Color Poster Triptychs 06: The Persona Image

for larger version click on the image.

The composition of a profile shot partly obscuring another character's near-frontal view is usually associated with Ingmar Bergman's black and white masterpiece PERSONA (1966). The iconic setup that was referenced or spoofed in countless films about split or merged personalities was not new and only one among many compositions built on half, overlapping and merging faces (now is as good a time to watch this groundbreaking film as any).

LA POINTE-COURTE (1955)

It also appears in Agnes Varda's LA POINTE-COURTE (1955) many years before, however, and Bergman also used it in earlier films.

Referenced famously in Woody Allen's LOVE AND DEATH (1975) and obviously in Kon's PERFECT BLUE (1997).

In the artworks above for three really great films, the black and white aspect is retained. While FRANTZ is, in fact, a black and white film with only a few hints of color, the sepia tone of the DEAD MAN WALKING poster not suggests skin tones but also matches the emotionally dreary tone of the movie. The stylized colorisation in the HABLE CON ELLA ("talk to her") poster combines the monochrome nature of the original image with the strong primary colors associated with the works of Spanish auteur Pablo Almodovar.

In contrast, the three posters below discard the monochrome aspect by keeping more or less natural skin tones. However, the overlapping aspect is much stronger here: unlike the characters that face the viewer in the posters above, one eye of those below is obscured. That way, we only see one half of each face.

for larger version click on the image.

Why are the men always in front of the women?
There is something in all six posters, though, that I was initially wondering about: why are the men (present in four of the six including the young Kevin in WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN) always the ones in front obscuring part of the women's faces? It certainly is more equally distributed in LA POINTE-COURTE.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this is really a coincidence. First of all, a poster has to prime us for a story by telling us already part of that story. The setup in question basically tells us that character A is looking at (or at least in the direction of) character B who is staring into space and is not returning the look. So there is at least a visual disconnect between them. Because of the profile shot, we also do not have a direct visual connection between B and the viewer, we see him from outside, while we are looking directly into A's eyes. In the Almodovar example, character A (the blue woman) is unconscious for much of the film while other characters look at her, "talk to her" and even behave unethically towards her.

So let us look closer at those four posters that place men closer to us than the women: Three of the four men are slightly out of focus and thus draw our attention to the woman's face. But in GIFTED and FRANTZ the women's gazes only lead us back to the male face, whereas in all the other images everyone is staring into the distance.

In the case of DEAD MAN WALKING the male profile makes sense to me: Sister Helen is by nature a much more open and well-rounded character (hence we see her face more fully) than the arrogant murderer she visits. Actually, the same is true for FRANTZ: protagonist Anna is trying to discover the truth about the mysterious Adrien, who is depicted with closed eyes so that we subconsciously accept Anna as the active, more important character.

In WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, the boy does actively ignore and metaphorically obscure his mother who increasingly seems to lose focus and the connection to her son. Kevin is indeed dominant and manipulative. I haven't seen GIFTED yet, so I can't say anything about that.

There is, in fact, a contemporary poster (left) that shows the man in the back and blurred even though he is much more well-known than the woman. Considering RETURN TO MONTAUK is based on the semi-autobiographical novel "Montauk" by famous Swiss author Max Frisch, this is even more interesting. I am probably going to use this later in a "beach scene with heads in the clouds" triptych.

Note: I do not think the artwork for THE TOURIST (below) falls into this category, by the way, because both characters look actively away from each other.

Annecy Colors

A visit to Europe's largest animation festival reminded me of two things: colorful animation is very much alive in all parts of the world. Computer tools and the internet have enhanced the awareness and skills of color design. But the full impact of colors is only perceived in a dark theatre (or any other darkened room without contrasting colors). 

After missing out on it for several years, I managed to visit the Annecy International Animation Festival once again at last. In those two and a half days I saw a lot of films and it dawned on me that I must come back for the whole week again next year. It is, after all, a celebration of the cinema going experience and seeing a film in the packed Bonlieu rightfully gives one the impression that this is indeed "the greatest audience in the world", as some of the world-renowned guests liked to put it.

