Color

Color in Visual Storytelling

Color is one of our most important tools and not merely because we can do beautiful things with it. Far more fundamentally is its power as a communications tool. Color affects the viewer in the same way that 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:

  • Basic color theory
  • Controlling color in the camera and in lighting
  • Visual storytelling with color

The Nature of Light

As we recall from the chapter on exposure, light is composed of photons, which have the properties of both matter and light. Even Newton recognized that individual photons don’t ...

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