Using colour to make a point.

[Zensteve]

Another article from the NY Times

First, the story about "Hero" and a bit about the heavy use of colours.

August 15, 2004
Cracking the Color Code of 'Hero'
By ROBERT MACKEY

The martial-arts epic "Hero," which opens on Aug. 27, is the product of an unlikely collaboration between two dazzling visual stylists: the Chinese director Zhang Yimou and the Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle. That they had never before worked together is not surprising. Mr. Zhang ("Raise the Red Lantern," "Shanghai Triad"), a former cameraman, is known for the quiet beauty of his carefully composed shots; Mr. Doyle ("In the Mood for Love," "Chungking Express"), who prides himself on his ability to improvise with the camera on his shoulder, prefers, as he says to "find the film" as he is shooting it. Mr. Zhang makes still lifes; Mr. Doyle is an action painter.

Why then did Mr. Zhang pick Mr. Doyle to shoot "Hero," his first attempt at a martial-arts movie with digitized action sequences in the style of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? According to Mr. Zhang, it was because Mr. Doyle is known for pushing film to its limits in order to produce extraordinary hues, and Mr. Zhang's plan was to divide "Hero" into five sections, each dominated by a single color.

The outcome of the collaboration is a spectacular film that looks like nothing that either man has done before. "Hero" tells and retells one story three times: how an anonymous assassin in ancient China overcomes three rivals. Two of the versions are false, one true. And they seem to come from different worlds: a red one, a blue one and a white one. "Obviously," Mr. Doyle says "it's our `Rashomon.' "

Add to this a frame tale dominated by shades of black, and a series of flashbacks infused with vibrant greens, and you have a film that functions like a prism.

While Mr. Zhang and Mr. Doyle insist the choice of colors was aesthetic, not symbolic, the coloration itself becomes the movie's theme. "Part of the beauty of the film is that it is one story colored by different perceptions," Mr. Doyle says. "I think that's the point. Every story is colored by personal perception." Slide Show: The Colors of 'Hero'

The really interesting part is here, where they have screenshots of various parts of the film along with an analysis of why the colours were used for particular scenes.

The Colors of "Hero"

Can't really copy/paste that one; it's the slide-show with images.

Anyways... my fave film with crazy colour usage is "Moulin Rouge". What other films pop to mind, along similar lines?

 

[NicklausLouis]

The Current Scr(i)pt magazine has an article about Hero where writer/director Zhang Yimou says this ...

"When I was writing, I was thinking about these colors and images all the time. I always take color seriously in my movies. Since this story was told in three different ways, I was hoping I could use different colors to tell the different stories. Because of this structure, I had a good chance to utilize different colors."

As far as other movies with noticeable color usage ... M. Night Shymalan always uses colors well in his flicks.

Poke

 

[OrangeMango]

I have the Hero DVD, and I can say that the usage of color is just breathtaking. More than one person has described it as a moving painting, and I absolutely agree.

Ghost World, directed by Terry Zwigoff, really works with color quite well. He recreates the whole comic book "look" of the original graphic novel. And speaking of visual adaptations, The Cat in the Hat trailer looked pretty impressive; never saw the film, though.

 

[Zensteve]

"The Cat In The Hat" was so impressive, that the surviving Mrs Geisel said she was never again going to authorise another adaptation of a Dr. Suess story, having seen it. 8)

(Clarification... she hated it)

 

[OrangeMango]

"The Cat In The Hat" was so impressive, that the surviving Mrs Geisel said she was never again going to authorise another adaptation of a Dr. Suess story, having seen it. 8)

(Clarification... she hated it)

Haha, yes. That's why I never bothered to see it. I was just talking about the color scheme

 

[SuperSoupy]

i liked the colour scheme in the first two batman films, it just set the tone right.
I only hope they get it right for the new batman film

 

[OrangeMango]

Based on the few shots I've seen, it looks like they're doing a great job. I mean, it's Christopher Nolan directing, right? Hard to go wrong with him.