Tarzan - Using dusk for dramatic lighting (2/4)

After an introduction to the basic color scheme of Tarzan (1999) in part 1, here the focus lies on an early scene that demonstrates the mastery with which the film makers handle subtle mood changes using “natural” lighting. This post also serves as a companion piece to one about a similar scene in The Jungle Book (1967).

Kerchak’s arrival after Kala has adopted the baby
As long as daylight is breaking through the tree tops, the compositions are balanced by contrast of warm and cold colors based on the fact that green looks warm when containing more yellow and cold if on the bluer side.

Naturally, on the coast there is more direct sunlight, so the right side has more yellow in the green. It’s also interesting how almost the whole forest is painted as one green organism without too much wood visible. While the amount of detail is extraordinary, the stylization happens in the coloring: myriads of details are united in large overall shapes of brown (rocks), blue (sea) and green (forest) areas.

As we enter the forest more deeply (from right to left) there is more and more blue in the shadowy green. Within the green itself, depth layers are separated by misty haze. This is a standard technique of separating layers in black and white photography.

This effect is visible in any monochromous representation because it only affects the values. The other structuring element though, the warm vs. cold, isn’t visible in the desaturated image below.

Right: I’ve highlighted all the areas of warm green where light that is breaking through tree tops is evoked.

Generally blue is perceived not only as cold but also as soothing and receding. So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Kerchak is surrounded by more yellow and thus warmer colors than Kala. If we look just at the balance, there are more warm areas around Kerchak than around her. Of course, Kerchak himself is rather dark and thus the background has to be lighter for us to see him. Kala’s brown is not only lighter but also shows enough contrast of hue.

It gets darker on the horizon, twilight begins. The last warm sunrays are almost horizontally falling on the vegetation.

Warm green is dominant around the loving foster mother.

When Kerckak arrives the yellow light gets redder, like it usually is perceived right around sunset. You can see the change best in the palm leaves behind Kala. The mood is getting slightly more tense. Kerchak even has yellow/reddish brown eyes.

He is not accepting Tarzan as his son. The light in that moment gets even fainter but also more golden/red. In the background we have a strong contrast of misty blue against which the golden light feels even more fiery.

After reaching the emotional climax, Kerchak is getting calmer while the sun has finally set and the last intense golden rays of light are slowly fading.

The palm leaves behind Kala are only olive, not golden any more, there’s a lot more cold green.

Night has still not fallen completely, there are still warm areas, but the ratio of warm vs cold areas is different and the overall picture has become darker. The character colors, however, are still more or less intact.

After everybody has gone to sleep, it’s really night and Kala takes Tarzan to her home that resembles his parents’ tree house off the coast.

Now that everything is dark blue, the character colors are affected by the absence of sunlight as well. What I especially like about this blue scene is the notion that it doesn't transport coldness and sadness but has a soothing and mysterious effect. Just look how close these production frames match the color key (found in the DVD bonus section).

Conclusion
In contrast to the Jungle Book scene where the breaking dawn is mainly used as an approaching deadline to emphasize the length of and Baloo’s immersion into the conversation, here the lighting strongly supports the first impression we get of Kerchak as a dominating and potentially dangerous character. It also visually underlines the emerging and decreasing dramatic tension – the dramatic arc – of the whole scene while leading organically to the following night time song number.

There are stronger instances of expressionist lighting based on actual lighting changes in Tarzan, but this is very early and influences the introduction of a new character.

Of course, it’s easier to achieve such subtle lighting changes if you have the budget and the crew to meticulously paint new backgrounds for almost every shot, even in a shot – reverse-shot scene. But as a concept, such effects can be applied in much simpler ways (changing color plates as simple BGs) or achieved by adjusting the BG colors successively with digital color correction equipment.

Dec 8 - skin color [Updated]

Looks like this is going to be the last post of the series. I still haven't received three answers to the Dec 5 question, so I'm ending the series with this post I've already prepared. Thanks for participating anyway.

What's the skin color of this happy Chuck Jones baby?

modified image (baby desaturated)

Color suggestions for baby skin tone

 Update: the answer is C...

...because this baby should have been delivered to Mars. The antennae and ear form didn't make that a very human looking baby, indeed.

Tarzan – Oversaturated but natural colors (1/4)

More than most Disney features Tarzan (1999) strives for visual and dimensional naturalism, especially concerning the anatomically accented title character and the “deep-canvas” inflated jungle setting. To make sure, it all is very stylized but not in an obvious, graphic way.
There are quite a few elements that certainly look more out of place in this context, but that’s not the issue here.
After an introduction to the basic color scheme here, in the next post I look at an early scene that demonstrates the mastery with which the film makers handle subtle mood changes within their "natural” lighting scheme.