Of course, an animation festival is also a great place to see how artists work with color to tell a story and create mood. That is why I would like to share a list of films that stayed in my mind because of their colors, some of them conventional, some of them innovative. So here it is, in no particular order:

Shorts:

LA SOUPE AU CAILLOU: Cut-out animation made of vibrant layers of translucent watercolors. Striking use of basic colors red, yellow and blue. Simple but sweet children's story.

CRABE PHARE: Cruise ship passengers build a candy colored city on top of a blue crab. Diamond shaped clouds and a color scheme that looks limited but actually spreads across red, yellow, green and blue.

PETE'S STORY: High contrast duotone style with additional spot colors. Strong and beautiful anidoc.

A COAT MADE DARK: The combination of gray and orange-red is very powerful, even as subdued as in this film. Unfortunately, I could not really connect to the story but maybe a second viewing will enlighten me.

RUBEN LEAVES: A film I wanted to mention for a long time since I have seen it at least four times now. Strictly limited to three (or five, if you count the two shades of blue and yellow as two colors each) colors without variation of saturation and darkness. Outlines are also limited to the most basic needs.

LAST JUDGMENT: Not sure why the story turned out how it did, but liked it anyway. Blue and yellow.

Features:

The great thing about independent animated features (especially French ones) is that the beautifully personal design approaches that you usually only see in "art of" books are right up there on the screen. The storytelling, however, is often another story and there are reasons why some of the films are limited to special-interest audiences.
 

PSICONAUTAS, THE FORGOTTEN CHILDREN: What works in a comic book divided up in panels and pages does not automatically make for a captivating story arc of a 76 minute film. Despite a strong and quirky opening, the narrative unravelled rather quickly. But the fine and varied choices of color and mood kept me interested.

LA JEUNE FILLE SANS MAINS: For me, this was one of the highlights of the festival. A highly inventive combination of realist animation and abstract design. The still images do not live up to the experience. The full beauty lies in the combination of mood and motion.

TOUT EN HAUT DU MONDE (LONG WAY NORTH): Technically not an Annecy 2016 film. But I bought the Blu-ray there and have never seen it before. There are no outlines, just razor sharp shapes of colors next to each other. Color-wise this is such an enormously thrilling film that I would love to look into it any further. Unfortunately, this is the only Blu-ray I own that prevents me from taking screenshots...

There are certainly many more films presented at Annecy worth checking out regarding colors, but these were among the ones I managed to see this year. I would like to end this post with a few (mostly experimental) shorts I remember fondly but not particularly related to color design:

• THE EMPTY (CHAMBRE VIDE): surprisingly fresh and poetic
• WALL DUST: experimental cinema is gaining momentum. This is a fast and excitingly unpredictable ride.
• MODERN LOVE - A KISS, DEFERRED: animated documentaries with sketches over white backgrounds have become an inflated staple of graduation film programs. This visual New York Times column nails it, though.
• I FELT LIKE DESTROYING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL: I kept thinking: why do I never see such a film coming out of Switzerland? Then: oh wait, this IS actually a Swiss film!
• BALKON: If there is something like a genre of films that seem to be custom-made for the Annecy experience, BALKON is one of them. No, there is no "lapin" in it. Much easier: just give the crowd in the Bonlieu a reason to scream...

Roy Andersson Reklamfilmer and the Complex Image

Falcon Bayerskt Commercial by Roy Andersson

With his trilogy on "being human" (SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000), YOU THE LIVING (2007) and A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING EXISTENCE (2014)), Roy Andersson has made a name for himself as one of Sweden's most original film auteurs.

While his first two narrative features from the 1970s already explored similar themes, the establishment of his signature style of one shot scenes (dubbed "the complex image") is usually traced back to his 1991 short film WORLD OF GLORY. For Swedish tv viewers it might be obvious however, that Andersson was working in this peculiarly funny style for many years as a director of commercials.

As Andersson himself wrote in 1995:

"I have not only worked on feature films, but also commercials, and there too I have worked with the complex image. I would like to suggest that it is during this work with commercials that I have realised the advantages, even superiority, of the complex image. I can find no reason to communicate something in several images if it can be done in one. I enjoy both watching and describing someone within a room - in the widest meaning of the word."

In the following two compilations of his commercials (two more are available on youtube) you can see many of his signature traits such as:

• one-shot scenes
• exclusive reliance on deep focus long shots
• sickly greenish gray colors
• the importance of offscreen sounds
• relationship between inside and outside action and doorways
• absurdist humor
• and most of all disrespectful behaviour towards one's fellow human beings, especially older people and spouses.

