Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?

[Josh Bass]

That's a very vague statement. In what way? Justify your choice to us. Make it clear that all this blue means something other than "stuff is gritty."

[Ryan Elder]

Well it's difficult to put into words, but I picture the look that best suits the story in my head, but hard to put into words why I think that would be the best look.

[Josh Bass]

I'm afraid the committee can't accept that. If you're going to spend multiple threads and months, and attempt to repaint locations and restrict wardrobe to fit this color scheme, you'd better have a good reason for it, that you can clearly articulate, otherwise it's probably not that important and is a huge waste of time, right?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

You're attracted to the non human elements in film making and don't understand their connection to story telling. You want to mimic cinematic techniques like color grading that you think look good. You probably could get away with throwing these effects on but you neither have the ability, experience or budget to do it well.

You repeatedly present these "problems" to people and everyone is going to give you different advice. One person told you to do black and white, I said a mild grade, someone else said use color lighting...

You would be far better off doing one of the technical jobs on a movie that doesn't require you to make these sort of decisions that you struggle with.

[Paul R Johnson]

That's the thing here isn't it Pete - we see the problems as challenges and can come up with all kinds of solutions, that Ryan seems unable to. This is where what we say here is fodder for Ryan - he can pick one comment and say "I've been told I should shoot in black and white", or "I've been told that I should only do a mild grade" or "I've been told I should use coloured light". All these were indeed said, but not meant to be definitive MUSTS, but simply suggestions. I don't know how to get Ryan to understand any of this now - he's just in overdrive and running at full speed, and we're still reading the map!

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, well as far as articulating it into words, how would one articulate it into words for other films. Let's take the movie Amelie for example, since it has a look that isn't going for what I am going for at all. The three main colors used in the movie are brown, green and red. Why did the filmmakers choose these colors do you think?

[Josh Bass]

What most of us would do there is look an up interview with the DP, director, or colorist and try to find out from the horse's mouth why they chose those colors.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, I can look for that. Well the reason why I chose brown, blue and red so far is because it gives a gritty tone, but is that not enough in explaination. If they want more than a gritty look and feel, are people perhaps overthinking it?

[Josh Bass]

thats shallow reasoning. why do blue and brown equal gritty?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

Oh okay, well as far as articulating it into words, how would one articulate it into words for other films. Let's take the movie Amelie for example, since it has a look that isn't going for what I am going for at all. The three main colors used in the movie are brown, green and red. Why did the filmmakers choose these colors do you think?

Amelie Color Analysis - Eda Aydin
You owe us another quarter, because you can't think for yourself, instead of answering a question, you pose another question about a feature film.

[Ryan Elder]

Well brown is inevitable, because skin is more brown, some furniture is more brown, the trees in the shots are going to be brown. So brown is just one of the 3 colors by inevitability. Blue I felt adds a cold grittiness, but I am not sure how else to explain it other than that.

Red just gives a real serious feel of passion so that's what the red is more in contrast to the blue.

[Paul R Johnson]

You made that up didn't you? Brown is not remotely inevitable. I'm sitting at home - I see nothing brown or even remotely brownish in this room? I see blue, green-blue, white and grey, and yellow. My skin isn't brown either. Confused now!

[Ryan Elder]

Well even if nothing is brown in the frame, the actor's skin is still more on the brown side so isn't that inevitable in that sense, that's going to be one of the colors?

[Josh Bass]

youre sort of getting somewhere. cold and passion are at least more concrete than gritty. Now tell us what cold and passion have to do with your story and characters. Im trying to get you to specifically tie these colors to things that happen in your film. what does cold have to do with your story? what does passion?

A director must be able to articulate and communicate things otherwise how will you ever succeed?

Paul, I am positive he got the brown is inevitable thing from one of those three color vids on Youtube cause I’ve seen that video too.

[Brian Drysdale]

Not all skin is brown, some has pink or red or purple,