The First Rule...
In the previous critical studies seminar, us first years were set with the horrifying task of creating a presentation on art direction, based on a topic of our choice. This could be anything from a couple of film stills to a painting. (Still a daunting task whatever the subject matter is!) I thought I could use my blog as an opportunity to just have a little play around with analysing colour and mood. For this, I've chosen to do a colour analysis of my favourite film, Fight Club. Breaking a couple of rules here but here goes...
I managed to find these really awesome stills from various different scenes in the film showing the variety of different tones included.
The above image is taken from the first scene of the film, I don't really want to spoil it for anyone reading so I'll try and get straight to the point. The majority of the movie has a very atmospheric choice of colours, consisting of mainly deep blues and greens which are obviously classed as cold colours - extreeeeemely relevant to the main plot of the film. The deep colours used within this film also help to create quite a menacing atmosphere. For example, the image below with the Narrator and Marla in the kitchen seems rather grungy. This would probably be down to the array of deep greens, greys and yellows helping to make the room seem dirty and unkempt. The sort of thing you'd expect from the old house at the end of a street that no one wants to go near because a creepy old woman lives there with 50 something cats scratching at the curtains every time someone walks by. Pretty awesome what a wee bit of lighting can do.
Again, we go back to the green tones. This time, we're in the Narrators office. Sticking with the dismal atmospheric colour palette, almost everything in the background is a mint green tone. This easily contrasts against the deeper tones of the wall, and more importantly, the crisp white shirt worn by the Narrator. The contrast between the shirt and background also draws attention to the character. Might also be good to mention that his boss also wears Cornflour Blue ties, again coinciding with the choice of colours. It also almost seems as though you're in the scene yourself, due to the depth of field. The camera is focused on the narrator, whilst his boss is slightly out of focus, again drawing your attention to the main character.
About 1/2 way into the film, this scene occurs. Yet again we can see the same green colour palette, this time the artificial lighting is making the place look grubby. You've even got the dodgy brown walls and ceiling pipes to add to the authenticity of the run-down, cheap motel look. Marla is also wearing similar coloured clothing, sticking to the colour theme of green. Whereas Tyler is very vibrant with the choice of clothing - contrasting well against Marla and the background tones. In my opinion, if the corridor was completely empty, it would seem like a scene in a horror game/film, probably an area you wouldn't really want to go near, but it intrigues you to find out what's at the end of it. Therefore I get a kind of creepy vibe radiating from this scene in particular.
Above is another colour palette from a much later scene in the film. This time we're shown a much brighter range of tones that seem to emit more warmth than those previous. I love how the right and left halves of this image are complete opposites in tonal and atmospherical qualities. For example, the left hand side of the image contains a variety of warmer tones, the most prominent being the yellow ochre. Whereas the right hand side seems much colder, washed out colours could possibly indicate dust in the air being captured by the sunlight. This again reflects on the points I made when talking about the kitchen - making the house seem grubby. (Peeling wallpaper!)
This video is probably the best representation of the limited colour palette used in Fight Club. However, by using these specific tones, it's helped to build one hell of an atmosphere. Every aspect of this film is beautiful, so you should probably stop reading this post and go and watch it for yourself...
"trust me, everything's gonna be fine..."
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