
Why Every Movie Looks Sort of Orange and Blue - vinnyglennon
http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and-blue/
======
swalsh
In The Matrix, you could tell which "world" you're in by the general grade of
color. When in the Matrix, everything had a greenish overtone, and when in the
"real world" it was more blue. I really liked that use of color to be a part
of the story telling process.

~~~
scelerat
Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000) made heavy use of this, too, to distinguish
different locales and parts of the story. The Mexico/Benicio Del Toro partions
were heavy on gold/orange, burnt, sepia, while the Washington/Michael Douglas
parts were blue, cool.

~~~
mrec
Yeah, Breaking Bad always painted everything a lurid yellow for scenes in
Mexico.

~~~
ben1040
Which inspired this funny photoshopped image on Reddit, poking fun at the
border:

[http://i.imgur.com/PXMGX.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/PXMGX.jpg)

------
joosters
At least they had the good grace to link to
[http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-
ho...](http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-
please-stop.html) before effectively rewriting his original blogpost (and
copying some of the images directly from it!)

~~~
cake
Those priceonomics guys really care for their SEO. They are one of the few
websites that writes totally unrelated articles to sell a product.

I kind of feel used when I see them pop up.

~~~
rohin
I work at Priceonomics, so maybe I can shed light on our motivations.

We make the kind of content we love and we sell products so that we can afford
to make more of that content. The two products we actually sell (data crawling
for companies and books for people) aren't particularly well-suited toward SEO
(though our original idea, a Price Guide which we killed years ago, was).

Anyhow, we're a content site that's trying to get by without using ads. I
think most of our regular readers appreciate we're trying to pay the bills by
selling things instead using ads. We'd like to avoid jamming our site with
advertising if that's possible.

Happy to answer any questions you have.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I miss the price guide :-)

------
KaiserPro
Ironically, teal and orange reached its peak with tranformers. With the rise
of RED cameras (which have useless colour reproduction) we've gone the
opposite way, low contrast, lots of grain.

[http://emertainmentmonthly.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/in...](http://emertainmentmonthly.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/intothewoods.jpg) (warning, 5k image)

[http://applications.creativeengland.co.uk/assets/public/reda...](http://applications.creativeengland.co.uk/assets/public/redactor_images/e10892d041ac4eaf76778da4c7730d8f.jpg)
note the softness on james corden's face, thats most likely someone painting
out blemishes.

Fun fact, virtually any special effects movie that you've seen since 2000, all
the film grain you see, is faked. So the people who bemoan the loss of grain
with the move to digital need to reassess what they are saying:

[http://conradolson.com/frame-by-frame-painting](http://conradolson.com/frame-
by-frame-painting)

~~~
sandofsky
I'm curious about what the makes the colour reproduction useless. Based on the
low contrast comment, I'm guessing it has to do with the log color space?

~~~
Matsta
It's true to a point, the RED isn't the best camera at reproducing colours.
But then again most of the time you're going to be filming in RAW so it
doesn't really matter as much since you get a flat image in post that you can
grade.

An advantage the RED cameras have say over a Alexa is that they can film in
4k,5k,6k (Alexa only shoots in 2k). So that you can get a sharper image by
editing in 6k, and then exporting in 4k or 1080p.

If you look at video cams for projects that need to be finished quickly, of
course your not going to choose a RED. Canon Cinema Cameras (c100, c300) have
the best colour science out of everyone (Sony and Panasonic are known to have
pretty average colour reproduction). The only downfall with Canon cameras is
that they use crappy codes and compression so when you start pushing to
extreme looks, you'll get alot of noise and loose sharpness in your footage.

I use Blackmagic cameras, which aren't know for their colours either, but they
own the industry standard grading software (DaVinci), so it is quite easy to
get your footage balanced before you do a grade.

------
S_A_P
One movie that seemed to play with color to a fantastic effect is Traffic -
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/) I
noticed when it came out that color played a subtle role in setting the mood
of each scene and aspect. For instance, near the border towns and where where
the "hot zone" of illegal drug traffic occurred, it was more yellow/orange
tinted. Then when you head back to the suburbs and see privileged kids doing
drugs in their large homes, the color was much more blue and lighting was much
softer. I wish that more movies would employ tricks like this without using a
"template"...

edit: looked on IMDB and it looks like 3 different films stocks were used:

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.

