Cinematography, Colour & The Coming Of Age

A cinematographer's job is to interpret the screenplay in a visual form and impact the audience's emotions through colour, composition, and lighting. The director and cinematographer need to understand the themes and emotions conveyed in the story and need to use visual elements to push the story forward. Cinematography includes different types of lights, film stock, gels, exposure, aperture etc to achieve a specific visual look.

The Psychology of Colour

Every colour has three main components:

Hue, the colour itself
Saturation, how intense the colour is
Value, how light or dark the colour is

These can all have a major impact on the types of emotions that are invoked for the audience. All colours are associated with different meanings and emotions depending on context.

Red- Anger, violence, passion, love, blood, war, rage, strength
Pink- femininity, softness, happiness, romance, innocence
Yellow- illness, hazard, wisdom, excitement, youthfulness optimism, happiness
Orange- humour, energy, warmth, enthusiasm
Green- renewal, wealth, growth, environment, envy, disgust
Blue- faith, calm, spirituality, peace, depression, sadness
Purple- passion, nobility, wisdom, power
Brown- earth, home, stability, comfort
Black- sexuality, wealth, mystery, evil, fear, unhappiness
White -innocence, purity, cleanliness, love, peace

Being able to use colour to create harmony, or tension within a scene, or to bring attention to a key visual theme can be used to create effect. In the sense of the work of the world’s greatest cinematographers, we admire so much nothing is accidental. A strong red color has been shown to raise blood pressure, while a blue color has a calming effect. Some colours are distinctly associated with a particular location or place, while others give a sense of time or period.

Colour schemes

Monochromatic
A colour scheme based around only one colour

Complementary Colour Scheme
Two colours on opposite sides of the colour wheel make a complementary pair. This is by far the most commonly used pairing. A common example is orange and blue, or teal. Complementary colours also matter in storytelling. Like if you're trying to bring a couple together and to show their chemistry as well. And set them apart from the backdrop.

Analogous Color Scheme
Analogous colours sit next to each other on the colour wheel. They match well and can create overall harmony in the color palette. It’s either warmer colours, or cooler colours so it doesn't have the contrast and tension of the complementary colours.

Triadic Color Scheme
Triadic colours are three colours arranged evenly spaced around the colour wheel. One should be dominant, the others for accent.

The Colours in Coming of Age Films

Call me by your name (2017)

The synopsis follows teenage Elio, who falls in love with his fathers intern in Italy in the summer of 1983. The colour palette in this film is like a preserved memory of Elio's experience. The palette includes a lot of yellows, greens and blues, giving a washed out and tanned look to the footage. It's faded but is still vivid and full of splashes of vibrancy here and there, we get a dreamy feeling, and it looks like a memory, as if Elio's is reminiscing on the summer of 1983. Connoting that this was a shaping and lasting experience for our main character, the colours didn't just focus around the first love and passion of the film.

American Honey (2016)

The synopsis follows a poor girl called Star, who joins a travelling magazine selling crew to get away from her toxic home. She falls in love with one of the crew and the film also follows their turbulent relationship. This film is more vibrant, saturated and colourful. Everything is bright and full of vitality like it would be through the eyes of an adolescent. The magazine crew is fiery and red full of energy and celebrating their youth and freedom. It's not a memory it is a painting of this characters experience and a celebration of youth. The film is partly a documentary aswell because most of the actors are playing themselves, therefore the film is not as heavily structured like lets say a Wes Anderson film, when it comes to colour. The surroundings of the film are all real and not sets, the film is very gritty and also shows themes of poverty in America. The film shifts throughout different colour schemes depending on the scene, keeping the saturation and punchiness throughout the film.

Andrea Arnold's visual style

Andrea Arnold, her films explore social realism, by representing life in the lower class she ahs also worked wiht Robbie Ryan who is her cinematographer and is known for his ability to shoot with natural light. She is known for filimg the story through the mian characters perspective, so we as an audeince can live vicariously through the protagonists experince, accompanied with handheld camera movements we feel part of the scene. The handheld camera movements connote the intstability of the characters lives and their situations. Arnold gets her cinematographer to spontaeously follow the action, she doesn't like her scenes to be to controlled and blocking and shot lists are not really followed or used. She experiments to find the best look. When asked why she shoots in a specific style she said "I want to make it feel like we've dropped in on some peoples lives, with a lot of films people are sitting on the outside looking in but i want the audience to get a bit more intimately involved with whats going on"

American honey, and cinematographers like Robbie Ryan, have been the biggest inspirations for the visual look of my short coming of age film. I really want my film to be a small reflection of youth, so i would like the colours to be bright and punchy in certain scenes. American Honey itself is filmed with handheld shots which immerses the veiwer in the film, i like the use of random cutaway shots to the surroundings because it adds a sense of reality and truth as to were we are. Its also a good and interesting way to transition to another shot. Interestingly imagery is used to convey the characters situation. Arnold uses a lot of imagery and cut away shots of nature to show the freedom that her charters desire, they act as a metaphor, for charcters who feel trapped and want to be set free. Definitely something that i want to incorporate into my film. Robbir Ryan is known for his use of natural light and for working on dramas, like the favourite and I, Daniel Blake. He caters to the directors needs and his work is quite realistic.

