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In filmmaking, color is used to set the tone of a scene before any of the actors have even uttered a word. Red is used to denote passion, danger or power. Pink signifies innocence, femininity and beauty. Yellow is associated with joy, naivety and insanity. Blue symbolizes isolation, passivity and calmness.

StudioBinder has come up with an interesting infographic that showcases the different color schemes used by filmmakers and the range of emotions they evoke. Check it out below.

Color Psychology In Films: A Supercut

Here's a brilliant montage by audiovisual media student Lidia Seara that shows how filmmakers use color psychology to portray the desired emotion in certain scenes.

00:03 - Innocence
00:09 - Sweetness
00:16 - Feminity
00:48 - Violence
00:57 - Passion
01:23 - Sociability
01:32 - Warm
01:42 - Youthfulness
01:56 - Madness
02:03 - Insecurity
02:14 - Nature
02:23 - Immaturity
02:31 - Destruction
02:49 - Calm
02:57 - Remoteness
03:15 - Fantasy
03:29 - Erotism

Also See:

Share this post with an artist, designer or a movie buff and voice your views in the comments below.

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How Filmmakers Use Colors To Set The Mood Of A Film

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In filmmaking, color is used to set the tone of a scene before any of the actors have even uttered a word. Red is used to denote passion, danger or power. Pink signifies innocence, femininity and beauty. Yellow is associated with joy, naivety and insanity. Blue symbolizes isolation, passivity and calmness.

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Color sets the tone and mood of a film before any of the actors have even uttered a word. Directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski used a green tint in The Matrix (1999) to create a mood palette that was suggestive of the early monochrome computer monitors. Yellow was used in Kill Bill (2003) to depict Uma Thurman's character's madness and instability.

Romantic comedies use pastel shades like beige, pink and lilac. Sci-fi and cyborg films use shades of blue, grey, and green. Teal and orange seem to be the trend in Hollywood nowadays, especially in movie adaptations of graphic novels and comic books.

To highlight the significance of color in films, UK-based designer Gaby Smith has come up with an interesting project called Cinema Palettes, that features color palettes derived from memorable scenes of famous movies. So far, Gaby has compiled more than 250 palettes, some of which might even give you color ideas for your next design project. Check them out below.

1. Aladdin (1992)

2. Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)

3. American Beauty (1999)

4. American Psycho (2000)

5. Annie Hall (1977)

6. Birdman (2014)

7. Corpse Bride (2005)

8. Deadpool (2016)

9. Django Unchained (2012)

10. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

11. Forrest Gump (1994)

12. Frozen (2013)

13. Gone Girl (2014)

14. Grease (1978)

15. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)

16. Inception (2010)

17. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

18. Jaws (1975)

19. Jurassic Park (1993)

20. Kill Bill (2003)

21. Kung Fu Panda (2008)

22. Life of Pi (2012)

23. Lost in Translation (2003)

24. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

25. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

26. Nightcrawler (2014)

27. Peter Pan (1953)

28. Pulp Fiction (1994)

29. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

30. Romeo + Juliet (1996)

31. Spirited Away (2001)

32. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

33. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

34. Suicide Squad (2016)

35. Taxi Driver (1976)

36. The Avengers (2012)

37. The Dark Knight (2008)

38. The Godfather (1972)

39. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015)

40. The Lion King (1994)

41. The Martian (2015)

42. The Revenant (2015)

43. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

44. The Shining (1980)

45. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

46. The Theory of Everything (2014)

47. The Truman Show (1998)

48. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

49. Titanic (1997)

50. Top Gun (1986)

Which one's your favourite? Share this post with a movie buff/designer/artist and voice your views in the comments below.

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Color Palettes From Famous Movies Show How Colors Set The Mood Of A Film

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Color sets the tone and mood of a film before any of the actors have even uttered a word. Directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski used a green tint in The Matrix (1999) to create a mood palette that was suggestive of the early monochrome computer monitors.

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Watch the most innovative stories-Documentary, Comedy, Sci-fi, Horror, Experimental, Animation, Inspiration, Student films, Award winners & more short films

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Coggle is online software for creating and sharing mindmaps and flowcharts. It works online in your browser: there's nothing to download or install. Log in to start diagramming!

