२७ सप्टेंबर, २०२६
"What has happened to colour in movies? Was there a meeting in which it was decided that the visual medium of film should now be as visually depressing as possible?"
"That instead of rich greens, cheering pinks and passionate reds, today’s cinema palette should be muted pastels and smudgy browns, as if a horrid grey film now covered all camera lenses? What movie could possibly have prompted this torrent of rhetorical questions?"From "I’m so sorry, this new Sense and Sensibility is simply dull/Daisy Edgar-Jones is lovely as Elinor Dashwood, but why mute the joyful comedy of Jane Austen’s funniest book?" (London Times).
Compare the color in the 1995 version of "Sense and Sensibility":

१२ टिप्पण्या:
I've heard that pretty much every frame of a modern movie has been adjusted in post production. So the color choices are deliberate. I'm guessing that a lot of it is simply programmed in at a high level, where everything is adjusted with a few commands. Think of how you want the sky to be uniform throughout a sequence even when shot on different days.
But why do they choose dreary palates? Maybe the same reason low-cost CGI tends to be dreary? Chromaticism costs more and is less convincing? It tends to look artificial?
\end uninformed speculation
There are virtually no shadows in the exterior scenes. Maybe that saves money.
Why the dreary palettes? Look around at American society today. Everything is a dreary palette: architecture, clothes, gray cars, black cars, dreary looking women, dreary mindsets, dreary movies, etc.
I remember saying at an early age The Godfather looked “very brown.”
We could just ask AI why modern palettes are so dull, but what's the fun in that? Uninformed speculation exercises the brain muscles a little.
I posted on this here in the Peter Max thread.
OnwardandUpward said...
"Everything is a dreary palette: architecture, clothes, gray cars, black cars, dreary looking women, dreary mindsets, dreary movies, etc."
I can only comment about the cars. Recently, I have noticed bright cars popping up again. Kandy Apple paint jobs are coming from the factories. Perhaps we have saved ourselves from droll.
It turned into color, you subjects of Her Majesty!
Wait, do you mean the whole world prior to, say 1920, wasn't all black and white ? That's the way I envision it.
Wince: "I remember saying at an early age The Godfather looked “very brown.” I don't think that was the movie--just the first DVDs that were released as a set. They were unrelievedly dark; but later mastering got it back to viewable, I believe.
Ditto for cars. What the heck happened to all the orange and blue and red and ridiculous looking cars people used to drive? Now everything is black or grey or white. So sad. It's like the Taliban took over or something.
James Lileks used to regularly point out the predominance of blue/teal/aqua shades in commercials for prescription drugs. When you look for it, it's very obvious, especially in the Jardiance commercials.
A.I said…
“The Godfather features a very dark, warm color palette dominated by rich browns, ambers, and deep shadows.
Cinematographer Gordon Willis used low-key lighting and deep shadows (chiaroscuro) to give the film its signature dark look.
Warm Tones: Interior scenes, especially in Vito Corleone’s study, rely on infinite shades of brown, mahogany, and soft orange to create a rich, enveloping atmosphere.
Artistic Choice: This muted, shadowed appearance was designed to reflect the moral ambiguity of the characters rather than the bright, flat lighting typical of 1970s studio films.”
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