Euphoria, a lesson in cinematography

I wanted to mention Euphoria in my research because it is has been so influntial to my generation. The cinematography in the show has become iconic and refreshing. The show is also about teens and a apart of the teen genre which includes themes from the coming of age.

The series follows a drug addicted Rue, fresh out of rehab, and the people and friends surrounding her, who are all troubled teenagers searching for themselves and battling thier own inner emotional conflicts. It's a drama about complex relationships and challenging solutions for characters to decide. This series has become renouned for its beautiful use of colour and cinematography, i have never really seen something that uses colour so effectively to communicate and convey intangible emotions and feelings so well. The visual language of the series was to convey emotional realism, so everything had to be more bold. it has a very expressionist visual style that highlights the themes of sexuality, mental health and drug abuse and matches the characters emotions.The cinematographer Marcel Rev said that

"It's not really based on realism. We called it 'emotional realism'
thats more based on the characters emotions,
and not how the world surrounding them really looks"

Some themes include,

• The juxtaposition between dark themes. The show ranged from shots that are very realistic and siturbing to very psychedelic scenes at parties or drug trips. My favourite shot from euphoria is a corridor shot. Rue is walking through a corridor at a party and the corridor starts to rotate around her, she begins to climb and walk on the walls. Its a disoreintating scene that shows Rues confusion.

• The colour grading is moody but has bright colours subtly in the background shining on actors sometimes.

• The camera became a character itself always sweeping around the characters and revealing their world, by moving in on a character or navigating around a long take. We explore the world of the show in a new unique way. Using dolly shots to move in on a character or crane boom shots going above or below a character. Tracking the camera when someone is walking or tilting it above a character, rolling the camera to give a sense of disorientation. Giving us the full range of omnoscient perspective that focuses on mutiple characters. The camera flows and creates a forward momentum, we are guided by a storytelling force.

• The show uses a lot of boca to keep the subject in focus and to show whats important and the characters emotion

• The show is shot with colour grading in mind. Ambient light is used in a lot of the scenes and the sets are designed with it. The stylistic choices give the show a distinct look and aura.

• Marcel Rev's use of complimetary colours create a separation and contrast. He wanted the colours to have a system and to be grounded in his use of colour, so throughout the show we see a lot of primary colours, which heightened the emotion of some of the visuals.

Lighting & My Inspirations

I want the lighting in my short coming of age film to be very naturalistic and sublte in most of the scenes. I want my coming of age to be relatable and not glamorised. I am planning to film some of my footage outside, so i would use natural daylight when filming. At my films climax, there is going to be a small party scene. Taking inspiration from Euphoria i would play around with coloured gels and lights to create a mood and to communicate my main characters emotions, using a complimentary colour palette would look higher production value and add an element of contrast with my main character and his/her surroundings. I would like to take various shots on set to experiment with boca, in the same way that Euphoria uses boca to make the audience pay attention to a character.

This is just some of the Lighting equipment that i might use or borrow:

Robbie Ryan & his use of natural light

Robbie Ryan does not worry too much about light because he has said that the world already has enough of it. He has said that to find your style you just need to see the world through a camera. His use of natural light has also stemmed from him working with directors like Ken Loach and Andrea Arnold, who make films about social realism, the characters are built up in the real world, therefore the cinematography and lighting has to be minimal and natural. To build up this natural realism, his lighting to suit the language of the films. He likes to use natural light as a base. The quality of his light is usually soft and that of natural ambient light, by using diffusers in his lights or using keno flos that have a wider light spreed. To put it simply and to link to what i mentioned earlier. My coming of age film is very naturalistic, i want the characters to feel like they are part of the real world, my simplified natural lighting will connote this.

Actor Blocking & Staging

Blocking is the placement of actors within a frame, and it refers to how actors move within a scene and interact with their environment. Blocking also relies on the actors body language to communicate the story. Depending on where characters stand and their levels it can also communicate characters opinions, beliefs and emotions, and how they feel about each other. Depending on the amount of actors you have in a scene, placing them around the frame communicates each persons importance or contribution to that particular part of the story and how the character feels about what's going on.