Whether you're taking notes, brainstorming, planning, or doing something awesomely creative, it is super simple to visualise your ideas with Coggle. Share with as many friends or colleagues as you like. Changes you make will show up instantly in their browser, wherever they are in the world

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The clear way to share complex information. Coggle is a collaborative mind-mapping tool that helps you make sense of complex things. Create unlimited mind maps and easily share them with friends and colleagues.

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1. Mise-en-scène

2. Sound

3. Cinematography

4. Editing

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Start studying Cinematography. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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Three-point lighting: Fill, key, back light. High/low key. Hard/soft. Practical set light. Natural light. Diffused overhead light.

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FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES

1. Cinematic types of lighting in film

Every cinematographer is an artist who makes creative decisions on how to guide the viewer's eye within the frame using lighting equipment.

DP Janusz Kaminski and his lighting equipment * Bridge of Spies

Their applications are broad, but their creative interpretation is what makes their lighting cinematic (or not). They include:

Which props and scene elements should be emphasized

Whose perspective we're seeing the scene through, and how much light they should be able to see

How characters differ from one another in a frame

Which emotions are being expressed through harshness of light, or its color

Each of these decisions are then realized technically by planning and executing lighting setups to create the desired effect. But the cinematographer must dream up what these effects will be before setting up any lighting equipment.

Film Lighting Techniques

2. Basic lighting: 3-point lighting setup

The most basic lighting in film is the three-point lighting setup. Lighting from three directions shapes your subject and sets them apart from their background.

To achieve this, your film lighting equipment needs to face your subject from three directions: front, back and side (generally).

Film lighting basics: (2001), using the three-point lighting setup

KEY LIGHT

The key light is the light that registers most prominently in your frame. So, when you look at the image of Amelie above, you'll see that the screen-right portion of her face is brightest. That's the key light.

FILL LIGHTS

Quite simply, fill lights fill in the shadows of your frame. You'll notice that the screen-left portion of Amelie's face is in shadow, but with her features still plainly visible. That is a fill light at work.

BACK LIGHT

The back light gives an edge light to the rear portion of your subject. Often, the backlight shoots down from a higher angle. You can see that Amelie has a light contour along her shoulders and the nape of her neck.

You'll generally want to flank your camera with your key and fill lights, spaced about 60 degrees on an axis from your camera.

Basic lighting techniques: Back, Key, and Fill lighting arranged around a camera

FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES

3. Soft film lighting

When talking about how a scene should feel emotionally, one thing that is referenced by cinematographers frequently is how hard or soft the lighting should be.

The hardness or softness of light concerns how large a light source is, and how it affects shadows on your subject.

Soft film lighting in a day exterior in Restless

HIGHER KEY LIGHT

This is an effect created by heightening the key light and using fill lights generously. This keeps the lighting bright and balanced in your frame, creating almost no shadow. This balances the lighting from object to object in your frame - which is known as your lighting ratio.

High key film lighting in

DIFFUSED OVERHEAD LIGHTING

You can soften a light source with diffusion materials like gels or Chinese lanterns to reduce shadows. This is great for shooting close-ups.

A Chinese lantern lights this close-up in The Quiet

FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES

4. Hard film lighting

Conversely, smaller light sources, including bright sunlight, will heighten the shadows on your subject. Conservatively, this should be avoided. But it can also create dramatic effects, as was popularized in the classic Film Noirs, which featured suspicious and volatile characters.

Hard lighting creates harsh shadows in Blade Runner's film lighting

KICKER LIGHT WITH SOFT FILL

In this effect, the back light hits the side of your subject's face. It can create an angelic rim of light, while a very soft fill light keeps the face gently illuminated.

An angel-to-be receives an angelic kicker light in Northfork

LOW KEY LIGHT

Low key lighting refers to minimizing, or eliminating, the fill light your shot so that it is intentionally shadowy. This can create dramatic, suspicious, or even scary effects.

Among the types of lighting in film, low key lighting is great for mystery

FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES

5. Motivated lighting

When cinematographers light a set, they always ask themselves where, within the scene, the light comes from.

They might, for example, choose to take the practical lights that are already in a location and elevate their effect. This is motivated lighting.

