

Teal and Orange in Hollywood movies - thmzlt
http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html

======
ethank
To every generation there is a film technique which defines it. There was the
smokey grey/green from the Matrix films. Michael Mann had his desaturated
shallow-DOF look. David Fincher uses silver-retention on his film development
to extend the dynamic range while underexposing his shots (thats why interiors
in Seven were so "dark" yet exposed).

Part of the device of cinema is extending the mise-en-scene outward and upward
to the representational devices (projection, development and treatment).

Part of the study of film is tracing how the use of technique defines
generations of film makers. Often, technology serves as an impetus for a style
(i.e., Robert Altman and the use of multi-track audio on Nashville
precipitated very "talky" films from the 70's/80's), or the developments in
computer motion controlled rigs.

Or lets not forget: lens flares.

Color grading (ie, the orange/blue compliments in this article) are also
defined by outward influences like magazine photography, trends in CGI, etc.

Anyhow, in a few years a new dominate "look" will pervade cinema and we'll all
have something new to complain about.

~~~
waterside81
Both this comment and your comment further down below are really illuminating
to a film luddite like me. It's always interesting to hear the nitty-gritty
details of someone else's trade. It always amazes me how much detail goes into
things that at the end of the day, the end user is none-the-wiser.

Thanks for the informative posts.

~~~
rdtsc
Interestingly you might find that once you are aware of such details it is
hard to go back and "just watch a movie".

You start noticing color gradients, lighting techniques, camera angles, and
many other technical details, and spend mental effort categorizing and
critiquing them instead of being immersed in the experience, like, perhaps,
you were before.

As computer geeks notice bogus computer terminals in the movies, and it is
somewhat irritating and frustrating "no, dammit, that is not what a mainframe
terminal looks like!" film geeks do the same with movies.

~~~
nickheer
After working a bit on a film in college, I started noticing cuts, and it
started to drive me insane. It's one of those things that's largely
inconsequential. I, as an audience member, am aware when a cut is made. But
now, after doing a bit of editing, I notice just how many cuts there are.
Conversely, I now have eternal admiration for scenes comprised of as few cuts
as possible (cf. "Children of Men").

~~~
rdtsc
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ark> just took that to the extreme and
made the whole movie in one long shot. It is interesting to watch just for
that effect. The content is only interesting if you care or are familiar with
Russian history.

~~~
ethank
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epB5Z6ijpk> The Player, opening scene. Self
referential of the fact that it's all one cut.

A dissection of the Copacabana shot from Goodfellas -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBMKyNJvNV8>

And one of the most brutal long-takes I've ever seen: the Death of Little
Bill, Boogie Nights (NSFW): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znwh41szei4>

------
relix
Am I the only one who doesn't mind the blue/orange gradient? I don't get why
everyone is going mental about it (this article and many like it have popped
up frequently over the last few years). The article itself isn't even worth
reading, filled with hyperboles like "...a monstrosity that would eventually
lead to one of the worst films ever...". Especially the history lesson at the
end is superfluous.

Ironically enough, the first thought I had when I visited his blog was "oh god
no not another white text on black background site!". But I'm not going to
write an article about the trend of light text on dark background, which would
actually be a more valid complaint because it objectively reduces readability,
while the orange+blue palette is just taste.

