

wallawe• 15 years ago

I first noticed this in the movie "Traffic." Great movie and cinematography in my opinion, but I noticed how the orange came out in the Mexican drug cartel scenes and a heavy blue in the DC ones.

ethank7• 15 years ago

That was an intentional narrative device from Soderbergh though.

From IMDB:

"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."

joshuamerrill4• 15 years ago

"Inception" took a similar approach, where each dream level had a unique tint.

ethank7• 15 years ago

To every generation there is a film technique which defines it. There was the smokey grey/green from the Matrix films. Michael Mann had his desaturated shallow-DOF look. David Fincher uses silver-retention on his film development to extend the dynamic range while underexposing his shots (thats why interiors in Seven were so "dark" yet exposed).

Part of the device of cinema is extending the mise-en-scene outward and upward to the representational devices (projection, development and treatment).

Part of the study of film is tracing how the use of technique defines generations of film makers. Often, technology serves as an impetus for a style (i.e., Robert Altman and the use of multi-track audio on Nashville precipitated very "talky" films from the 70's/80's), or the developments in computer motion controlled rigs.

Or lets not forget: lens flares.

Color grading (ie, the orange/blue compliments in this article) are also defined by outward influences like magazine photography, trends in CGI, etc.

Anyhow, in a few years a new dominate "look" will pervade cinema and we'll all have something new to complain about.

waterside81• 15 years ago

Both this comment and your comment further down below are really illuminating to a film luddite like me. It's always interesting to hear the nitty-gritty details of someone else's trade. It always amazes me how much detail goes into things that at the end of the day, the end user is none-the-wiser.

Thanks for the informative posts.

ethank7• 15 years ago

Glad my years in film school amounted to something :)

rdtsc2• 15 years ago

Interestingly you might find that once you are aware of such details it is hard to go back and "just watch a movie".

You start noticing color gradients, lighting techniques, camera angles, and many other technical details, and spend mental effort categorizing and critiquing them instead of being immersed in the experience, like, perhaps, you were before.

As computer geeks notice bogus computer terminals in the movies, and it is somewhat irritating and frustrating "no, dammit, that is not what a mainframe terminal looks like!" film geeks do the same with movies.

bobbles• 15 years ago

In the Matrix films the greenish tint is used while 'inside' and blue-ish for the 'real world'

ethank7• 15 years ago

It's actually fun to use Kuler to do the palettes for the Matrix. They did the whole complimentary triad thing in spades with both looks.

huhtenberg• 15 years ago

Tron certainly takes the prize here, but at least they had a plausible excuse for the palette choice :)

lloeki• 15 years ago

The blue/orange palette comes straight from the 1982 original. The author does not make a valid point with TRON, especially as he is concerned about color realism. As he says it's set inside a computer so it could look like anything. Any way I read his argument, it ends up contradicting itself on that one.

bornon5• 15 years ago

Using complementary colors to make your subjects "pop" is just standard color theory.

When coloring anything, you pretty much have to choose some variation of red/green, orange/blue, or violet/yellow. Anything else blurs into one of these three.

We'd all do better to criticize specific color choices, rather than stigmatizing one of the three possible general palettes. Otherwise it's like criticizing violins or oil paint for being overused.

mikecane• 15 years ago

I think this was the first thing I ever submitted to HN. It got several hundred points and hit #1 for a time. It's amusing to see things resurface here.

EDIT: It was the 17th submission, 538 days ago, My god! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193657

baddox• 15 years ago

When all you show is frames that happen to be teal and orange, of course you can make it look like all movies are just teal and orange. Also, the sky is blue and light-colored skin can easily look orangish, which explains most of the frames.

glenstein• 15 years ago

I agree. I'm open to the possibility that this is a widespread phenomenon, but a handful of frames, some of which don't even feature much orange, are unconvincing.

sesqu• 15 years ago

Ever since I saw the first of these articles a few years ago, I've occasionally paid attention to this effect (and a little before then). It's not when teal and orange occur that's distracting, it's when nothing else does. You sometimes see scenes with orange trees and teal shades, with no other hues.

The best example of this, to me, is the CSI franchise. LA was light blue, NY was straight up blue and Miami straight up yellow.

stdbrouw• 15 years ago

Yup. Never really been upset by the teal/orange thing in movies, but in CSI everything looks like they've let a first-year cinematography student go wild on it. And even so, I wouldn't say it looks ugly, it's just a cheezy effect.

chrisbolt• 15 years ago

Another way to look at it: http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/

fuzionmonkey• 15 years ago

Blue/Orange contrast is used because red/green has too much of a Christmas vibe. Complementary colors look good. Its not like its a conspiracy.

SamReidHughes• 15 years ago

Yellow and purple don't look particularly good. Besides, you can make any combinations of color look good.

pak• 15 years ago

Not a Lakers fan eh? NY's complementary sports colors of choice seem to be orange blue, pretty close to the palette the OP hates (Knicks, Mets).

revdinosaur• 15 years ago

Actually I'm fairly certain it has more to do with tungsten/daylight balancing of the film stocks. While many features have shifted to full digital production, tungsten lights read as orange on daylight-balanced films and daylight reads as blue on tungsten-balanced films.

