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Conveying Emotion in Cinematography with Color Themes

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Outside Hollywood has an excellent post on Color Theory for Cinematographers. In the article, the author breaks down the film Blackhawk Down scene-by-scene, showing the consistent and effective color themes used throughout. In the film, Ridley Scott and DP Slawomir Idziak chose to buck the standard color theory trends…

…instead of the standard warm=friendly and cold=harsh, they chose to turn convention on it’s head by reversing the standard themes, disorienting the viewer and supporting the overall sense of confusion and chaos in the film. The end result is very effective, and it’s an interesting study in how they pulled it off. There’s also a very cool chart analysis of the film towards the end of the article. A must read. Check it out here.

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