Unusual Colour Transitions

Many films use colour transitions for various reasons, the beginning of this was when filmmakers realised they could use colour as an integral part of the story.

    

fig.01                                                                                  fig.02

Greed (1924) is a black and white film that uses early colour tinting techniques. The gold coins are hand painted on the film strip to be yellow, fig.01, as the protagonist’s greed grows the entire film is coated in yellow, showing how he has become completely consumed by his greed. ‘Greed’ is a good example of colour progressively transiting to aid the story.

Another interesting method of using colour to transition the story is in the film ‘Hero’ 2002, here director Zhang Yimou uses colour to establish different characters points of view.

fig.03

 fig.03 shows an example of Yimou using the scene to visibly show you that you are witnessing different characters perspectives. Admittedly, of all of the films I’ve referenced throughout the blog this is the one I am yet to see, so my knowledge of it was based on word-of-mouth and an online synopsis.

I would however be quite interested to incorporate this type of technique in my own short films, to see first hand how successful the technique is. You could argue that Pixar is using a similar technique in ‘Inside Out’, it isn’t a colour transition, however colouring the characters to represent emotions separate their personalities in a loosely similar way.

 

fig.01: https://wondersinthedark.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/snapshot_dvd_00-08-24_2010-03-22_20-12-34-greed.jpg

fig.02: https://michaelgloversmith.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/greed.jpg

fig.03: https://mishkanyc.com/sites/default/files/styles/blog_inline/public/hero.jpg?itok=mBrofsDV

(2002) Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299977/synopsis (Accessed: 17 December 2016).

Inside out (2015) Directed by Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen USA: .