The Effects of Film Illumination Hues – An Exploration Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2020.278Keywords:
Color, Cinematic Lighting, Film, Perception, Appearances, MoodsAbstract
This study is an attempt to investigate the ability of different colors used in cinematic lighting designs to affect audience’s impressions towards the appearance and mood of film characters. The study critically appraised existing cinematic lighting techniques and identified the two basic color groups (i.e., warm and cold colors) that should be examined in order to answer the research questions and formulate its conclusions. To provide the needed empirical evidence for this research work, some experiments with a representative sample of viewers were conducted. These experiments confirmed the existence of direct relationships between various colors of lighting and the perceived appearance and mood of film characters. Moreover, specific color hues of lighting appeared to be more effective than others in altering the perceived appearance and mood of film characters. The study concluded that audience’s perception of appearances and moods within cinematic images is linked, even in part, to different colors of lighting.
References
Akser, M. (2011). Reinvigorating film studies: an immodest proposal. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 1(1), 1-3.
Bang, M. (2016). Picture This: How Pictures Work. Chronicle Books LLC. Revised edition.
Berlyne, D. E. (ed.) (1974). Studies in the New Experimental Aesthetics. Washington, DC: Hemisphere.
Bloomer, C. M. (1990). Principles of visual perception. New York; Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
Boyle, G. J. (1987). A cross-validation of the factor structure of the Profile of Mood States: Were the factors correctly identified in the first instance?. Psychological Reports, 60(2), 343-354.
Brown, B. (2018). Motion Picture and Video Lighting 3rd Edition. London: Routledge.
Castellanos, J., Delicado, J., Dominguez, C., & Rigo, C. (1994, October). Hypermedia method to teach concepts of colour through art. In Proceedings of the second ACM international conference on Multimedia (pp. 321-327).
Chen M. (2011). Visual Literacy for Theatre. Linus Publications.
Dondis, D. A. (1973). A primer of visual literacy. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ericsson, K. A., and Simon, H. A. (1993). Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Glenn, B. L. (2002). ‘The Three Penny Opera: Designing lights with brecht’. Mphil thesis. Louisiana State University.
Gooch, B., Reinhard, E., & Gooch, A. (2004). Human facial illustrations: Creation and psychophysical evaluation. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 23(1), 27-44.
Grawitch, M. J. (2004): ‘Comparing the structural and functional approaches to mood: Design and validation of the approach-avoidance mood measure’. Ph.D. thesis. Saint Louis University.
Henry, R. C., Mahadev, S., Urquijo, S., & Chitwood, D. (2000). Color perception through atmospheric haze. JOSA A, 17(5), 831-835.
Holtzschue, L. (2017). Understanding Color: An Introduction for Designers. 5th Edition. Wiley
Hornung, D. (2012). Color: A workshop for artists and designers (A practical guide on color application for artists and designers). 2nd Edition. Laurence King Publishing
Kang, J. (2004). The effect of light on the movement of people. PhD thesis. University of Minnesota.
Kaufman, D. (2004). Light conversation. Back Stage. 45(17): 45-48.
Kingdom, F. A. (2003). Color brings relief to human vision. Nature Neuroscience. 6(6): 641-644.
Lam, W. M. (1992). Perception and lighting as form-givers for architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Landau, D. (2014). Lighting for Cinematography: A Practical Guide to the Art and Craft of Lighting for the Moving Image (The CineTech Guides to the Film Crafts). Bloomsbury Academic.
Lee, H. C., Hao, X., and Varshney, A. (2004). Light collages: Lighting design for effective visualization. IEEE Visualization 2004. October 10 – 15. Austin, Texas, USA. p.p. 281 -288.
Malkiewicz, K. (2012). Film Lighting: Talks with Hollywood's Cinematographers and Gaffers. Revised Edition. Touchstone.
Mc Nair, D. M., Lorr, M., and Droppleman, L. F. (1971). Profile of Mood States: Manual. San Diego: CA: Educational and Industrial Testing Service.
Misek, R. (2010). Chromatic cinema: a history of screen color. Wiley-Blackwell.
Moyer, D. and Flynn, B. (2019). Visual Literacy Workbook: For Graphic Design and Fine Art Students. Oxford University Press.
Park, Y. and Guerin, D. (2002). Meaning and preference of interior color palettes among four cultures. Journal of Interior Design. 28(1): 27 – 39.
Pierman, B. C. (ed.) (1976). Color in the health care environment. Proceedings of a special workshop held at the National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, Maryland. November 16, 1976. Washington: Department of Commerce.
Rotem, O. (2003). The world as one whole: The syntactic role of color in film. KINEMA. Spring 2003.
Russell, P. M. (1999). Focused instructional multimedia design guidelines. Volume one. PhD thesis. Staffordshire University.
Scanlon, T. J. (1970). Viewer Perceptions on Color, Black and White TV: An Experiment. Journalism Quarterly, 47(2), 366–368.
Schwartz, S. (2017). Visual Perception: A Clinical Orientation, 5th Edition. McGraw-Hill Education.
Serafini, F. (2013). Reading the Visual: An Introduction to Teaching Multimodal Literacy. Teachers College Press.
Seif El-Nasr, M. and Horswill, I. (2004). ‘Automating lighting design for interactive entertainment’. ACM Computer in Entertainment. 2(2): Article 05.
Street, S., & Yumibe, J. (2019). Chromatic modernity: Color, cinema, and media of the 1920s. New York: Columbia University Press.
Tomasulo, F. (2019). Teaching creativity: a practical guide for training filmmakers, screenwriters, and cinema studies students. Journal of Film and Video, 71(1), 51-62.
Van Gorp, A. J. (2000). ‘Guiding issues of artificial light use in urban landscape architecture’. MPhil thesis. University of Manitoba.
Vanstone, K. M. (1998). ‘Media images and effects on mood and eating: A function of dietary restraint?’ Mphil thesis. University of Manitoba.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
- Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- the Work is the Author’s original work;
- the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- the Work has not previously been published;
- the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.