Take I'm literally like it's fake.

Have you not read about it?

It is fake.

My mom thought it was really She's very embarrassed for me.

Hi, Larry Sharon.

I'm a cinematographer.

Today.

I'll be talking about color and film House cinematographers use color to help tell ineffective story.

For example, how to certain colors, contrasts on screen to create depth separation and moved.

You probably noticed some changes just then, right?

Let's take it back a second.

So this flat de saturated image is a result of us shooting on a digital camera and something called Law.

This camera shoots in s law.

Three you could basically think of.

It is a raw digital negative before the color grading.

Shooting in log lets us retain a wide range of colors recorded by the sensor, which an editor colorist in post production in grade anyway, they want much different, huh?

We had a blue Varian stemmed up the orange to complement the blues.

I know it's all technical.

Trust me.

You don't have to think of it is technical stuff.

I was an economics major.

I don't know any of this stuff.

Color and film is comprised three main elements.

The color Hugh itself, saturation or intensity of that, and the brightness sometimes refer to his value or tone.

Saturation is probably the most subjective part of modern filmmaking.

Values of color refer to shades or brightness levels.

One way to create depth in an image is to use complementary colors or colors opposite each other on the color wheel blues go with oranges, reds with greens, yellows with purples and so on.

You play around to create different color schemes.

So how does the Scimitar for choose what colors to use in a movie?

It's hard to talk about color in motion picture photography without thinking of the legendary Zin, retired for Vittorio Storaro.

Seriously, after this is over, go watch the conformist Last emperor, Apocalypse Now he uses color as imaginatively as anybody in film history.

He actually had a whole color theory and with a sign colors to different moods.

In the movie, the emotions, the characters, we all have associations with color memories, how we think about color.

It's subjective for example.

Green It's a color in nature may evoke tension or envy or greed.

Or it may represent power of transition for a car, whereas warm yellows and oranges may have locomotion like comfort and home love, tranquility or not, I don't know.

It may make you want to go the bathroom so Color has a meeting in film.

But it's an aesthetic choice, and some masterful filmmakers choose not to use color in the same ways perhaps Harare or even myself.

And they use a limited color palette or the saturation to tell their stories.

I've always appreciated how colors contrast within the same image and how they could be used in movies to help evoke certain emotions and tell the story that took some examples is your father in Garden State?

The movie opens with him literally in a colorless world.

He lives in a tiny apartment with all white walls, white furniture.

We're trying to limit the color space because his life is a bit colorless at this stage.

In the movie, he opens up his mirror very little color.

Only the pills are the only color that breaks up the scene he drives to work in a fairly de saturated, busy highway.

So then the next contrasting color when he goes here is an example of contrasting colors against themselves and seeing the scene not just within a scene.

If you are willing to embrace color as a director like Zach is, you're gonna look for opportunities to show color from scene to scene, or certainly within the scenes.

Fun fact.

We shot this, I said.

Has anyone actually done this is so unrealistic, like driven away with the hose still in the car.

Three weeks later, I did it.

I'm just saying it's clearly marked, Okay, we're definitely not supposed to be here.

So this is seen from the hangover, which was the first film I did with Todd Phillips, who directed Joker.

And here we are shooting on a practical rooftop in Vegas in terms of lighting in here in the contrasting color of light.

Some of it is not necessarily motivated by emotion, but it's motivated by the desire to one be authentic to the environment, but also to help separate the world via contrasting colors.

We had a practical concern, which is we were shooting up there for riel, so this is an example of how production is on and cinematography are like entwined as closely as they convey.

Because here, as a cinematographer, I was basically helping to design the set by having us put in those fluorescent because you needed to light them in an environment in which we could shoot them from far away, you know, surround them.

So they have this science light well on the rooftops that red lies there as a way for airplanes and other things, to see the rooftops and to see the boundaries.

So those two contrasting colors of scion and red made for just a really wonderful way to separate out the actors from their environment jets.

Cheers.

What that wait.

This is a movie I shot called Paul.

They arrive on the top of a mountain to basically meet the spaceship.

That's gonna take Paul home, that the moonlight is the dominant source of light here, which is blue with a little bit of science, just personal preference as to where I like moonlight to bay.

They're supposed to see a spaceship coming, and in fact it's a misdirect because it turns to be the baddie flying in a helicopter to come take Paul away.

I've always been really happy with the way this turned out, in part because we decided to put these moving lights on the end of a helicopter when we talk about color and if we're talking about here, the color contrast I love the way that yellow and that yellow is not a yellow you see really naturally mixes with the moonlight in this scene that that light that came through the trees could have been anything if we had kept it blue or white light.

I just think it doesn't have the same power and the same striking imagery that I was looking for.

Another aspect of color in films.

Color temperature.

It has to do with how the color white light looks like on camera in a given temperature.

They're measured in Calvin.

You often hear about indoor temperatures like 3200 Calvin and outdoor temperatures by sunlight.

5500 Calvin.

Lower temperatures are considered warmer and could given oranges.

Tinto white, object on camera, higher temperatures, air considered cooler and provide a bluish look.

So, for example, has 3200 Calvin.

If you introduce something at 2000 degrees, Calvin who would be very warm and orange like firelight.

5500 Calvin.

If you introduce something at 10,000 degrees, it would be really blue.

You know, I gotta hand it to you.

Still, place is paradise, so this is from hangover Part two.

Here's a fire lit scene, right?

