Cinematography-Theory-And-Practice

COLOR IN VISUAL STORYTELLINGColor is one of our most important tools and not merely because wecan do beautiful things with it. Far more fundamentally is its poweras a communications tool. Color affects the viewer in the same waythat music or dance does: it reaches people at a gut emotional level.For this reason, it can be a powerful tool in creating visual subtext.There are three aspects of color that we must understand as cinematographers:The Nature of LightAs we recall from the chapter on exposure, light is composed ofphotons, which have the properties of both matter and light. EvenNewton recognized that individual photons don’t have “color,” butthey do have different properties of energy that cause them to interactin different ways with physical matter, which, when reflected isperceived by the eye/brain combination as “color.”Every beam of light has a characteristic color which can vary ifiblelight is a small part of the continuous spectrum of electromagneticradiation, most of which is not directly observable, and wasunknown until the 19th century. At the low-frequency (long wavelength)end of the spectrum we find radio, television, microwave,and infrared radiation.Then we encounter a tiny slice of the spectrum, that we can seewith our eyes; this extends from red to violet — the colors of therainbow. They were originally classified as red, orange, yellow,high-frequency colors are ultra-violet, x-rays, and gamma rays.is no longer used. Where formerly it could be memorized as Roy G.all properties of a wave. Light can be described in terms of its wavelength(Figure 12.4), which is measured in nanometers. A nanometer isone billionth of a meter.The Tristimulus TheoryMost people can tell you that the three primaries are red, green, andblue, but few can say why these, of all colors are the primaries. Thereason lies in the physiology of our eyes.The human retina is filled with two kinds of light receptors thatare called rods and cones. The rods are primarily responsible for theperception of light and dark: value or grayscale. The cones primarilyperceive color. The retina has 3 kinds of cones. The response ofeach type of cone as a function of the wavelength of the incidentlight is shown in Figure 12.5. The peaks for each curve are at 440nm(blue), 545nm (green), and 580nm (red). Note that the last two actuallypeak in the yellow part of the spectrum.Figure 12.1. (previous page) Color isan important part of this still from amusic video. (Photo by the author.)Figure 12.2. The naturally occurringcolor spectrum and respectivewavelengths in nanometers.380nm 450nm 490nm 560nm 590nm 630nm780nmcinematography228