Motivated lighting in The Assassination of Jesse James

As you can see, the lighting in this scene is motivated by the lanterns carried by the actors. When motivated lighting is done right, the audience is unaware of the artifice at work.

Lanterns create motivated light sources that sell the lighting choices

PRACTICAL SET LIGHTING

Often times, using existing lamps and light sockets around the set can be used to light a scene. This is referred to as practical lighting, and is particularly useful when you need to reveal wide portions of the set, or move around it in longer takes.

A practical overhead bulb lights the subjects

This was the case in the diner scene in . In an interview for TIFF Originals, DP James Laxton spoke about how he used practical set lighting to keep his location visible in wide frames.

Moonlight * Film Lighting Techniques

In essence, he swapped out the bulbs in the existing light sources around the diner to make them stronger. Since the scene reveals wide portions of their location, he relied on the practical sources, with some of LED light mattes brought in as well for additional soft, balanced light.

Practical lighting techniques at work in Moonlight

Here's Roger Deakins discussing his approach to practical lighting, and why "unmotivated" light always takes him out of the movie.

FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES

6. Natural film lighting

Natural film lighting refers to using and modifying the light that is already available to you at your location.

Before you shoot, you can take your camera to the location to see how well the natural light holds up. You can decide from there how what additional lights you might need, or how you might adjust the light. For example, you can use bounce boards for reflecting the light, or black flags for blocking it out.

In this video, Deakins discusses how he first learned to pay attention to how natural light behaved - during fishing trips as a kid. Deakins is also a proponent of simplicity when it comes to lighting.

Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki maximized natural film lighting on Alejandro Inarritu's The Revenant. His interview with GoldDerby is a wonderful primer on finding and controlling available light in outdoor shooting locations.

The Revenant created beautiful imagery with natural film lighting

For example, he speaks about using Magic Hour, or the soft light created by the sun at the end of the day, for specific moments. And, further, he talks about how the selection of locations, and how they appear at different times of the day, created appropriate moods for the shoot.

FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES

7. The set lighting technician's handbook and other good reads

Trade books can get you more comfortable with cinematography tools, common problem solving practices, and a deeper sense of how to make your vision actionable.

Here are a few that can be your lifesaver during pre-production and production:

This guide puts you in the trenches of assembling lighting gear, with industry-standard techniques and hints to keep you sane during production.

This book takes you through the theory of creating visual imagery and how to apply them in modern production settings.

A straightforward, affordable, and easy-to-understand guide to lighting and cinematography. It is a slim volume, but extremely thorough.

Kino Flo is an industry standard light manufacturer who host this free film lighting techniques PDF on their website. Naturally, it is to be used in conjunction with their own equipment. But it takes you through many universal lighting tips for broadcast, documentaries and more.

Up Next

Lighting tips you didn't learn in school

Like all aesthetic principles, lighting choices have highly individualistic interpretations, based on the DP or director. These techniques are purely meant to maximize cues that can create evocative imagery. For further reading, read about out how cinematography techniques, beyond lighting, that can enhance your storytelling. And, as always, be sure to let us know in the comments which techniques have worked well for your own shoots, and any we may have missed!

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5 Cinematic Lighting Techniques Every Filmmaker Should Know

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Every cinematographer is an artist who makes creative decisions on how to guide the viewer's eye within the frame using lighting equipment. DP Janusz Kaminski and his lighting equipment * Bridge of Spies Their applications are broad, but their creative interpretation is what makes their lighting cinematic (or not).

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Film analysis: Editing Flashcards | Quizlet

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Start studying Film analysis: Editing. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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Basic/standard cut, jump cut, montage, cut on action, L/J cut, match cut, cut away, cross cut

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Cover image via

If your goal is to master the art of editing, you're going to need to know the essential cuts to use when editing a film or video. Let's go through eight of these and look at some examples of each. For said examples, we'll be using excerpts from various films - but keep in mind that you can use these same cuts in any editing session, be it narrative, documentary, commercial, industrial, or even animation.

Before we break down each individual cut and talk about how to do them and look at some examples, I thought we'd look at a video I made on this very topic!