Lukas Moodysson revisited: LILJA 4EVER

During my research for an introductory lecture on Lukas Moodysson's VI ÄR BÄST! (WE ARE THE BEST!) I couldn't help marvelling about the recurring color schemes in his first three features. Even LILJA 4EVER (2002) which most people remember as particularly grim and bleak is full of carefully chosen colors.

From warm to dingy
To make up the lack of in-depth posts I will have a superficial glance at the color coding of Lilja's three apartments during the course of the film:

Initially Lilja lives somewhere in Russia in a world of warm colors that go quite well with her blue and lilac clothes.

But when her mother is leaving for America and dumping her for good, her aunt Anna forces her to move to a dirty room with hardly any heating or electricity.

She always carries with her a framed religious picture.

 Now her pink and blue clothes support the already cold bluish-green feeling of her new home...

...while Anna has secretly usurped the warm apartment of Lilja's mother.

Lilja's friend Natasha still lives in her cozy family environment...

...after Lilja has been lured to Sweden where she is locked up in an empty but nevertheless dingy apartment.

There, the furniture is almost exclusively brown and gray and thus reflects the appearance of Lilja's tormentor.

Her daily routine now oscillates between equally brown and gray/white clients' homes and the cold blue back seat of a shabby Mercedes 190 E...

...until her face looks as pale as her future.

If you have not seen LILJA 4EVER yet, go for it! It is one of the rare occasions of an important movie that is actually great and accessible for a late teen audience and thus highly recommended.

One-Shot: The Kite Runner (2007)

Years after seeing Marc Forster's adaptation of THE KITE RUNNER I mostly remembered the costume colors. So when I revisited it last week in the course of studying Forster's personal film making style I still found the colors to be most attractive. Considering that they are based on the now well-worn drama cliché of blue against sandy brown this is saying a lot. There is so much variation throughout the film that I cannot possibly do justice to the color design in this short "one-shot" post. But since Marc Forster is very deliberate and particular when it comes to colors in his films I would like to highlight two facets that I liked in THE KITE RUNNER.

From two-colored present America back to three-colored Afghanistan
Having just received the specimen copies of his first novel, Amir (Khalid Abdalla) gets a phone call at home that triggers memories of his youth in Kabul. Both he and his wife wear dark blue clothes against more or less monochrome sandy colored surroundings.

When one of his late father's friends calls, a flashback to Amir's happy childhood days in Kabul sets in. At first the color scheme is basically the same but the blue is more vivid, less repressed.

Then suddenly a second kite brings orange and green into the frame. The lighting seems naturally golden. Then we see a young boy whose clothes are orange, blue and sandy brown.

These are no doubt the quintessential 1970s colors (a title overlay states the year 1978). And although this story is set in an Oriental desert, we soon learn that the Afghans are indeed influenced by American fashion (movies and cars).

Young Amir's (Zekeria Ebrahimi) best friend Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada) is clad in blue in this expository scene of their close friendship and interdependency.

Soon we meet Amir's Baba (Homayoun Ershadi) and his best friend Rahim Khan (Shaun Toub). Rahim's orange shirt and tie against a gray suit, by the way, was the color scheme that I remembered most vividly:

Although the apartment looks very warm and golden, DOP Roberto Schaefer managed to keep the gray suits from looking muddy. It is this slight contrast of gray against sandy brown that makes this color scheme stand out from the many sepia toned, nostalgically warm stereotypes I have seen over the year (just think of interior scene in any recent Woody Allen film). In many ways, it is equal to the color design of FANTASTIC MR. FOX which is also reminiscent of the 1970s.

Marc Forster's scenes are usually very tightly composed in matters of color design but not as obviously flashy as in Jerry Bruckheimer or James Cameron movies.

[Note: Later on in present Pakistan the overall color scheme is still based on sand and blue but feels a lot colder.]

Green stands out
The one color that seems to have a special significance to Marc Forster is green (J.M.Barrie's apartment and the park in FINDING NEVERLAND, 2004; the fatal green apple in STRANGER THAN FICTION, 2006). I have found it to be very deliberately used in all of his features except QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008) (although Forster mentions a green door in an interview), where at least the villain was named Dominic Greene.

