Color plays a role just like any actor. Blue comes with its own connotations and emotions, tools that artists can utilize in their masterpieces. Van Gogh’s “Starry Night and” the blue hue on “Twilight” are two examples of creatives who found ways to incorporate blue to implement emotion and depth. The use of blue in art is deliberate, so pay attention to the feelings it sparks in you.
Filmmaking can be like assembling a machine with thousands of moving parts conjoining to form the final product. Within film, color is meant to guide the film’s tone and tap into the viewer’s subconscious reactions. The versatile and evocative color blue is used by filmmakers to heighten the emotional impact of scenes and convey specific themes. Given filmmaking’s deliberate nature, the use of blue in film is never coincidental. The meaning behind employing blue hues within a film dives deeper than most viewers can discern.
“Blue is something you do not embrace,” said University of Miami film professor Thomas Musca. “It is not as inviting, whereas the greens and yellow invite you in more.”
Musca says that blue is often associated with nighttime or coldness. In contrast, its complementary colors, red and yellow, are associated with daytime and warmth. Musca, a highly accredited filmmaker with a four-decade-long career in producing, directing, and screenwriting, is color blind. The professor, who cannot differentiate between shades of blue, says he needs to weigh color psychology more heavily into his filmmaking process.
“I often find myself having long talks with my director of photography and production designers about my handicap and how to use color,” said Musca of his alternative methods of employing color psychology.
“Blue is what darkness is when you illuminate it,” said Konstantia Kontaxis, the department chair of cinematic arts at UM. “I believe this is very true for film,” added the professor, who teaches film editing and directed research courses.
“I think there is the blue what we call the blue of daylight on a color temperature scale; daylight is the bluer edge of the scale,” said Kontaxis. “Blue daylight is meant to convey an upbeat or happy moment, whereas the darker the blue, the gloomier and more sinister the scene can be.”
“The truth is we can take a color and imbibe it with an emotional thing,” said Edmund Talavera, another film professor at UM. Talavera, who teaches cinematography courses, says that blue can range in meaning depending on the shade. “Blue can be the open sky, symbolizing freedom; blue can also mean sadness by being the color of a kid’s shirt when he died,” said Talavera.
The meaning of color is very vague,” added Talavera. “But we, as filmmakers, decide what the color means and try to use it throughout the film to affect the audience.” During the filmmaking process, the filmmakers will choose the color for the overall feel of the world they are creating — this is the primary color. Succeeding this decision is selecting a secondary color for the character and the things they deal with; this color often compliments the primary color. Filmmakers will then pick an accent color that changes over time to illustrate how the characters develop throughout the story.
“The selection of the primary, secondary and accent colors plays into every aspect of filmmaking,” said Talavera. “Whether selecting lighting, locations, props, makeup looks or wardrobe options, everyone knows we are playing with these colors and tries to use them as creatively as possible.”
“When you talk about objects, you talk about set design and color there is determined by contexts and what is going on with the character,” said Kontaxis. Color and lighting are often denoted as the creative toolkit of a cinematographer, allowing them to create the mood by selecting the quality of light.
“In great films, set design and lighting work in tandems; together, they conspire for a great film,” added Kontaxis. “Color is a way to externalize emotions by putting on sets to make sure the color is apparent throughout the use of color and imagery.”
Talavera says three things impact how well colors play together: the hue, the brightness and the saturation. Often, dependent on these three variables, blue does not play well with colors near it on the color wheel, such as green and purple.
“Blue is very popular to use as a primary color to represent the feel of the world,” said Talavera. The cinematographer says that for a film he shot, he and his coworkers decided to shoot it in New York City and add blue hues to the film to dull the city, making the scenery look bluish and colder.
“Nobody wants to watch a bland and grey film,” said Alex Patriotis, a junior majoring in film. “You can tell the quality of a film by how it looks on the screen and how the colors play together.”
Patriotis said that even before becoming a cinematographer, he subconsciously looked at the colors used in film because he likes vivid, interesting-looking things.
“When I watch films, I look at things from the standpoint of someone who also creates,” said Collette Belzer, a sophomore majoring in film. “I try to pay attention to colors and how they shift the tone.”
Belzer recalled filming a longshot film, or a one-take film, for a class earlier this year. For this one-shot thriller, Belzer said she used lighting to foreshadow the main character’s murder, using a cooler purple tone to convey mystery. However, when the protagonist was later discovered she was not in imminent danger, the lighting switched to warm tones for the surprise party her friends had planned for her.
“Blue can be mysterious,” said Belzer, adding, “I have noticed a pattern of blue being associated with emotion. Blue shows when someone is sad, prompting you to wonder why; blue suggests that there is a story to be told.” Belzer said the “Twilight” film series exemplifies this well, using cool tones and a blue aesthetic in the gloomy, desolate town where the protagonist struggles with loneliness when she arrives.
“Blue is typically a sad color,” said Belzer. While watching the Disney film “Soul,” Belzer said she noticed the use of blue when the protagonist regretfully reflected on his life post-mortem. However, when he realized there was never a purpose to living life — only to live to the fullest and have fun — filmmakers filled the screen with warmer tones.
“Depending on what the story is trying to convey, a lot of times it all goes back to the common mindset of blue being a lowkey color,” said Patriotis. “It is an important color, but nothing aggravates; blue is calm like a pendant or a small blue orb.”
“Blue feels very quiet … it’s a vibe,” added Patriotis. “When I see it in a film, it makes me mellow and eases me into whatever is coming next.”
“Blue stands out for the things that cannot be verbalized by the characters or captured in film,” said Kontaxis, speaking of Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film “Blue.” The cinematography professor says that in some movies, blue becomes almost like storytelling, woven in as an essential part of the story.
No matter the motive, using blue, and color psychology in general, is meant to guide the audience along whichever journey a film takes them on. And isn’t that what every great movie is about? A journey?
words_caleigh russo. photo&design_lizzie kristal.
This article was published in Distraction’s Winter 2023 print issue.
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