Study Task 4- Images Examples and Theories

My area of research in cinematography with a focus on colour and composition.

1. Select and define important terms / concepts you have discovered through your reading. 

Colour:

Monochromatic - one colour, multiple shades

Complementary - Opposite colours on the wheel (green and red / yellow and purple)

Analogous -  Range of colours all close on the wheel (greens, blues, purples)
Triadic -Three colours evenly spaced on the wheel (red yellow and blue)

Composition:
Frame within a frame - we seek order
Negative space and contrast - we know something by what it is not

Rule of three - points of interest should align
Scale - Size = importance

Power is split between artificial control and primal control

Colour is reliant of context.
Composition gives context. 

1. Collect and analyse examples / images / phenomena that could be interpreted as following these concepts.

The short opens with a strong complimentary colour scheme. The combination of green and red can imply a range of meanings but, within the context of the story, it is a discussion of wealth and value. Red reinforces the idea of profitability. It marks the performer as important with a bright sash and connotes a reference to red’s cultural relationship in china as the colour for wealth. The performance and thus the performer holds power within the interpersonal relationship with the caretaker as the tool to provide. As the financial yield of the performance lessens over time, a third colour is introduced to the scheme and the colour wheel turns. By unsettling the established scheme, the power dynamic is, in turn, changed. At the camp fire, instead of feeding the performer, the caretaker is drinking. The forest is blue, his face is red and the fire is yellow. The scheme reverts from triadic to the complementary green and red palette at the brothel. The red has escaped the performer and now sprawls out, gradually filling up more and more of each shot. Red finally takes up the whole frame when the caretaker happens across a counting chicken. The chicken is marked twice as valuable by, first, the crowd and secondly the red box and feathers. Colour has expressively translated the Performer’s loss of monetary value which renders him a burden to the caretakers survival. By the time the performer is eliminated, his clothes have gone from green to blue, signifying his impending disposal as he is one with the surrounding landscape.  

1. How could they be used to interpret your theme / question? Triangulate with theorists and critics.

Blain Brown emphasis the power of colour as a key cinematic tool for it’s “ability to reach people at a gut, emotional level” (2016). The multimedia editor and, now, director Jon Fusco corroborated with this view by saying that there is no better way to communicate subtle messages, themes and emotional depth than colour (2016). The reason why colour is so effective is down, essentially, to the innate physical/mental reactions triggered in animals by colour (The Psychology Behind Colors 2017). Some colours have been proven to accelerate our heart beats and tense muscles without need for narrative context. However, it is this unfocused reaction that prevents colour from truly out doing composition when serving a theme. Composition is the “most fundamental principle” of cinematography (Composition in Storytelling 2016 00:00:48) because it directs the use of colour and all other visual storytelling techniques. Sudhakaran, a celebrated creator, places composition above colour a cinematic tool in his online cinematography class (The 5 Most Powerful Elements of Cinematography 2019). Composition is an expressive technique that creates an “everlasting metaphor” (composition in storytelling  2016 00:00:24). As a metaphor, composition strives to communicate a specific sense of tone and further the narrative wholly. The effectiveness of cinematography can be measured the “more  you disrupt the emotional stability of the scene” (Draven 2016). By combining multiple different techniques of composition and colour, creating patterns and then breaking them, Delbonnel unsettles the placement of power. Without composition, colour is open to a wide range of interpretation. In this, all meaning can be lost. It is imperative to note that the history of cinema starts with black and white film where composition manages to convey wholly independent from colour (The Science and Media Museum n.d). Another reason why colour is unreliable on it’s own is that it depends on the viewer having complete colour vision. Currently, the estimated amount of potential viewers having some form of colour blindness is approximately 300 million people. Without a full range of colour vision, the cultural connotations of colour (e.g reds relationship to wealth in china) and the subtle shifts in colour scheme (e.g complementary to triadic) would be completely missed. While the cinematographer has used complex colour schemes throughout the anthology to explore power successful, the technique itself is limited by who can percept it. Composition, however, is more effective as it is universally perceived as it was designed to.