~~~
mVChr
Side-note: Soderbergh's editing is absolutely fantastic and original too (see:
The Limey, Out of Sight). Fine, fine film-maker, one of the few to be able to
cross from pure art film to Hollywood blockbuster and back again through
everything in between with ease. It will be interesting to see where his
"retirement" takes him.

~~~
dingaling
Soderbergh recently did a recut of 2001 to make it less 'obvious'...

------
dperfect
> There's no specific colour decision-making process where we sit in a room
> and say, 'We're only going to use complementary colours to try and move the
> audience in a particular direction – and only use those combinations.'

A lot of production designers would strongly disagree with this statement. The
color palette of a film is very much a part of the decision-making process
(pre-production as well as post-production), and it's used primarily to "move
the audience" in one way or another, as per the film's theme and story
elements.

It may just be that the colors within a chosen palette are often classified as
either "warm" or "cool" \- orange and blue being the most obvious
manifestations of those classifications - so we tend to see a lot of them.
Without contrast (literal and figurative), a film simply doesn't _say_
anything. Warm and cool colors go a long way in helping the audience feel
positively or negatively about certain story elements.

~~~
KaiserPro
Having worked in a grading suite, I can say that the quoted statement is
indeed false.

Colour usually is considered right at the start, as dperfet correctly points
out.

~~~
ted5555
Right. There are also those color houses that standardize more or less the
worlds palette for the next few years. It is not an accident that we all had
avocado refrigerators and green minivans. It is a truly big brother industry.

------
circlefavshape
Funny to see Amelie there as a counter-example - it's pretty much my favourite
movie, and one of the things I love about it is the autumnal quality of the
light. Normally I wouldn't notice that kind of thing at all, perhaps it's the
contrast with all the orange-and-blues (or maybe just the exceptional
loveliness of the film itself)

~~~
pkroll
On the director's commentary, at 21:50, he talks about pushing the digital
grading and that "sometimes it's a little bit too much." (But obviously he
didn't tone it back!)

~~~
lobster_johnson
He did, however, go completely overboard with A Very Long Engagement, which is
drenched in yellow/orange:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYfo3nt-
O_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYfo3nt-O_U)

It's a fine film, but the grading is rather extreme. It does the opposite for
the war scenes, which are quite desaturated.

------
chton
One of the most interesting exceptions I've seen on this convention was the
2011 movie
Limitless([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219289/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219289/)).
They still used the orange-blue complement, but switched saturation between
them, sometimes every scene. It was used as an indicator of how the
protagonist views the world: bright and with an orange saturation for when he
is on NZT, dull and blue when he isn't. I thought it was a great way of
deconstructing this particular trope.

~~~
HCIdivision17
To join in, I too loved the use of color in Limitless. I personally associate
vibrant autumnal colors with clarity, not sharp blues, so when the characters
go on NZT, it feels _fuller_ , not just sharper. It looks like something a
person would actually _want_ , as opposed to losing one's humanity in a soul-
crushing washed-out green or blue usually seen in sci-fi.

------
nmeofthestate
Recently when watching stuff on Netflix I found myself amazed at how
ridiculously orange and teal movies were getting. Even the pilot episode of
House was ridiculously Orange'n'Teal.

Then I twigged it was because I was running F.Lux.

------
robbrown451
One thing that isn't mentioned is that realism doesn't seem "cinematic." It's
just like people not liking high frame rate because of the "soap opera
effect," or even some people's preference for black and white. Visible grain,
non-subtle bokeh effects and lens flare, etc are other things that aren't
realistic per se, but for some reason they make it seem less "cheap" and bring
more emotional weight than a more perfectly realistic image.