Vivtek• 15 years ago

Wow, all you people with your fully functional color vision. Maybe I won't get the retinal DNA hack if it causes this much pain.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

Post processing isn't exactly new. Not sure what the big deal is. I'm just wondering how long it'll be before we see entire feature length film processed using HDR?

sp332• 15 years ago

Pretty much every film ever made on real film is in HDR. What would be "tone mapping" in a digital HDR image is just "developing" a film.

joshwa• 15 years ago

These correspond to the basic axis of light typically found in the real world (up until fluorescent, anyways):

Blue = natural light (5000-8000K)

Yellow/Orange = artificial/tungsten light (2400-4500K)

Anyone who's shot actual film will know that if you shoot daylight film in tungsten, it comes out yellow, and vice versa. For you young folks who only ever knew digital cameras, that's the "white balance" function automatically correcting for you.

It's only natural for this set of color contrasts to show up in film (try shooting something lit by a tungsten lightbulb in front of a north-facing window).

/professional photographer

dantkz• 15 years ago

I disagree. The effect of illumination temperature does take place, but in the article the stress is on color grading. It is that color grading that makes faces orange under both daylight (Transformers example) and tungsten light (iron man example).

JasonPunyon• 15 years ago

The first time colors really stood out to me in a movie (and I noticed it while watching) was One Hour Photo. The range was so wide and the colors really added to the story telling. Later (I think on the DVD special features) someone broke it down into it's constituent parts and I really understood an example of how someone designs with color. Very illuminating.

bluedanieru• 15 years ago

The last bit about this 'disease' infecting artists through history was particularly odd. Can you imagine! We might end up with works like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafe_Terrace_at_Night

Van Gogh was a big fan of these colors and it shows in his work.

mtts• 15 years ago

Van Gogh also admitted, in a letter to his brother Theo, to using deliberately exaggerated colors because he suspected the pigments he used were of such poor quality that they'd quickly fade to something more sensible.

Which turned out to not always be the case.

pbhjpbhj• 15 years ago

"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully." (Letter to Theo van Gogh, 11 August 1888), see http://painting.about.com/od/artandartistquotes/a/Quotes_Van...

That link has several quotes on use of colour.

Van Gogh is notable in his symbolic use of colour.

yason2• 15 years ago

I have barely noticed the color schemes. I do recognize different color in films from different ages--for example, I like the warm colors of 70's and 80's film--but generally I don't care much because it doesn't distract me from enjoying the film.

However, there's a huge issue that has practically stopped me from watching the recent films, or nearly anything made in the 2000's.

It's how cutting the film and camera tracking have changed. It used to be more about long takes and cinemaesque dolly shots that also give time to get immersed in the film. But there's a newer trend that started in the late 90's and developed fully a few years later: extremely short and rapidly changing cuts and excess hand-held filming with the camera shooting from within the scene, rapidly turning and changing positions. To me, it feels like watching a strobo light: I literally have no idea what's happening in the film. It just all flashes in front of my eyes.

The problem is that it's not just action-packed scifi films or anything: many films in all genres have become more fast-paced. You can barely find a romantic comedy or a drama without several scenes that enable this ADHD limbo. To make it worse, even European films have begun to adopt this style in the last decade.

I watched some old action films such as Rambo or Terminator recently and I must say that even they were more moderate in tempo than the last few, and not necessarily action, films I've seen in the cinema in the last five or so years. This is just terrible and I hope cinematography will recover soon or that these tricks will move on to the 3D videos.

Similarly to reading books, a good film gives you the essentials of the plot, characters, and the visual scene only and leaves the rest to your imagination. And giving space to this imagination is crucial to make a good film.

A good film must not give you everything because it can never be as good as if you had imagined it yourself. In opposition, these youtube flicks with 50M budget are only trying to make a first impression on you.

derleth2• 15 years ago

> Similarly to reading books, a good film gives you the essentials of the plot, characters, and the visual scene only and leaves the rest to your imagination.

Vonnegut would disagree that books need to be as spare as you imagine. As would Tolkien and William S. Burroughs. You have a rather narrow view of the art to leave out those authors.

yason2• 15 years ago

I've only seen books where you absorb textual descriptions of what's happening by deciphering sentences and paragraphs written in some vague form of language which leaves using your imagination to be the only way to actually make it vivid and real. But, I probably don't know everything.

Films are a bit different because they inevitably offer some visual scene that is much more pre-set than a book can ever offer. But there comes the art of cinematography which, like any art, is about showing pointers to what can't be seen. This approach has become more rare yet it would be very useful especially in dramatizing these action and horror films that, these days,diverge from it most.

It's often much more effective to not show what's happening than detailed takes of the action. A cliche is that the first time an alien or a fictional monster is shown on the screen, the film will falls flat because the unrealistic visual mock-up blatantly kills all chance for your imagination to do its job. Similarly a hectic fighting scene just gets lost in the action but the same could be filmed differently, showing something that all the fighting points to, instead of showing the fighting itself. With books, they say that a writer should describe what happens instead of writing his interpretation of it.

Teal and Orange in Hollywood movies

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