~~~
moultano
> it objectively reduces readability

Would love to get some pointers for good reads on this. I've always felt the
opposite.

~~~
vukk
Yeah, I use Readability in Inverse mode myself so I can get my reading in dark
background and light text.

To be fair, that is not white on black, it's very-light-grey on dark grey.
Personally I find white #FFFFFF on black #000000 hard to read too, but very
few sites use such colors.

Light grey on black, which this blog uses, seems perfectly fine for me.

Might there be differences of opinion because of differences in monitors? I'm
using Eizo S-PVA, so I might have it better than those with cheaper LCD
monitors.

------
yason
I have barely noticed the color schemes. I do recognize different color in
films from different ages--for example, I like the warm colors of 70's and
80's film--but generally I don't care much because it doesn't distract me from
enjoying the film.

However, there's a huge issue that has practically stopped me from watching
the recent films, or nearly anything made in the 2000's.

It's how cutting the film and camera tracking have changed. It used to be more
about long takes and cinemaesque dolly shots that also give time to get
immersed in the film. But there's a newer trend that started in the late 90's
and developed fully a few years later: extremely short and rapidly changing
cuts and excess hand-held filming with the camera shooting from within the
scene, rapidly turning and changing positions. To me, it feels like watching a
strobo light: I literally have no idea what's happening in the film. It just
all flashes in front of my eyes.

The problem is that it's not just action-packed scifi films or anything: many
films in all genres have become more fast-paced. You can barely find a
romantic comedy or a drama without several scenes that enable this ADHD limbo.
To make it worse, even European films have begun to adopt this style in the
last decade.

I watched some old action films such as Rambo or Terminator recently and I
must say that even they were more moderate in tempo than the last few, and not
necessarily action, films I've seen in the cinema in the last five or so
years. This is just terrible and I hope cinematography will recover soon or
that these tricks will move on to the 3D videos.

Similarly to reading books, a good film gives you the essentials of the plot,
characters, and the visual scene only and leaves the rest to your imagination.
And giving space to this imagination is crucial to make a good film.

A good film must not give you everything because it can never be as good as if
you had imagined it yourself. In opposition, these youtube flicks with 50M
budget are only trying to make a first impression on you.

~~~
derleth
> Similarly to reading books, a good film gives you the essentials of the
> plot, characters, and the visual scene only and leaves the rest to your
> imagination.

Vonnegut would disagree that books need to be as spare as you imagine. As
would Tolkien and William S. Burroughs. You have a rather narrow view of the
art to leave out those authors.

~~~
yason
I've only seen books where you absorb textual descriptions of what's happening
by deciphering sentences and paragraphs written in some vague form of language
which leaves using your imagination to be the only way to actually make it
vivid and real. But, I probably don't know everything.

Films are a bit different because they inevitably offer some visual scene that
is much more pre-set than a book can ever offer. But there comes the art of
cinematography which, like any art, is about showing pointers to what can't be
seen. This approach has become more rare yet it would be very useful
especially in dramatizing these action and horror films that, these
days,diverge from it most.

It's often much more effective to _not_ show what's happening than detailed
takes of the action. A cliche is that the first time an alien or a fictional
monster is shown on the screen, the film will falls flat because the
unrealistic visual mock-up blatantly kills all chance for your imagination to
do its job. Similarly a hectic fighting scene just gets lost in the action but
the same could be filmed differently, showing something that all the fighting
points to, instead of showing the fighting itself. With books, they say that a
writer should describe what happens instead of writing his interpretation of
it.

------
tantalor
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193657>

------
bornon5
Using complementary colors to make your subjects "pop" is just standard color
theory.

When coloring anything, you pretty much have to choose some variation of
red/green, orange/blue, or violet/yellow. Anything else blurs into one of
these three.

We'd all do better to criticize specific color choices, rather than
stigmatizing one of the three possible general palettes. Otherwise it's like
criticizing violins or oil paint for being overused.

------
Vivtek
Wow, all you people with your fully functional color vision. Maybe I _won't_
get the retinal DNA hack if it causes this much pain.

------
mikecane
I think this was the first thing I ever submitted to HN. It got several
hundred points and hit #1 for a time. It's amusing to see things resurface
here.

EDIT: It was the 17th submission, 538 days ago, My god!
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193657>

------
wallawe
I first noticed this in the movie "Traffic." Great movie and cinematography in
my opinion, but I noticed how the orange came out in the Mexican drug cartel
scenes and a heavy blue in the DC ones.

~~~
ethank
That was an intentional narrative device from Soderbergh though.

From IMDB:

"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."

~~~
joshuamerrill
"Inception" took a similar approach, where each dream level had a unique tint.

------
huhtenberg
Tron certainly takes the prize here, but at least they had a plausible excuse
for the palette choice :)

~~~
lloeki
The blue/orange palette comes straight from the 1982 original. The author does
not make a valid point with TRON, especially as he is concerned about color
realism. As he says it's set inside a computer so it could look like anything.
Any way I read his argument, it ends up contradicting itself on that one.