1. The Standard

The hard cut is the basic type of cut in editing. This type of cut is utilized when you want to cut from clip to clip without any type of transition or where you cut from the end of one clip to the beginning of another. The only downside of the hard cut is that (out of all the cuts we'll talk about) this one gives the least amount of visual meaning. To provide you with a quick overview of the history of cutting, here is an excellent video from Filmmaker IQ.

So that seems simple enough, right? It's cutting from one shot to another, no added meaning, no fuss, just a cut.

The jump cut is a technique that allows the editor to jump forward in time. We see an early version of this technique in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, where the battleship fires a mortar round, and we watch the destruction as various angles jump cut from one to another. In this very early version of the jump cut, contemporary audiences were introduced to a new way of time passage in film. It gained traction and is one of the most used types of cuts today next to the hard cut. We'll look at many classic examples of the jump cut in some of your favorite films in the video below. We'll learn why they are significant and what they can do for your film.

Another great place to use jump cuts is during an interview, especially if you film the interview with multiple cameras. This allows you to jump from one angle to the other without it being jarring for the audience. In order to really grasp this type of editing technique, here is a fantastic resource from Vimeo Video School on the Understanding of Jump Cuts.

Now that we know a popular cut within a scene let's talk about a way to jump from one scene to another.

First, let's talk about the L Cut. This editing technique is used not only by narrative filmmakers but is also a favorite of documentary filmmakers and commercial videographers. What L Cut means is that you are hearing the audio from the previous shot, even though we've moved on to another shot. So, the audience is looking at clip B but still hearing audio from clip A.

Here is a great example of an L Cut from David Fincher's , where Tyler recites the rules as various characters ready themselves to fight. Here, the audience is introduced to the voice, and then we are given visual information on the environment where the voice is located. This technique will keep your film or video flowing naturally while also giving your audience much-needed spacial information.

Again, this type of editing technique is used to help lead audiences along in the narrative by giving them spacial information and audio. L Cuts are also used to contextualize a conversation or give it a deeper meaning, as was done in during the museum scene with Q and 007. As they are talking, we cut to the painting of the old warship on the wall while Q continues to talk, explaining what they are looking at while also correlating 007s career to the warship in the painting.

See what they did there? I feel like we all learned something.

A J Cut is essentially the opposite of the L Cut. Here we hear the audio before we see the video. So, the audience is looking at clip A but still hearing audio from clip B. This type of cut is often used in all forms of filmmaking and videography, but you can often see it in content featuring an interview.

Just like with L Cuts, you can give your audience additional visual information to go along with the dialogue that is being fed to the audience. As was with the video above, this allows your audience to better understand the environment the character exists in. These cuts exist to guide your audience from one scene to another. Notice how I said "scene" and not "shot." These are designed to take two different sets and locations and bring them together. Make sense? Okay, moving on.

4. Cutting on Action

The technique of cutting on action is a huge component of action films. Of course, this type of cut can be used on less-explosive action. The basic idea of cutting for action is that the editor cuts from one shot to another and matches the action of the shots. Editing is all about motivation. Each time you cut to a new shot, you need to ask yourself: why? In the words of Videomaker:

Don't be tempted to wait for a pause and then cut, unless you have a good reason.

Your film will develop a better 'flow' if you cut on action instead of waiting for pauses. Think of the action in your scene as direction for the edit later on in post-production. One of the best examples of motivated cutting is . Watch the following clip closely and specifically look for instances of cutting on action. Almost every cut happens mid-action. This results in a much smoother transition and a more tense action scene. Again, each cut is a way to take you from one shot to another, so the action guides the whole thing.

One of the best parts about writing articles like this is the research I get to do on these topics. The video below is a prime example of the joy I get upon finding a video like this. It's simple and to the point, just like tutorials should be. Anyways, I will stop talking this up and show you.

See what I mean? Like the sweet old days of YouTube. Anyways, learning the "cutting on action" rule is essential for knowing how to edit your film. The technique provides a necessary groundwork for feeling the flow of an edit.

Cutaways take the audience away from the main action or subject. These are used primarily as transition pieces to give the audience a view of what is happening outside of the main character's environment. This also goes a long way in helping you emphasize specific details of the mise-en-scène and allowing you to add meaning to them. You can see this clearly in this breakdown of all the many uses of this technique throughout Hollywood favorite films. I just want to give some love to American Werewolf in London because I think it's a masterclass in filmmaking.

