Using colour in cinematography || Seamus McGarvey || Masterclass

Cinematography and how it relates to
engendering or evoking emotion

for a narrative or a story is --

I mean it's not the essence
of cinematography,

but I think many cinematographers

hone in or focus on lenses,
on camera, on stock, on the medium itself.

And something that I really love,

which I think is the most potent aspect
of cinematography

in how light and the imagery
tell stories,

is colour itself.

No, not just a colour
but colour contrast,

the juxtaposition of colours.

And I know that there are
colour theorists

who describe what particular colours mean.

They do have a very
unconscious effect,

physical effect on you
when you watch a movie.

And I think that sometimes
that slips in unconsciously to you

as you watch an image.

There are great colour theorists
from Goethe to present day,

cinematography theorists like Storaro,
who has great notions

on colour and what it means
and how it affects your emotions.

I love thinking about that.

I've worked with directors
who understand that.

For instance on
We Need To Talk About Kevin,

Lynn Ramsay was very specific
about the colour red

obviously as a harbinger of doom,

also as a signifier of anger or unease.

It's a great colour in cinema.

We used that extensively on
Noctural Animals as well

because there's something about it,
whatever frequency it has,

900 nanometers, whatever it is,

it oscillates, it almost vibrates.

Film is a great way
of registering it, actually,

digital hasn't quite achieved
that truth in colour

because colour in digital
is more of a translation.

On film too but somehow
film records deep colours

in a very alchemical way

and you get this effect
of almost a stained-glass window effect

with celluloid that I think
goes into your head in a way.

So on We Need To Talk About Kevin
we played with red quite a lot

and that was an ongoing theme
through the film.

In Bad Times At The El Royale,

we used colours as a way of, kind of a photographic
signature of each character;

it's almost like Cluedo, where
each character had a colour dimension.

That was a way of
separating their identities,

but also something underlying about
the colour character

the red again and the Billy Lee character,
Chris Hemsworth's character,

signifying impending doom, and blood and death.

The black and white signified
the truth and lie of the priest.

The mustard and green
of the Darlene character,

played by Cynthia Erivo,
having kind of a purity and an innocence.

The soiled cream white
of the little Rose character.

It was about defining the character
through those colour tropes they have.

It's interesting what colour can do
to an audience.

I love playing with colour that way.

The Greatest Showman talking about colours
is an entirely different beast

because there was less thought
about what the colour meant,

but certainly, we had to evoke
a carnivalesque environment and

a circus environment.

So colour there was used more
in a bombastic, spectacular way,

cynically I suppose, but also just for
its symphonic effect.

I know that Ellen the costume designer had

great fun working with
big bold colours

reds and purples
and greens and yellows.

Although we shot it digitally
on Alexa 65,

the fun of that was working with
such bold colour effect imagery

and that extended into lighting as well.

We consciously used gels and
went with more saturated colours,

extended that to the DI as well.