------
fuzionmonkey
Blue/Orange contrast is used because red/green has too much of a Christmas
vibe. Complementary colors look good. Its not like its a conspiracy.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Yellow and purple don't look particularly good. Besides, you can make any
combinations of color look good.

~~~
pak
Not a Lakers fan eh? NY's complementary sports colors of choice seem to be
orange blue, pretty close to the palette the OP hates (Knicks, Mets).

------
joshwa
These correspond to the basic axis of light typically found in the real world
(up until fluorescent, anyways):

Blue = natural light (5000-8000K)

Yellow/Orange = artificial/tungsten light (2400-4500K)

Anyone who's shot actual film will know that if you shoot daylight film in
tungsten, it comes out yellow, and vice versa. For you young folks who only
ever knew digital cameras, that's the "white balance" function automatically
correcting for you.

It's only natural for this set of color contrasts to show up in film (try
shooting something lit by a tungsten lightbulb in front of a north-facing
window).

/professional photographer

~~~
dantkz
I disagree. The effect of illumination temperature does take place, but in the
article the stress is on color grading. It is that color grading that makes
faces orange under both daylight (Transformers example) and tungsten light
(iron man example).

------
djenryte
Insightful article. Happy for the repost. Missed this the first time around.

------
JasonPunyon
The first time colors really stood out to me in a movie (and I noticed it
while watching) was One Hour Photo. The range was so wide and the colors
really added to the story telling. Later (I think on the DVD special features)
someone broke it down into it's constituent parts and I really understood an
example of how someone designs with color. Very illuminating.

------
baddox
When all you show is frames that happen to be teal and orange, of course you
can make it look like all movies are just teal and orange. Also, the sky is
blue and light-colored skin can easily look orangish, which explains most of
the frames.

~~~
sesqu
Ever since I saw the first of these articles a few years ago, I've
occasionally paid attention to this effect (and a little before then). It's
not when teal and orange occur that's distracting, it's when nothing else
does. You sometimes see scenes with orange trees and teal shades, with no
other hues.

The best example of this, to me, is the CSI franchise. LA was light blue, NY
was straight up blue and Miami straight up yellow.

~~~
stdbrouw
Yup. Never really been upset by the teal/orange thing in movies, but in CSI
everything looks like they've let a first-year cinematography student go wild
on it. And even so, I wouldn't say it looks ugly, it's just a cheezy effect.

------
ejs
It is pretty common in any form of art or photography to use color balance to
convey a mood.

The eye is pretty good at dealing with these things, does the author get
frightened and angry when the setting sun makes things appear orange?

~~~
swah
In the the article he says that both effects (nighty blue and sunset red)
can't happen at the same time IRL...

------
bluedanieru
The last bit about this 'disease' infecting artists through history was
particularly odd. Can you imagine! We might end up with works like this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafe_Terrace_at_Night>

Van Gogh was a big fan of these colors and it shows in his work.

~~~
mtts
Van Gogh also admitted, in a letter to his brother Theo, to using deliberately
exaggerated colors because he suspected the pigments he used were of such poor
quality that they'd quickly fade to something more sensible.

Which turned out to not always be the case.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more
arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully." (Letter to Theo van
Gogh, 11 August 1888), see
[http://painting.about.com/od/artandartistquotes/a/Quotes_Van...](http://painting.about.com/od/artandartistquotes/a/Quotes_Van_Gogh.htm)

That link has several quotes on use of colour.

Van Gogh is notable in his symbolic use of colour.

------
wavephorm
Post processing isn't exactly new. Not sure what the big deal is. I'm just
wondering how long it'll be before we see entire feature length film processed
using HDR?

~~~
sp332
Pretty much every film ever made on real film is in HDR. What would be "tone
mapping" in a digital HDR image is just "developing" a film.

------
pwg
Ironic value of complaining about the ugliness of Hollywood movie color
schemes while utilizing an absolutely putrid color scheme on the blog itself:
priceless.

Physician, heal thyself.

~~~
ugh
Can we please stop this?

