How Color Will Play a Role in My Film

     As I mentioned in a previous post, my short film is going to follow the personification of death as they encounter different people and witnesses their reactions to "death". For the film, I want death to start off as all black and white, and as they go through each person, they will gain the color of said person until at the very end, "death" is colorful, representing how death is anything that people view it as. Each person and their view will be visually represented by costumes and especially their color scheme. 

Each Character and their Color

    In no particular order right now, one of the characters that "death" encounters will be blue, representing an individual who is perfectly at peace with the idea of eventually dying, believing that there is a better life awaiting after. The yellow character will be obsessive, fixated on avoiding death by illness at all costs, consequentially becoming dependent on pills in the process. The next character will be purple, depicting the fantasy or delusion that this character can simply avoid death all together, causing them to be reckless and over confident. The orange character would be someone who happily welcomes death with open arms, almost as if they were longing for deaths warm embrace. Green will represent a person who is dealing with survivors guilt over someone who died in a car accident they were both in, envying their death and wishing that they were the ones who died instead. Finally, the pink character would be someone younger and innocent, who does not quite grasp the full idea of what death is and what it means to die. 

    While I'm not sure if I will have enough time in the film to flesh out the character for every single reaction and color listed above, my overall idea is to try to incorporate as many depictions and reactions to death as possible in the most meaningful and effective way I can.

Colors in Film

     Since mise-en-scene is going to be extremely important in my short film, especially the colors, I feel that it's important that to do research how colors work in film to help convey specific tones and meanings. 

Different Presentations of Color

    Color is more than just its hue. According to a 2020 article by Josephine Holmstrom, "How Movies Use Color to Create Emotion", colors are described by three aspects, hue, saturation and value. A color's hue is what what would be seen on a rainbow or color wheel. Blue, red, and yellow, for example, are what we'd use to describe the hue of a color. Saturation is how intense the color is, for example pastel blue and neon blue are two different saturations of the same hue. The more saturated the color, the more intense it is, and the purer form of the color it is. The final aspect of colors is its value, or how dark it is. An example of this would be the difference between dark blue and light blue. A high-value color is a color that is lighter or has had white added to it, while the opposite is true for low-value colors. It seems to be noted that in films with less saturated color palettes, more pastels, typically take on a more light hearted tone, while more intense saturations and darker shades take on a more serious and intense tone.

How Each Color Works in Film

    Colors can help create a specific tone or feeling that a filmmaker wants to portray, and each color can be used to portray different emotions depending on the filmmaker's vision. Red, for example, can be used to highlight aggression and anger, as well as love and passion. Purple is often used to depict mystery, delusion, and even death. 

    Green can be used to depict abundance and nature, but it is also often used to depict envy and even evil like in many Disney films. 

Outer Banks (2020)

    Orange can represent vibrance, enthusiasm, and warmth.

Titanic (1997)

    Blue can depict cold, depression, peace, and loyalty, while yellow can often signify insecurity, obsession, and illness. 

    Pink is used to depict femininity, sweetness, and charming. However, in some cases like Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix(2007), the great amounts of pinks used for the costuming of the character is used to starkly contrast her actually cruel and cold hearted personality. This technique can be used with all colors, and in this case, the contrast makes the character appear all the more sinister.

    Color can also be used to draw attention to important aspects in a film. For example, in Steven Spielberg's 1995 film Schindler's List, there is a little girl in a red coat, the only thing that is saturated throughout the film. This not only draws the viewers attention, but is also representative of the imminent danger that awaits her. 

    These are just some of the ways that color can be used in film. In my next post, I will discuss how I plan to use these colors in my short film.

References

Deruvo, J. (2019, Sep 19). Creating Emotion with Color in Cinematography. nofilmschool. https://nofilmschool.com/creating-emotion-color-cinematography

Holmstrom, J. (2020, May 28). How Movies Use Color to Create Emotion. Medium. https://medium.com/vionlabs-tech-blog/how-movies-use-color-to-create-emotion-36226e31067d

Short Film Brainstorm

    In attempting to create a better concept for my short film, I decided to do what I always do, and start writing down any words that came to mind when I thought of what I wanted to do for my portfolio project. I started out with writing the names of of media pieces that have been on my mind a lot recently and that I wanted to use as inspiration for my short film.   

Bojack Horseman

    The first was the Netflix original series,

Bojack Horseman.  I thought of this show in particular because I recently started re-watching it while I was home sick. I really like how it portrays really deep issues like addiction, as well as existential dread, which is shown through a lot of the main cast, especially with Bojack himself. I like how the show is existential and even unsettling a at times in terms of its visuals. I want my piece to be something that forces the viewer to look internally, maybe even get a little uncomfortable in terms of thinking of the existential. 