I think these sorts of forced palettes do the same thing. Maybe a different
color combination will become trendy at some point, but for now, orange/blue
is a pretty safe bet that it will achieve the emotional effect, without it
just looking weird.

------
jobu
A few years ago there was a good article on Cracked (of all places) about the
annoying trends for movies:

[http://www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-
that-...](http://www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-
every-movie-look-same.html)

There is the orange and teal trend, but also color trends by genre, and of
course lens flares...

~~~
fivedogit
I was just about to post this link as well. Glad someone else had the same
thought. Cracked, while an absurd humor site on the surface, is one of the
most reliable resources of new-perspective intellectual stimulation on the
web, IMO.

------
jmstout
A fun read, but I'm not convinced the reason for all the orange and blue is
rooted in trendiness, as the article makes it seem. It suggests that this
color combination "might not be naturalistic", but in my experience with
light, color, and art, that statement couldn't be further from the truth.

Look around, in light, orange and blue hues dominante our world. Sunlight,
moonlight, street lights, sky, incandescents, the glow of lcds screens, etc -
blue and orange everywhere. If you take notice, you will realize this is true.

As the article points out, in art, when wanting to create vibrancy and visual
interest, one of the best tools in our arsenal is the use of complementary
colors.

No other compliments are even close to occurring as frequently in the lighting
of our natural world. This, I believe, is the true reason for its abundant use
in cinema.

Of all the compliments, orange and blue is just the most natural.

------
mladenkovacevic
While working at a tv distribution company about 8 years ago, I used to design
these promotional one-pagers for various shows. After a while I noticed all of
my designs were mostly blue and orange (or at least the main components of the
design were). Then I started consciously trying to use other colour
arrangements but orange-blue just always sort of looked best. I celebrated any
time i managed to get a good looking poster/one-pager without relying on the
orange-blue complementary contrast.

I wonder if women might have an advantage here due to many men being red-green
colour blind to some extent.

------
nosuchthing
Here's a visualization summary of entire movies in a "barcode" timeline format
from the start of the film to the end.

[0] [http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/movie-
index](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/movie-index)

[1] 2001: A Space Odyssey
[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3432026155/2001-a-space-...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3432026155/2001-a-space-
odyssey-1968-prints)

[2] Aladdin
[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/5766889425/aladdin-1992-...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/5766889425/aladdin-1992-prints)

[3] Beyond the Black Rainbow
[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/39051819960/beyond-
the-b...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/39051819960/beyond-the-black-
rainbow-2010-prints)

[4] Blade Runner [http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/4438993828/blade-
runner-...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/4438993828/blade-
runner-1982-prints)

[5] Star Wars Episode IV
[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/13255664875/star-wars-
ep...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/13255664875/star-wars-episode-iv-a-
new-hope-1977-prints)

[6] The Wizard of Oz [http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3512965847/the-
wizard-of...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3512965847/the-wizard-of-
oz-1939-prints)

------
jhanschoo
One argument in favor of using orange-blue as opposed to other contrasting
colors, is that humans associate blue with darkness and depth. Our eyes and
mind, too, perceive blue at a lower resolution as other colors (We perceive
green with the greatest fidelity).

Colorizing the screen in orange and blue, then, imposes a hierarchy on the
objects in the screen. Whereever the orange-blue scheme is used, the blue
depicts the background and the orange depicts the action.

This adds to the illusion of depth, which is extremely important especially
for Hollywood action films, as they need to feel big and grand amid fast-paced
movement and short takes. Where objects flash across the screen in split
seconds, the orange-blue contrast can provide a natural vocabulary to re-
orient the viewer as to what is happening in the 3D space depicted by the 2D
screen.

I would guess that the blue-green colorscheme is overrepresented in action
films and especially in action sequences, and underrepresented in say, comedy
and romance films.

------
m-i-l
Danny Boyle's Sunshine [0] also made good use of colour - the interior of the
ship had no reference to red, orange or yellow to make the appearance of the
sun more striking.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(2007_film)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_\(2007_film\))

~~~
devonoel
Sunshine was a criminally under appreciated movie.