You are not making a valid argument, not in any way, shape or form. It’s pure,
irrelevant bullshit.

It’s possible to be completely unable to color grade yet still notice trends
and write that you think they are horrible.

But you are not even talking about the author’s ability to color grade, you
are talking about fucking web design which is a tenuously related field at
best. It just makes no sense at all.

Critics do not have to be good at what they criticize in order to be good
critics. Would Roger Ebert be a good director?

It’s astonishing really, a complete non-sequitur.

~~~
foobarbazoo
The author is a colorist.

~~~
ugh
And? Was I suggesting the author isn’t or what? Criticizing the author’s web
design skills just makes no sense whatsoever. It just doesn’t. There is no
connection.

I was also trying to make a larger point: Even if you think the author’s work
sucks you can’t just dismiss everything that is said.

~~~
rumpelstiltskin
_Even if you think the author’s work sucks you can’t just dismiss everything
that is said._

Yes. We can. Some ppl may not like it, but we certainly can.

~~~
joshuamerrill
The reason that "some ppl [sic] may not like it" is because it's logically
unsound. Dismissing a point of view based on the party, rather than on the
position, is the definition of a tu quoque fallacy.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque>

P.S. I agree the author's web design isn't exactly "web 2.0" but it clearly
does not diminish the author's credibility to comment on film colorization.
They are completely separate.

~~~
uuoc
> Dismissing a point of view based on the party, rather than on the position,
> is the definition of a tu quoque fallacy.
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque>

Except that the original poster's comment was not a tu quoque fallacy. Note
from your source:

    
    
       This form of the argument is as follows:
    
           A makes criticism P.
           A is also guilty of P.
           Therefore, P is dismissed. 
    

In this instance "P" is "Hollywood color choices". The original poster did not
dismiss P (i.e., a dismissal of P would be that Hollywood color choices are
perfectly fine). The original poster dismissed the blog authors reputation to
assert an opinion regarding Hollywood color choices because the blog author,
by virtue of having made awful color choices in his blog, had presented
evidence of lack of knowledgeable sufficient to assert an educated opinion
about P (Hollywood color choices). Whether Hollywood color choices (P) are bad
or good remains an open question, P was not dismissed.

Note further in your own citation:

    
    
       Legitimate use
    
       The legitimate form of the argument is as follows:
    
           A makes criticism P.
           A is also guilty of P.
           Therefore, A is dismissed (from his/her role as a model of the principle that motivates criticism P).
    
       The difference from the illegitimate form is that the latter would try to dismiss P along with A. It is illegitimate to conflate the logically separate questions of whether P is a valid criticism and whether A is a good role model.
    

Which is exactly the use made by the original ironic/priceless comment. "A"
(blog author) criticized "P" (poor color choices). "A" is also guilty of "P"
(poor color choices). "A" was dismissed.

~~~
joshuamerrill
1\. As another poster already said, "Readability and typography is not
something someone who color grades deals with." EVEN IF I were to accept that
this is not a tu quoque argument, the two skills are _completely different_. I
am personally a web designer, and I have no basis or knowledge to comment on
color grading in films. None.

Nevertheless, it's a moot point because...

2\. I believe the original poster's comment, "physician, heal thyself" is a
reference to a person (in this case, the author), and not to a position.

Can I make this any plainer?

~~~
uuoc
> I believe the original poster's comment, "physician, heal thyself" is a
> reference to a person (in this case, the author), and not to a position.

That would therefore be an incorrect assumption:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician,_heal_thyself>

"The moral of the proverb is counsel to attend to one's own defects rather
than criticizing defects in others, ..."

Or, in other words, before criticizing movie color defects, attend to his own
web color defects.

> I am personally a web designer, and I have no basis or knowledge to comment
> on color grading in films.

Granted. But, would you say that your experience in web design and color
selection would allow you sufficient knowledge to identify an absolutely awful
movie color scheme? I would posit yes. The converse would also be true.
Someone with movie color grading expertise should have sufficient knowledge of
colors to at least make a reasonably passing effort at reasonable web color
selection. I.e., the underlying basics apply and carry through in both arenas,
even if the particular technical specifics differ.