Opal

    The second was the work of YouTuber Jack Stauber. Particularly his animated short film Opal. This short is by far my favorite of Stauber's work, and I love how unsettling and dark it is. The short follows a young girl Opal who lives in a very cheery household where her family sings about how they see her and love her and they eat cheese burgers. All this while reminding Opal to not pay attention to the house across the road, Opal however, becomes increasingly drawn to the house. She eventually goes to the house and goes inside, encountering the horrifying residents that live there, one by one. From this piece I really like the atmosphere of it all. I, unfortunately, can't do an animated short film as I am not an artists in that manner. However, I want to create a similar atmosphere in my short film, one that is weird, and once again slightly unsettling. 

World of Tomorrow

    While I had written both of these pieces down, I still had no idea what I was going to do, and how I would incorporate the color elements into my short film. When I asked my friends in class about it, an kind of told them how I wanted to make something weird but that still had a message of some sort, my friend Ace recommended I watched the short film World of Tomorrow by Don Hertzfeldt. He said that it was very colorful and had a sort of atmosphere that I was talking about. I immediately decided to watch it, taking notes on techniques that stood out to me and that I'd like to incorporate into my project, like the heavy use of foully sound. Besides that however, I was not getting much that could help me draw ideas, that was until future Emily described her first job of working with robots on the moon, and programming them to fear death as a way to keep them in the light side of the moon. This sparked an idea.

 Short Film Concept

    For my short film, I've decided on creating a psychological film about the different views of death. The idea is that death will be represented as a person who will start off in all black and white in an empty room. As they move about the room, different people appear in front of them, reacting to them in extremely different ways, this being representative of the various ways people view death and the after life. This can vary from coming to terms with death and being at peace, being in denial about eventually dying, being mortified of the idea of dying, and feeling depressed and like nothing matters because they will eventually die anyway. All of these would manifest in different and very extreme ways like drug/alcohol addiction or  Each person will be characterized visually by a different color. As "death" moves between each person, they will gain the color of the last person they spoke to, until at they end they are colorful and have adopted the color of every single person they encountered. The adoption of color is meant to be a visual symbol of how death is whatever anyone thinks it to be, that any ideology on death is equally valid.  

    For the colors I was thinking of using colored lighting, costuming, and editing to make the drastic color differences. For the black and white to adopting color I am thinking I will rely a lot on editing, however I need to figure out how exactly I would go about it. While I still have to solidify how exactly I am going to execute the color changes and changes in color, I’m very excited for this project and how it will turn out.

    

    

Project Concept

    For my project, I've decided it would be really cool to show different perspectives on the same event, using colors as a driving force of how the character's emotions are visually portrayed. While I am still on the fence about it, right now I am thinking of using my idea of the kids' reaction after a parents divorce, however, instead of the mise-en-scene coinciding with he stages of grief, I want it to reflect the two kid's reactions to it. For example, one of them blames themselves for the divorce and is very sad, so the mise-en-scene is primarily blue. The other one knew something the other kid didn't, like one of the parents was unfaithful, so they're very mad about the situation and the mise-en-scene is primarily red. 

    For this I would most likely only use two to three perspectives since the short film is only around five minutes, I want to make sure I am able to properly develop each perspective in the piece. This week I plan to finalize my short film idea, do some research on color theory in film, and on Friday, watch Hero (2004) to get ideas for how I can format the film and see a movie which follows the format of showing different perspectives/versions of a story.

Portfolio Project Timeline

 For this project, it's crucial to have a set and organized schedule in order to get everything done, especially since, at least for me personally, the first few weeks of this project are going to be extremely hectic due to extracurriculars involving theater. Below is a rough schedule for how I plan to approach this project. 

Week One:

-choose project genre

-research genre and story ideas

-begin developing full film plot

-post to blog

 

Week Two:

-continue research on project components

-continue to develop story – land on final ideas

-post to blog

 

Week Three:

-continue to research/plan project components (digital/print)

-develop script or outline

-develop filming/editing schedule

-create shot list/storyboard

-create social media tool

-post to blog

 

Week Four:

-continue to research/plan project components

-begin production of video component

-document production process (for social media and blog)

-post to social media

-post to blog

 

Week Five:

-continue to research/plan project components

-continue production of video component

-start edit video component

-begin planning print component

-post to social media

-post to blog

 

Week Six:

-continue post-production of video component

-continue planning of print component

-post to social media

-post to blog

 

Week Seven:

-research information relating to Critical Reflection

-finalize video component

- work on print/digital components

-post to social media

-post to blog

 

Week Eight:

-research information relating to Critical Reflection

-finalize video component

- work on print/digital components

-post to social media

-post to blog

 

Week Nine:

-create Critical Reflection

-finalize print component

-post to social media

-post to blog

 

Week Ten:

-create final, overall project reflection

-post all project components to blog

-Post Critical Reflection to blog

Transitioning into Portfolio Project

   Ending Preliminary Projects

    

    My class has just finished our final project before we start the absolute beast that is the A Level portfolio project. We did a film distribution project in which we collaborated with the creative writing class at our school, and made movie trailers and distribution plan for their movie concepts. Overall, the project went well although it made me realize just how difficult making a movie trailer actually was. The project, while helpful, definitely solidified which type of project I wanted to do for my portfolio since I was in between doing either movie promotion or a short film. 