Another way to use cutaways is during dialogue sequences. A great example of this is during a scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where Rooney believes he is talking to Ferris, only to be met with the realization that he is on another line.

Now we understand the hows and whys of cutting away; we can talk about doing this and then cutting back to what you just cut from. Does that make sense, or have I already lost you? Let's discuss.

The technique of the cross-cut, also known as parallel editing, is where you cut between two different scenes that are happening at the same time in other spaces. When done effectively, you can tell two simultaneous stories at once, and the information being given to the audience will make complete sense.

In the last ten years, probably no filmmaker has loved using the cross-cut technique more than Christopher Nolan. He's used this technique in several films and always uses it effectively to connect the various storylines in each film. In his 2010 film Nolan utilizes the cross-cut technique to aid the audience in keeping up with the various levels of the dream state. Obviously, that movie gets to be chaotic in structure, so it speaks to the power of this type of editing and how informative it can be for viewers. Nolan utilizes this technique pretty regularly for his films. His films often feel like they are just one long series of cross-cuts. For an example of this cut, let's look at how several of his movies can analyzed and broken apart. I love watching breakdowns of particular trademarks from my favorite director's filmographies.

Utilizing this type of cut, you'll need to be careful in structuring your multiple storylines. If not done correctly, you'll just confuse the audience more. I've always found it extremely helpful to get a separate pair of eyes on the edit when using the cross-cut technique. It may make complete sense to you as the editor, but it may go right over the audience's head. For other examples of this type of cut, all you need to do is look to other work by Nolan. He successfully uses this technique in Memento, The Dark Knight, and Interstellar.

Montage is another technique that has been around for a long time but isn't used as much as the previous cuts. The idea behind the montage is to use rapid cuts of imagery to help convey the passing of time or to help aid the context of the narrative. There are many different forms of montage, but one of our favorites is the rhythmic montage in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. During the three-way standoff, director Sergio Leone uses quick montage cuts to give the audience the facial reactions of all three characters. This works perfectly to heighten the tension of the moment.

As we said, montage is also used quite often to help get the audience through the passage of time. There are great examples of this throughout film history, but one of my personal favorite montages is from the movie Up. If you're familiar with it, the idea is simple - the sequences tells the story of a young couple moving through their entire marriage, all within the span of about 5 minutes. It's emotional and highly effective at conveying a ton of information about the characters and their respective motivations for the remainder of the film.

So how do you do it? Practically speaking, how do you edit one of these sequences on your timeline? Zach Ramelan shows us in one of our favorite PremiumBeat tutorials. Watch it below!

Here at PremiumBeat, we're fans of a good ole' fashioned montage. Especially the montages of the '80s and any action movie. So it only makes sense that we've written extensively about them over the years and published videos on how to make them. Go montages!

8. Match Cuts

The match cut is the technique of matching the movement or space of two opposite environments together. This technique has been used for many years. It's most effective when you need to move the narrative along, but you need to find a way to connect them seamlessly. Two particular films do this exceptionally well, and they are two of the most lauded films in history. The first film that we'll look at is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and how Stanley Kubrick found a way to move from the 'Dawn of Man sequence' to the 'Space Station sequence' in a second without continuity issues. He did this by showing the primitive man throwing the bone up into the air and then replacing it with a spaceship floating through space. This was highly effective and easily allowed the audience to move from one scene to another.

The second example comes from Lawrence of Arabia. After being introduced to Lawrence, director David Lean and editor Ann V. Coates needed a way to move from the space of the government offices to the deserts of Arabia. In this case, they used the blowing out of the match to jump us forward in time to the rising sun of the desert. This cut works because we have extinguished one light and the rise of another. Again, this keeps the flow and pace of the narrative going without disorientation to the audience.

I love that cut so much. Movies are awesome! Okay, that about does it. Hopefully, you have a greater understanding of these cuts and can start to use them in your next film!

Looking for additional industry insights, tips, and advice? We've got you covered:

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8 Essential Cuts Every Editor Should Know

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These essential cutting methods will help any editor transform their footage into a gripping, solid narrative.