Let's start with a picture.
▲ Image courtesy of The Associated Press
After seeing what the first word appeared in your mind was, I took this picture and asked several friends for their first impressions, coincidentally, the answers they gave were all movies.
What a science fiction movie, the special effects are so realistic, oh, recommended to show me.
Although many people hope that this is just a special effect of the movie, the answer is no, in fact, this picture is a live shot of the mountain fire in California, USA.
The reason why this mountain fire scene map will be mistaken for film special effects, and the large, continuous orange in the picture is related, this strange scene composed of the same color, most people can not see in their daily lives, and the film is through the color to create a scene that does not exist in life, leading the audience to immerse themselves in the story told by science fiction movies.
Through the visual element of color, the film affects our emotions at the same time, but also subtly affects our cognition.
Believe it or not, if you think about the picture corresponding to the word "end of the world" now, is the result similar to the movie you have seen?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > science fiction movies answer a non-existent question with color</h1>
What the future should be like, what the end of the world should be like, what the alien environment, what the aliens should be like.......
This series of questions is what every science fiction screenwriter and director must answer, for science fiction movies, if even the basic plot settings cannot convince the audience, I am afraid that not many people are willing to spend money to buy tickets to enter the cinema, or even unwilling to click on the video platform movies.
Just as movie cameras will always deliberately imitate the movement of people's eyes, the purpose is to hide the existence of the camera, so that the audience believes that this is a real environment, and the audiovisual content shown in the film frame is the real story that happens, and immerse themselves in it.
Ordinary movies can also build scenes according to the real world, so that the audience will not have a sense of withdrawal.
But science fiction movies often set the story in the future, the end of the world, and other times, and no one knows what the environment was like at that time. Sci-fi film directors don't know, but they use the visual element of color to build the scene, and it's convincing enough.
This is because color, as a visual element, can have an impact on people's emotions, especially when large pieces of color appear in the same scene. Pink is usually associated with innocence, red is passion, yellow is desolate or morbid, and so on.
▲ The main color of "Mad Max 4 Fury Road" is yellow
The plot of the movie "Mad Max 4 Fury Road" is set in a future world where a nuclear explosion occurred, and the film uses a large number of desert-based yellow colors, giving people a desolate and lonely feeling, which increases the credibility of this plot setting.
In the classic science fiction movie "Alien" series, black has become the main color of the movie, on the one hand, black is often associated with mystery, unknown, etc., in line with the space scene set by the plot, on the other hand, in order to highlight the horror image of the monster alien in the film, the use of a large number of black scenes can also trigger people's fears and better immerse themselves in the movie.
"Avatar" takes blue and purple as the main colors of the movie, generally speaking, blue and purple will give people a mysterious and illusory feeling, just in line with the alien planets and alien civilizations set in the plot of the movie, which are mysterious to humans.
In addition to the soundtrack, the film uses visual colors to connect the audience's emotions and echoes the plot setting, creating one visual spectacle after another to attract the audience and bring freshness, while also allowing the audience to better immerse themselves in the "dream" created by science fiction movies.
Of course, the application of color is also well-founded, they often come from our daily life experience, such as the Gobi Desert, the desert is often sparsely populated, scarce resources, and yellow is the main color of the Gobi Desert and the desert, naturally it is easy to associate the word yellow and desolate.
Life experience will be spread more and more widely according to people's migration and circulation, and eventually become our common culture, which is based on the recognition of culture, which makes us associate colors and then affects our emotions.
The influence of color on people's emotions has formed a special discipline in continuous research and development - color psychology, in addition to movies, brand packaging design, clothing, etc. are the application areas of color psychology, through the color to affect emotions, to complete sales.
Film as a kind of audiovisual art of author expression, although only more than 100 years of history, but the author's exploration of the content and way of expression has been very rich, in addition to the use of color to affect emotions, to help promote the audience into the "dream" described in the film, color can also be a narrative variation tool, and even the film industry has deduced a special three-color law.
