In his extraordinary colour studies at Yale University the artist Josef Albers demonstrated and defined what is called colour interaction.
(Block, 2020)
Albers’ studies clarified theories about how colors appear to change their hue, brightness, or saturation when placed next to each other. His demonstrations, based on his personal work and the work of his students, developed into a set of rules that accurately predict how colors interact with each other and appear to change. Making a color change its appearance requires two ingredients:
- The susceptible color – a color that appears to change.
- The catalyst – a color or tone that activates the change in the susceptible color.
The same interaction can be created from shot to shot, which is called successive contrast. In successive contrast, the catalyst is the color in the first shot and the susceptible color is in the second shot.
(Block, 2020)
For the rest of Term 1, I concentrated on finding books on colour and learning the different systems, analyses, and approaches to classifying the art of colour. “The Visual Story: Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV, and Digital Media” (2020) by Bruce Block talks about colour interaction, which I found interesting considering I was writing about a scene with only two colours. However, after careful deliberation, I decided that it would have to be an entire essay chapter to discuss the details, and it is not worth just mentioning it in the article. I also don’t think that such an approach was taken by the concept artists at Platige Image.
I thought about describing the scene in the context of the entire short (or other colour palettes), but due to the scope of the critical report, I rejected this idea. Instead, I turned to other books to deepen my knowledge and background in the essay.
Further questions:
- Should I explain where I get the correlations between colour and emotion?
- Should I go into more detail about the theory behind it?
- How accurate should I be when explaining colour theory (e.g. colour scripts)?
- Why am I deconstructing a particular scene?
- Can I include the artists’ opinions on colour in the essay?
Areas to research:
- Derrick German
- Andy Warhol
- Experimental filmmakers
- Early filmmakers
- Disney
Bibliography:
Albers, J. (1975) Interaction of color. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Atterbury, R. (1971) Colour: the art of its uses. London: Franklin Watts.
Binns, B. (1991) Designing with two colors. New York: Roundtable Press.
Block, B. (2021) The visual story: creating the visual structure of film, TV, and digital media. London: Routledge.
De Grandis, L. (1986) Theory and use of color. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Eiseman, L. (2000) Pantone guide to communicating with color. Cincinnati: How.
Evans, R. (1974) The Perception of Color. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Gage, J. (1999) Colour and Meaning. London: Thames & Hudson.
Guild, T. (1995) Tricia Guild on colour: decoration, furnishing, display. London: Conran Octopus.
Holtzschue, L. (2017) Understanding Color. Fifth edition. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Libby, W. C. (1974) Color and the structural sense. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Padgham, C.A. (1975) The perception of light and colour. London: Bell.
Platige Image (2019). Fish Night. Available at: https://platige.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/FISH_NIGHT_STILLS-12-1-1800×1074.jpg. (Accessed: 02 January 2023).
Verity, E. (1980) Colour Observed. London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press.