So it's warm, inviting.

It's the calm before the storm, so the first image as they wake up is gonna be them waking up in a grimy room in the middle of Bangkok.

It's daylight, but the lights are all on.

Is a tungsten ball been there to show contrast?

There's uncorrected Cy Inflorescence.

The warm light that's coming in there now is represented heat right, cause they're sweaty and hot.

One of the things that we talked about we talked about color temperature is the way it shows up in the form of like cool white or warm white.

But the other thing that really plays into lighting that we see in our natural world is the green spike or some lights, maybe very magenta, but often with fluorescence, they have a very high green spike.

So means in relation to the 3200 film stock when it shoots an uncorrected fluorescent.

As I say, it's also showing up with all that green spike in the form of green.

So you mix that cool color temperature with the green and you get science.

And that's that sigh in that we saw in the room when they first woke up in black and white.

You can really see how death is created with shadows and contrast on tone, the ultimate contrast being the silhouette.

Obviously, that's one extreme, but they're different values of exposure.

We use varying effects.

Famous still photographer Ansel Adams made Famous Zone system, which was a way to think about exposure and tone ality in a film image.

The lowest value.

Zero being towed black in the highest value.

10.

Being white with very little information at all, you can think about an image and think of all the tonality is between there in 10 steps of exposure.

It's a good way to think about the death you can create to shadow light darkness, but another way to create that depth in a way I really appreciate.

Just through color, two things could be the exact same tonal range.

But if they're different colors they create depth within the same friends.

All right, here's a clip from Joker.

He's suffering from severe insomnia.

At this point in the movie is going through this riel crisis because Joker, in large part, is a movie about opposite ends of the spectrum.

Two sides of yourself, a shadow in the light.

And so those contrasting colors is a lot like what's going on internally with Arthur, and that color difference makes a huge impact on the scene.

If we drain the color out of this, you can really see what we're talking about when we're saying values and tone ality of light.

But suddenly, if we bring all the color back in, we're now creating separation with the color.

The dramatic difference between the sodium vapor in the background and the uncorrected fluorescent sigh in blue.

One way to achieve natural color contrast in a movie is to exploit that 15 to 20 minute window each day known as Magic Hour, when the world is bathed in blue light and the balance of it mixes with all the natural light of the world.

Streetlights, storefronts, fluorescents.

Anything that's in there is contrasting with that beautiful ambient blue light.

This scene from Joker is a perfect example of Todd Nice shooting.

At dusk, we contrasted the build of the storefront that Mark Friedberg, the production designer, did and added a bunch of color contrast.

There are different colors to play off of the blues.

You can get some real beautiful stuff if you're willing to shoot in this tiny window.

And if everyone is hyper focused.

Funny thing happened, though.

Joker, another cute dust for some reason, right?

As we began to shoot right after the second take, they just started handing out tacos to the ground.

I went a little crazy because I went, Wait a second.

We have 20 minutes to shoot this scene.

Can we just wait on the tacos?

One of the fun things about Joker was creating Gotham in the seventies and early eighties for May.

A large part of that was representing whatthe cities looked like back that, well, big part of the city's.

Back then were the street lights, and the street lights were sodium vapor.

You don't see sodium vapor as much anymore, and they're really going away that green orange gross life.

That's what we saw back then.

That's how the city represented itself on film but also in our memories, little bit gross, but for me, quite beautiful.

It's an example of the blue light that bathes the city at this time of day, and then us adding these warmer sodium vapor lights in those positions on the building.

We turn some lights on inside the building in the interest of the reality of the space in the world in which we live.

We're now adding another color, this sort of warm, white, uncorrected, fluorescent yellow warm to his lobby.

And then when he gets into his home, that's the first time we're introduced to some warm, comforting tungsten light.

It's lamps, it's warm.

It's inviting Andi.

It's probably the warmest, most gentle light that's in the whole movie.

Those guys look at sex like parking the car like there's a spot Florissants that existed back then.

They were just gross and ugly, and they had a green spike.

And so, in the interests of being authentic to the time, but also loving the contrast of that sai into the yellow downstairs and then to the red here.

This environment, because we're backstage, is a real opportunity to mix a lot of color, but he's going to go into environment in which now he has to perform with all these red lights that have shades over them.

You can barely see the people.

The ideas focusing on Arthur struggle.

So in terms of lighting and the tonality of the scene, the people were meant to be a bit invisible.

This is really Arthur's moment almost for himself.

But this slightly dirty but little bit cooler spotlight was in the interest of putting him in a very harsh, almost an interrogation light.

Overexposed, certainly not something that you could hide from.

And here he was, exposing himself in a really human way.

Let me big preface that I think is important.

Everything I talk about is somewhat emotional and intuitive to me, So I often talk about contrasting colors like yellow and blue because they're on opposite ends of the spectrum.

So all you people that know about color theory it's complimentary.

I always say contrast ing Forgive me.

I don't know much.

Just a simple guy trying to make a movie.

Thank you so much for watching this.

If there's two things you take away, one all of this technical stuff.

Don't worry about it.

Just feel the scene.

Feel the emotion of the lighting and try to express that as best you can and whatever you're doing in second behind camera for a reason.

So I apologized for all the stumbling around this thing.

Use this in whatever way you can and go make something cool, Take risks.

And remember no tacos at dusk.

Come on, people.

Shoot small window of opportunity here.

All right, Thank you.