Film directors have many more applications of color.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > to intensify dramatic conflict with color</h1>
Color can affect people's emotions, and the conflict and contrast of different colors is often a sublimation of the film's plot and intention, serving the narrative. The 2017 high-scoring movie "Big Buddha Plus" is basically based on black and white tones, and only the two protagonists use the computer to watch the content of the boss's driving recorder, and the video screen turns to color.
▲ "Big Buddha Plus" uses a lot of black and white and color interspersed editing, and the picture is from Douban
After seeing the color picture recorded by the dashcam, the two protagonists could not help but let out an exclamation:
The world of the rich is indeed colorful.
This sentence is also the most widely spread and the most popular line in the whole film. The director shows the difference between the rich (the boss) and the poor (the two protagonists) in black and white, giving the audience a strong visual impact, while also emphasizing the class difference between the poor and the rich.
In the high-scoring movie "Schindler's List", it is also dominated by black and white tones, and only little girls are dressed in red. The conspicuous little red in the black and white of the blockbuster is difficult to ignore. The cute little girl symbolizes hope in the film, but ends with a corpse on a body carrier.
Such a strong visual impact is a good expression of the theme of "Schindler's List" - anti-war.
In addition to deepening the theme and allowing the audience to empathize with the film, the alternation of colors often plays a metaphorical role in the movie, suggesting to the audience the development of the plot and the emotions of the characters, especially in some films with suspense, the frequency of occurrence will be higher, and the mileage medal work "Hero" in the era of China's film blockbuster is a movie case.
The big scene and visual spectacle are many people's impression of the blockbuster "Hero", but in fact, the color elements in the film are equally important. "Hero" segments the film through red, blue, white, black and other colors, suggesting that the story of "assassination of the King of Qin" is told by different people, and each person's way of telling and character psychology are also different.
The black expression in the film is reality, the assassin nameless played by Jet Li talks with the King of Qin, and the black is also a display of the atmosphere of slaughter and martial arts in the Qin Dynasty.
When it comes to the nameless storytelling, the main color of the picture turns to red, love, jealousy and other emotions become the theme of the story, when the King of Qin tells this story, the main color of the picture turns blue, reflecting the calmness of the King of Qin as a monarch, and when the story of "Hedgehog Qin" is finally told, the color of the picture turns to white, symbolizing pure white, implying that this is the most true version of the story.
The three times the story is told, the narrator's mentality and position are different, some people support the hedgehog, some oppose, under the story's many reversals, the color is actually the "hint" given by the director.
As the most intuitive visual element of the film (video), color can be used as an environmental element to guide the audience's emotions, and can also be used as a narrative element, showing the psychological state and plot direction of the characters, and strengthening the dramatic conflict.
Today, when video is popular as a content medium, it also affects our perception of things.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > movies are a reflection of our daily experiences and also influence our cognition</h1>
Professor Dai Jinhua of the Department of Chinese at Peking University once told a film-related experimental story.
Once, a documentary filmmaker showed a documentary he had made to a primitive tribal ethnic group that had never been exposed to modern culture. To the director's surprise, the primitive tribes were actively discussing a chicken, but he didn't find a chicken in the documentary.
You must know that as the director and editor of the film, he has watched the content of the documentary countless times, and all the content has long been familiar with it, but he does not realize that he has made a chicken. In desperation, the director could only choose frame by frame to watch the documentary carefully, and finally found the chicken in a small corner of the picture.
The reason behind this is that most people subconsciously pay attention to the most common things in their lives and cultural traditions when watching movies, and the primitive tribesmen actively discuss this chicken because it is very common in their lives.
Movies are a reflection of our daily life experiences, and everyone can see in the movies the content corresponding to their own life experiences, and there are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people.
At the same time, film creators use people's common life experience and cultural traditions to put elements such as color and music into the film to create one color spectacle after another and attract the audience to immerse themselves in it. And these film wonders spread in large quantities, but also integrated into the audience's life experience, become a new culture, affecting the audience's cognition, such as seeing the endless orange wildfire, the first thing that comes to mind is the special effects of the movie.
The plot in science fiction movies also indicates the direction of life development, and true wireless headphones are not the products of the imagination in earlier science fiction movies.
Movies are a reflection of our everyday experiences and also influence our perceptions.