------
furyofantares
An interesting persuasive technique here: When they linked to "some
filmmakers" not using this scheme my guess before clicking was it would be to
a scene in The Grand Budapest Hotel. I've never thought about color in film
before so this didn't feel like it should be an easy guess unless the article
is correct about how pervasive orange/blue is, so when it loaded and it was
correct it added a lot of emotional force to the argument. Though I suspect it
is actually a pretty easy guess: they didn't choose a random film, they chose
an extreme, recent, popular counterexample to their argument. I'd bet my mind
was already thinking about that movie in the background while trying to come
up with counterexamples, and they successfully turned this into enforcing
their argument rather than the opposite.

------
ted5555
Color theory is like a fractal. The closer you get the more detail there is.
The Color Correction Handbook: Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema by
Alexis Van Hurkman is a great book if you really want to geek out or are
considering working in DI. Two particular topics come to mind. One is memory
colors which describe the ideal colors people within a cultural group tend to
think of when remembering common elements such as grass (greener) or brick
(redder). The other is cultural preferences regarding saturation. Seems UK
audiences like things a bit less saturated which I now understand is why all
my British photography magazines "look washed out". In a the 90's there was a
craze for bleach bypass and other alternative film processes. I'm pretty sure
the 3 Kings dvd says not to adjust your tv.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
UK light is very different to California light.

Colours here really are washed out. A long time ago I was in Australia. My
then gf bought a bedspread by an artist called Ken Done - lots of bright
primary colours.

It looked great in Sydney.

In UK light - even in sunlight - most of the colour punch disappeared. It
actually looked kind of grey and old. Disappointment...

So if supersaturate movie colours, they look surreal here.

But California really _is_ teal and orange. The light is warm and intense, and
LA gets a lot of clear blue sky. So I wonder if directors like TnO because
it's a variation on natural Hollywood light.

------
bshimmin
Kubrick was always masterful with colour, and while he is probably best known
for his fascination with red [1], it's actually the orange/blue contrast in
"Eyes Wide Shut" that is most memorable for me.

[1]: [http://vimeo.com/112129153](http://vimeo.com/112129153)

------
graedus
Moviebarcode [0] provides some nice visualizations [1][2][3] of the color
palette of movies and other things.

[0] [http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/)

[1]
[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/104685404787/transformer...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/104685404787/transformers-
age-of-extinction-2014)

[2]
[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3432016573/traffic-2000](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3432016573/traffic-2000)

[3] [http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/8951346287/tron-
legacy-2...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/8951346287/tron-
legacy-2010-prints)

------
dharma1
If you are interested in colour grading, this is a wonderful piece of software
- [http://3dlutcreator.com](http://3dlutcreator.com)

That and davinci and you'll be fine

~~~
imjk
Can you elaborate a little on how this is different from Photoshop or
Lightroom?

------
tlrobinson
Final Cut Pro X literally has an effect called "Teal and Orange":
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/kdbub5jctmn4lqh/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/kdbub5jctmn4lqh/Screenshot%202015-01-29%2011.34.17.png?dl=0)

I applied it to one of my (totally amateur) drone videos
([https://vimeo.com/95716566](https://vimeo.com/95716566)) and thought it
looked kind of "good", now I know why.

------
iLoch
_Drive_ has some great usage of this type of cinematography if I recall
correctly. I think the author may have ruined watching movies for me now
though. :/

------
parenthesis
Overdone computer-enabled post-production colour manipulation is one of the
(many) reasons I find it hard to watch a lot of film and television drama
productions of this century.

I much prefer the result when the manipulation of colour is achieved through
lighting on the set or location.

Two examples of films I think have fantastic use of colour in the lighting are
_Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom_ and _Desperately Seeking Susan_.

------
hownottowrite
How do to color grading in Final Cut X
[https://vimeo.com/58051635](https://vimeo.com/58051635)

------
binarymax
I remember this from a while ago -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193657)

After I read that post it took something away from a lot of films for me,
since it was hard to not notice. In this context, ignorance is bliss I say! I
wish I could go back to not noticing.