Short Film

    

    I've decided on doing a short film for the portfolio project. The main reason for this is I want to explore and experiment with mise-en-scene and how a character's emotions can be portrayed through color. I want to do this in a more stylized manner though, mainly through lighting and costuming and make it stand out. I wanted to explore the stages of grief someone goes through when their parents divorce during the short film. When discussing it with my teacher, she mentioned an idea of following an event based on different perspectives, and representing each perspective through different colors. I really like this idea, and think it could be a better approach than going through the grief cycle since it is a topic that has been explored time and time again. She also recommended a movie called Hero (2002) that does this, and I am planning on checking it out to get some inspiration.

    I've also decided to work by myself, despite the option to work in groups. While I love working with my friends and the people in my class, I want to take this project as an opportunity to see what I can do, and enhance my skills, especially in editing and set design. I'm excited to see what I'm able to create and accomplish throughout this process.

    

The Critical Reflection

    Through the documentaries we studied in class, my group was able to pick up ideas and techniques to structure "Mic Check" and create a documentary that follows typical conventions of the documentary genre. What I feel especially helped in our process to create the best product that we could, were the shorter documentaries in the Op-Docs series from The New York Times, which features short documentaries about anything and everything by all kinds of people from around the world. When we started watching these documentaries in class, I made sure to watch the shorter segments of the series, as I wanted to understand and see examples of how to make a short, yet effective documentary. The Netflix series Abstract: The Art of Design also helped to show us how a documentary can be short yet effective, relaying important details on a topic while still providing a connection with the audience, which is exactly what we were hoping to do with "Mic Check". 

    The two film length documentaries we watched in class, Exit Through The Gift Shop and American Promise, provided excellent examples of how to use indirect and direct interviews, and how using a specific type of interview can create a certain effect and feeling for a documentary. We decided specifically to use indirect interviews for "Mic Check" as we felt it would make the piece feel cleaner and less repetitive this way, as well as feel more organic, and like the interviewees were simply having a conversation.  These two films, along with the other documentaries, provided us with examples of how to incorporate b-roll, archival footage, and interview footage in a way that flowed smoothly and made the most overall sense. We used archival footage and b-roll to interject in between every few seconds of interview footage while the voice over of the interview continued playing to make the documentary more visually engaging for the viewer as well as provide visual examples of what the interviewees were talking about. 

    As for research on the technical side of theater and techies in general, we were lucky enough that both me and one of my other group members have been actively involved in theater since at least middle school, we both were at least familiar with the technical aspects of theater and personally know people who do theater tech. This helped us, not only to be able to easily find people to interview for the documentary, but also to formulate interview questions that would be appropriate to ask each interviewee depending on their position within the technical theater department.

     Through "Mic Check" my group was aiming to showcase a bit of what the technical side of live theater is like, and what the people, including high school students, behind it all had to say about their experience working in technical theater. As someone who has done some work in technical theater side of live theater and who has friends who are techies both at school and out of school, it was a topic that was particularly interesting for me to learn more about. It was important to get as many sides of technical theater covered as we possibly could, while still creating an easily digestible piece that would portray technical theater and the people who are apart of its community as accurately as possible. Through interviews, we ensured that we got information from three different people who work in tech, that way we could make sure we got multiple perspectives on what it is like to work in that particular field. 

    We made sure to ask questions on what it was like to work in tech as well as how they viewed themselves within the theater community as a whole. This helped to not only get the reference for what it is like to do tech for a show, but also to show how some techies may feel while about themselves and their work, and how their work affects those in the shows and those watching the shows.  Along with that, we also felt it was important to include an interview with an actor, allowing the documentary to offer up an outside perspective on techies and what they do, showing just a snippet of how the theater community views techies. If given the opportunity to add on to the documentary, we would try to include one more interview with another actor to gain even more perspective on how performers view techies and what they do. 

    The documentary's target audience is teens and young adults, particularly those who are interested in theater and learning about the technical side of it. Through "Mic Check" teenage audiences that are interested in theater tech get to see what it is like for other teenagers who are apart of the technical theater community. For teenage audiences specifically, seeing teenagers being involved in technical theater could encourage them to get involved in technical theater as well if they are interested, or at the very least appreciate just a little more the work and dedication that goes into doing technical theater. The documentary is also meant to help inform audiences on what theater tech is and why it is important for live theater overall, and provide an insight into the side of live theater that is not necessarily always the forefront in conversations about theater. 

    "Mic Check" serves as a way to get the audience involved with what theater is with and without all the technical aspects as well. A way that we chose to showcase this was through the b-roll that was included throughout the documentary. We included various scenes from different shows where we could see the footage from rehearsals with no lighting, set, or costumes, and then included the same scenes after all of the lighting, set design, and costumes were added. This helped to visually show audiences how much tech in theater makes a difference in a performance, and makes what the interviewees say about how important technical theater is to overall performances that much more impactful for the viewer.