Staging, is placement and movement of the camera in relation to blocking. It is a cinematographers job to plan movement, camera placement and the area of focus with the director. When blocking and staging work together you can create an interesting visual story full of subtext, instead of a simple functional scene.

With blocking and staging, it is also very important to consider and remember the lines and shapes that are in your scene, whether they are horizontal or parallel. Shapes can be created out of these lines to bring focus to another character or move an audiences attention. Refer to the picture from a scene in Guardians of the Galaxy, where a conversation is happening but more important action is being stages behind it. Eye lines/attention lines are also important. (Where are the characters looking? We as an audience will want to see what they are looking at). On the left we have a shot out of Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange'. Kubrick began as a photographer and his close attention to staging and lines is very clear. He stages his scenes so that a single frame can communicate a story. We can see the attention lines and where the characters are looking at, their placement within the scene matching the straight lines behind them, the shadows guiding us. The levels in this shot also communicate who is more dominant over who in the moment.

For this years FMP my film will have scenes with more than two actors in them. So i need to consider blocking, and visualize where i want certain actors to stand within a particular scene. For example, i am going to have a party scene that will be the climax of my film, leading to the resolution. I will have to think of how i want my character to move around multiple people and around the room, so thinking of how i want to stage my camera is very important to create a good quality scene. This could include, me planning out shot lists with blocking in mind, and figuring out who needs to be in frame or not depending on the script and who my main character is interacting with.

Storyline & Structure

Screenwriting has a structure to it. In every film you watch you can identify the different acts and plot points within the story. A screenplays structure contains certain plot points and key incidents that push the story forward and lead us into the next act. I will be referring to my favourite book about screenwriting and story structure is Syd Fields 'Screenplay The foundations of screenwriting'

To begin any story you will have an inciting incident. An Inciting incident usually occurs before the first plot point and it is what grabs our attention and drives the story into motion. For example in Pulp fiction the opening scene is a couple talking about how they are going to hold up the restaurant it then cuts away to two hitmen retrieving a suitcase (its a bold opening sequence) In American beauty we see the boring life of Lester Burnham as he goes about another day of unfulfilled dreams. As i mentioned earlier in my research, in the opening to American Honey, we see Star our main character, seeing a bunch of kids dancing in a supermarket, this sparks her interest which pushes us towards plot point one, which is her going off to work with them as a magazine seller.

You need to have a dramatic premise which is what they story is about, it is a conceptual description of it. Now we also have a key incident in screenwriting terminology. A key incident also reveals to us what the story is about, but this is done in once specific scene or line within the film. The inciting incident sets the story in motion and the key incident establishes the story.

Plot points

Plot point- Any incident or episode or event that hooks into the action and pushes in a different direction towards the resolution. It directly impacts whats going to happen next. It doesn't matter if your story is linear or non linear, the plot points will still be there and still anchor it.

Plot points 1 and 2 are the story points that hold the three act structure in place and anchor your storyline, The paradigm is essentially your first, second and third act.

PP1- The set up of the story ends, and this is the characters call to action. It moves the story into the second act.

Midpoint- The midpoint is in the middle of the story and it is an event that raises the stakes for the protagonist because they cannot go back, they need to become proactive to reach their goal. It can be a false victory or defeat. The midpoint can also be a moment when the character is reflecting on themselves, having an identity crisis or question. foe example in Gone girl, the midpoint is when Amy's husband has a press conference to clear his image, but Amy's best friend decides to ask him what he did with Amy. He has to act to save himself.

PP2- The character becomes determined to reach their goal, their actions and obstacles in the second act have brought them here. This leads to the story's resolution and is a low point for the protagonist. Plot point 2 leads us to the climax of the story in which the character may or may not reach their goal/need. For example the second plot point in Gone Girl, Amy comes home and admits to her husband that she lied about being kidnapped, her husband wants nothing to do with her but if he leaves Amy will frame him for attempted murder.

My storyline

My storyline meets the coming of age genre because my main character has an epiphany and has a new perspective by the end of the film which is a trope of the genre. I wanted to add the coffee scene to show my characters indecisiveness and be metaphorical for him being confused and lost in his own life, however it also creates a subtext that links the audience to the last scene in which the main character puts a coffee down next to him at primrose hill, the morning after the party, it gives us something to think about, him putting the coffee down shows that even though he is still figuring things out, he is now more grounded.