If we neglect the many lighting and mood nuances, basically the jungle presents itself either green or blue, depending on time of day.

There’s not much brown in the jungle itself. One could even call it uni-colored green (or blue at night).

Here the healthy green has already been drained of color after a gruesome fight.

In the green environment the characters’ earthlier colors stand out clearly enough (with the side-kick elephant looking unnatural at times).

The young cartoony elephant is integrated by some flowers in the background that pick up his skin color

It’s interesting to see that there’s hardly any contrast of value between elephants, jungle and surrounding water, just contrast of hue basically. 

In fact, there’s almost no untinged grey but several shades of brown. Gorillas and elephants are brown, with gorillas darker towards grey and elephants redder. In daylight, both of them contrast well with their surroundings (if not always completely to my taste, but that’s another story). This ongoing trend towards more saturated/glowing colors seems to have become unjustifiably popular somewhere during the early 1990s. It’s not that there are no muted colors any more, it’s only that when there are muted colors, the whole picture is toned down and not just some of the colors (and vice versa).

So, muted colors are only used for night time, dreary or rainy scenes and not so much for certain parts of “normal” jungle images. It’s very seldom that one character is allowed to stand out the way the red frog stands out here:

had the frog been green like in the storyboard, it wouldn't have signalled danger as easily and it would have been much closer to the night time background color

While red isn’t part of either blue or green, red and orange spots attract our attention. Not very surprisingly, red and orange are most always connected to danger as can be seen in the following screenshots:

You might want to enlarge this image to see the red nose of the mandrill and the red eyes of the dark monkeys. Clayton's scarf is clearly visible, though.

this piece of visual development art depicting the burning ship is taken from the DVD bonus features.

Sabor is a threat to humans and animals alike.

The (potentially dangerous) human world is generally represented by yellow and beige as can not only be seen in the three explorers but also in earlier scenes in Tarzan’s tree house.

These silhouettes remind me of the clown scene in Dumbo also featuring two layers of shadows but applied differently.

The tree trunks in Tarzan's jungle (green, right) and where humans have allowed sunlight to break through by clearing the forest (yellow, left).

Very similar colors like Sabor, note the scarf colors matching the personalities.

Even if we don’t take the cut of the cloth into account, colorwise Jane is very much belonging to the human world (so much for realism... as if anybody would travel the jungle in such a dress). Later on she is seen wearing a green skirt, tying her closer to the jungle and finally brown like Tarzan.

there's still a lot of yellow in the background green, she can't be too far from the camp.

now, she's really in the jungle, less light and less yellow, making her dress stand out even more.

after she has met Tarzan, she is seen wearing a green skirt closer to the jungle, finally she wears a brown one like Tarzan (and the apes, sort of).

in the preliminary art she is still wearing the (yellow?) Victorian costume, in the final frame she's very much adapted to Tarzan. This, by the way, is a good example of red not meaning any danger but just a wonderful effect.

All the color schemes in Tarzan seem to be dictated by “realism” meaning that they are based on reality assumptions like time of day, natural colors of objects and animals and weather conditions. Even though all the colors are fairly oversaturated, this still is a far cry from the artificial cinematic color schemes in What’s Opera, Doc (1957) or even in the more realistically rooted Alice in Wonderland (1951) with red grass and all.

Maurice Noble/Phil DeGuard vs. Mary Blair

What makes Tarzan’s color design fascinating to me is the fact that – like in many Hollywood live-action movies – “realistic” lighting is very precisely utilized for subtle mood changes and emotional development.

Dec 5 - Irv Wyner

Maybe I was a bit naive thinking I could go on on a daily basis and still get comments in time, so every now and then I leave out a day. There's no Dec 4 post, in case you wondered...

While Maurice Noble's background painter Phil DeGuard is relatively well-known for his highly recognizable work in Jones classics like What's Opera Doc (1957), background painter Irv Wyner brought a similar, sometimes even more radical coloring style to Hawley Pratt's stylized layouts. They worked together in the Freleng unit from 1952 until 1957. Much later, Wyner worked for Jones on specials like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1975).

Here are four screenshots from Freleng's Goo Goo Goliath (1954) and eight possible sky colors only four of which are from this cartoon:

Which sky color matches which background?
(example: 1A, 2B, 3C, 4D)

1

2

3

4