How to color films: five popular schemes in coloristics

Recently, many old black-and-white films that have become classics have been painted, so this will not surprise anyone. But have you ever thought about the fact that modern paintings undergo significant color processing and initially look far from as juicy as we see them on screens?

Initially, the frame in the movie looks like this.

And only after post-production we get this.

In most cases, they try to shoot in such a "faded" format, which is called logarithmic. This format is low-contrast, has a large dynamic range and extensive color coverage.

And this is done in order for a person who works with color, a colorist, to be more comfortable working with the source material.

Over the long years of the existence of color cinema, the most popular color schemes have appeared. To select the necessary combination, use the Johannes Itten color circle.

There are five most popular color schemes in cinema.

1. Complementary color scheme

Most often you can notice combinations with blue and light blue, which are so characteristic of modern blockbusters.

About the most popular colors — blue and orange.

The saturation of colors may vary, but complementary pairs of colors often look very natural and delight the public eye. A few more examples:

2. Similar color scheme

3. Ternary color scheme

The three colors are equidistant from each other.

4. Split-complementary color scheme (contrast triad)

Very similar to the previous scheme, but instead of one opposite color, two are used.

5. Tetraidal color scheme

Keywords: Before and after | Colorization | Shooting | Movies | Colors

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