I have not yet found out if there is a recurring symbolic meaning to it or if Forster uses it in a new context in every film. In THE KITE RUNNER, Amir stand on green Californian meadows in the beginning and end, but in Afghanistan (and later Pakistan) there is hardly a green piece of cloth except in two connected scenes.

After Amir has abandoned Hassan he schemes how to get rid of his too loyal friend. During the preparation for his birthday party he asks his father to send Hassan's father away. Soon after he comes up with a more effective plan to betray Hassan. He lies to Baba - who now wears a green jersey - telling him that Hassan has stolen Amir's watch.

Amir's plan works out when Hassan loyally takes the blame on and his father decides to leave for good.

I have yet to look at the film more closely to see if there is another instance of Amir or his father wearing green and if there is a connection to Amir's betrayal that serves as his narrative backstory wound that motivates the film.

Bob Clampett: Black Cats in Technicolor (1/3)

100 YEARS OF BOB CLAMPETT!

 According to most sources Robert Emerson Clampett was born May 8, 1913. In honor of his 100th birthday I will look at the colors in three of his most beloved cartoons involving black cats. The first of these (THE HEP CAT, 1942) is a good example how to apply contrast of hue, value and saturation in favor of a nicely structured color scheme.

You may have noticed that most of my Clampett posts so far have been about some rather particular traits of his films. Since I am aware that there is already a plethora of articles about Clampett's overall style available online (not in print, unfortunately), I try to focus on specific subjects that haven't been analyzed in detail yet.

Limited color palette in THE HEP CAT.

For readers looking for some background information on Bob Clampett, I recommend the once controversial 1969 interview by Michael Barrier and Milt Gray,  this recent interview with Clampett's daughter Ruth by Chris Lukather as well as Adrian Danks' article "It can happen here! The world of Bob Clampett". There is a wealth of further information on michaelbarrier.com.

Colorful Clampett
I used to say that Clampett didn't really know what to do with color when he was finally able to leave the black and white Porky cartoons behind. That is not true, however. More accurately, I should have said that Clampett wasn't too subtle or sophisticated in his use of color as a storytelling device.
But then, with Clampett nothing is ever subtle or sophisticated in the conventional sense of these words. Everything has to be extreme, even outrageous.

There are a few exceptions to this rule, though. His first few cartoons with Avery's color unit work within a strong and beautiful but limited color palette, very unlike the garish and muddled colors of his later masterpieces like BABY BOTTLENECK (1946). I have already mentioned the candy color scheme of HORTON HATCHES THE EGG (1942). In THE HEP CAT and TALE OF TWO KITTIES (1942) his color/background person (most likely Johnny Johnsen) made expert use of a very limited color palette.

John Kricfalusi has already attempted to write about these backgrounds here but soon digresses into other aspects of the cartoon.

Muted Background, Strong Foreground
Harsh contrasts dominate the opining of the cartoon: a black cat is strolling in front of a pale beige moon surrounded by dark blue night:

a typical Clampett character: ambling hind and fore legs look identical.

A-D: background colors; E-H: character colors.

The same basic hues are used for background and character (the feet (E) might have been less pink on the cel). The whole image is based on a duotone scheme of near-complementary colors pale beige and dark blue. The cat's colors are more saturated (H and F) than the corresponding hues in the background (A and D). This is a good example for contrast of saturation.

Characters and background are not only separated by saturation but also by stronger values. As you can see in the following desaturated images, the background is in the middle range overall whereas the characters are near the extremes of black and white:

This difference in contrast of value was quite common - necessary, in fact - in black and white cartoons in order to achieve readable silhouettes. In color cartoons however, we are used to more subtle dark colors than this pitch black cat (Sylvester and Daffy remained pitch-black until today, though). Seen in color, the saturation of the skin colored facial parts stands out more clearly. The strongest elements however are the spots of red that mark the mouths and the femme fatale's slender neck.

More saturated colors are not restricted to characters alone but are also used for foreground objects such as Rosebud's doghouse (why did Clampett include so many out-of-place CITIZEN KANE allusion into his cartoons?).

A-D: doghouse colors; E-H: most saturated versions of red - green scheme.

Brown lies inbetween green and red.