~~~
moogleii
I'm not totally opposed to the idea since there's an artistic goal behind it.
Kinda like Instagram filters, which I admittedly used to oppose, but for
Instagram's purpose, which isn't vying for National Geographic awards, they
work well.

------
sosuke
I enjoyed Dead Silence, but some of the blue they do was overkill. For
example:
[http://static.yts.re/attachments/Dead_Silence_2007/Screensho...](http://static.yts.re/attachments/Dead_Silence_2007/Screenshot_006_large.png)

I hope we get a more natural dynamic range of color in the future.

------
steve94103
There's a really good video that illustrates & describes this effect. It's
targeted towards users of the color grading tools, but it's an interesting
watch nonetheless.

The Summer Blockbuster Colour Grading Tutorial:
[https://vimeo.com/65617394](https://vimeo.com/65617394)

------
Breakthrough
Full Metal Jacket had it's moments of blue and orange, but I'd classify most
scenes in the film as 'green'. Then again, Kubrick was known to be obsessive
in regards to attention to detail, especially when it came to lighting and
colour reproduction.

------
dsuth
This is all a little bizarre, as these are my two favourite colours,
especially in combination. As a teenager getting to paint my walls my own
colours for the first time, I chose orange walls with blue trim. I had not
idea it was so prevalent in movie-making!

------
Yhippa
When I shoot portraits of people with a flash I will sometimes use an orange
gel to give people's skin a more human look. White flash tends to take that
out of the final picture but the orange gel makes skin look more natural.

------
trhway
gold and blue, due to the price of the paint components, were hallmark of an
expensive art painting through the history until very recently. Thus using
those colors allows to exploit that association and puts your movie at
perceived level of the old masterpieces.

That also correlates nicely with the fact that cheap or produced in other
countries inferior color film (like in the USSR for example) didn't have good
blue, was reddish-greenish instead, and thus this gold/blue of today also
suggests associations with better quality.

~~~
throwaway2048
Maybe somewhat ironically, this assumed association with quality without an
associated real correlation with quality leads to crap trying to pass itself
off as amazing stuff by using such techniques. This then leads to an
association with crap rather than the quality they intended....

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tawdry](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tawdry)

------
Grazester
My girlfriend and I noticed this in 2001 with the movies "Sword Fish" and
"Traffic", We made fun of it and called it the cool movie filter. lol.

------
blt
I usually dislike any color grading over an entire movie. I recently re-
watched Snatch and its heavy green cast felt so obnoxious and ugly.

~~~
test1235
That's kinda weird, considering the vividly red cover.

------
peter303
1950s films looked washed out. Little green in outdoors Westerns or indoors
movies.

~~~
blt
Probably a limitation of the color film stock at the time. Technicolor used a
beam splitter and three strips of black-and-white film. It made super-vivid
colors but was expensive. Single-strip color film rose to the top in the 50s
and 60s with worse colors, but much cheaper and easier to shoot.

~~~
pkroll
The Adventures of Robin Hood, the Errol Flynn movie from 1938, is an excellent
example of three-strip Technicolor, and on blu-ray some scenes look like they
were shot last week, not 80 years ago.

------
coin
-1 for disabling zoom on mobile devices

------
3minus1
tl;dr human skin is orange

edit: why the downvotes? it's actually in the article

> Most skin tones fall somewhere between pale peach and dark, dark brown,
> leaving them squarely in the orange segment of any color wheel

