If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling

RED

THE CAFFEINATED COLOR

1

Lola has twenty minutes to find 100,000 marks to save Manni’s life. Red is her visual fuel.

Bright red is like visual caffeine. It can activate your libido, or make you aggressive, anxious, or compulsive. In fact, red can activate whatever latent passions you might bring to the table, or to the movie. Red is power. But red doesn’t come with a moral imperative. Depending on the story’s needs, red can give power to a good guy or a bad guy. After all, both the Wicked Witch and Dorothy wore the ruby slippers.

Because we tend to see it first, red gives the illusion of advancing toward us. Due to this, it can manipulate ...