Using Color Within Film To Strengthen A Visual Narrative

What I wish to accomplish with this paper is to explore the idea of using color, in an abstract manner, within film to build or strengthen a visual narrative. Color is forever present within our lives, but it has nonetheless always had a problematic identity, of which has fascinated both scientists and philosophers alike. Eisenstein would identify ‘the problem of color as the most topical and intriguing problem of our cinema’. Newton would give us the modern understanding of color we know today, through a series of experiments he would publish in 1972, showing his findings of light refraction through a prism, resolving it into its component colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. This helped give color a more physical identity, but that is not what concerns this essay, the psychological phenomenon of color and its application within film. Of course, it is necessary to look at the nature of color, to help us better define and understand it. Even the terminology of color becomes problematic when looking at different culture’s perception of color. Even within a single language there may be various names for the different shades of a single color. For example, blue and green being notoriously difficult to establish. Indeed, many languages (commonly groped as ‘grue’ languages) simply collapse blue into green, while others make no distinction between blue and black. Neither does every country have the same number of colors. The New Zealand Maori have some 3000 color terms while, in the Philippines, the Hanunoo have only four, each of which covers a whole range of colors that in English would be distinct.

The context of color is subjective but can be better defined by looking at individual cultures. For much of the West the color red would invoke emotions such as anger or passion. Blue is the typically heavenly color, the ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest, supernatural rest. As for the emotional context, Kandinsky puts its best. “Color is a power that directly influences the soul. The artist is the hand which touches one key or another to cause vibrations in the soul.” In film color can become an element of storytelling by use of repetition or by drawing the audience eye. Color can adopt a whole other meaning or atmosphere by connecting the color with a theme. A critical look to Michael Mann’s work will delve deeper into colors use within film narrative.

Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use shapes, colors, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect. We can Take this definition and apply it to color within film. In ‘Color as Space and Time: Alternative Visions of European Film’, Wendy Everett examines ways in which color, if isolated from its realistic or descriptive function, can assume an independent, even abstract identity. Although color within film has generally been used as a realist tool but I want to begin to separate color in its use as a realist tool and its use as more abstract one. A brief history of colors rocky introduction into cinema, will give us a look at colors jump from the static image to the moving image and the extra layers that this brings with it and further contribute to this idea of color being stuck to the realm of realism. The late 1890’s saw most film hand colored, in a time-consuming process of applying paint to each individual frame of film. It is worth noting that due to the chemical instability of the nitrate film base used, much of the black and white film that exist today used to be colored. Technicolor would become the norm for most post-war European audiences. Rudolf Arnheim a German born film theorist, was convinced colored film was nothing more than a gimmick to attract general audiences and that black and white film remained the superior ‘artistic’ identity. Color would be used sparingly and perceived as an element of fantasy, being restricted to the unrealistic worlds of musical and cartoons, in which the potential of fantasy was limitless. In Chromophobia, David Batchelor extends this notion by arguing that Western culture as a whole is basically afraid of color which it perceives as ‘alien and therefore dangerous’, on the one hand, and on the other as ‘merely a secondary quality of experience, and thus unworthy of serious consideration’.

In comparison Russian cinema used color in a much bolder and abstract fashion. Discussing Tarkovsky will also help to branch the gap between colors use for realism and abstract, as much of his work and writings look closely into the application of color and, as I’ll go in detail later, its inherent issues within film but also its potential for achieving an artistic vision. In short Tarkovsky argues that color needed to be expressive more than it needs to be descriptive. Tarkovsky had this to say on colors use as a realist tool, “the cinema is going through a bad period in terms of aesthetic. Filming in color is regarded as getting as close as possible to reality. But I look on color as a blind alley.” This in my mind showed Tarkovsky disdain towards colors use as realist tool and his praise of its use in more abstract manner. Later down the line the introduction of digital tools would make the application of using abstract color much more refined and streamlined for the filmmaker.