While the backgrounds are basically built around cold and warm grays rooted in pale yellow and blue, the foreground colors are built around the red - green complementary contrast. This makes for a brilliant contrast of hue.

Although most of the night time backgrounds look rather earthy, there is a wealth of different colors. This variety of hues does not distract from the characters because saturation is low and the values are all very close:

upper row: moonlit planks; lower row: planks in shadow.

It is the same with these bricks: since the dog's color is so much lighter and more saturated we don't even notice at first sight that every brick has a different color.

The character colors in Clampett's cartoons are often stereotyped. Cats are pitch-black and dogs and wolves are brown. It is interesting to see that when the cat turns into the proverbial wolf when aroused by the cool female the colors also change to the dog/wolf scheme.

The cat and dog character however differ in almost every instance: even their hand and seemingly white muzzle are colored differently. Since we only have a digitally restored NTSC version of a Technicolor cartoon at hand, it is impossible to say if the dog's muzzle already looked slightly violet. But what we can see is the relation of these colors (which could be digitally tampered as well, of course) and they work well so that we intuitively know even in strange drawings which body part belongs to what character.

However, the downside of keeping the cat completely black like in a monochrome cartoon is that its silhouette can hardly be read in front of backgrounds that are not based on high or middle values (below left). In static camera setups, the layout/background person is able to contrast the visual void that is the cat's body with a slight pool of light.

As we have already seen in the example with the black and white cats above, pure red as a spot of color is a recurring theme within in this cartoon. In fact, it looks like only red is used as a "spot color" which makes for an unusually restrained color scheme (by Clampett standards at least).

The commenting bird is small and seldom on screen. But because it is red and saturated, our eyes are involuntarily drawn to it. The same with the brick: with such a high saturation it contrasts with every other color in the picture and therefore reads very easily.

And as we have seen, the female - and her puppet imitation - is all white with spots of red. The same can be said of the fake love letter attributed to her.

Color Harmony and Drama
After focussing so much on contrast, one should not forget that at the same time color harmony is important to the success of any color design. In the second part of the cartoon, orange and warm yellow become more important.

If you look closely, you can see that there are two different shades of orange.

Although we usually think of orange as a hue in between red and yellow, one could also argue that it is a brightly saturated shade of the same hue as the brown fur of the dog. Therefore, these two colors go very well together, they are part of the same family.

Now that the dog has successfully lulled the cat into believing that his hand puppet (an early reference to Cecil the sea serpent?) was a hot girl, the characters proceed into a less deserted area. While the fences have almost exclusively been illuminated by moonlight until now, artificial light sources start to turn up next to the houses.

The more saturated yellow/orange light of these windows and streetlamps increases the sense of drama.

Beyond the wooden fence a warm light source illuminating a tower building is visible.

The more dramatic lighting becomes obvious when comparing the two silhouette shots in the cartoon: early on, when the cat is wooing the the girl and is given the cold shoulder, the shadows are the product of pale moonlight.

When the dog is chasing the fooled cat, however, the lighting is more yellow, far stronger and more dramatic. This chase culminates in a high angle shot of the fire ladder of the harshly lit tower building the two are about to climb.

While the main impression in this picture (above right) is one of strong contrasts (bright yellow vs. dark purple), the pieces of laundry do not draw our attention away from the staircase because they are all painted in closely related harmonious tones.

Yet, none of these colors (above) are reused when the characters actually hit the clothes line. Here we have green, yellow and orange - colors that are closely related to the dog's brown fur:

Since black goes with virtually anything, the cat fits into any color environment.

Left: laundry colors; right: dog colors.

Limited Cel Colors
I believe that if we looked at actual cels of this cartoon, the two tones of orange (above left) would be identical to the two versions of orange flowers. This observation is very typical of colors in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. While the Disney model department used a vast variety of cel paints, the Schlesinger Studio (later Warner Bros. Cartoons) cartoons usually display a very limited range of character colors.* They also tend to favor purer colors - more saturated and closer to primaries and secondaries - than Disney or MGM.

I suspect that this is one of the reasons why so many of these characters are either completely pitch-black, grey or brown. After all, these non-colors go with almost any background. Even when there was no time to avoid black characters in front of dark backgrounds, most of these characters (except for Daffy) have white hands so that their gestures are still comprehensible without seeing most of the silhouette.

But the limitation to colors that are close to "nameable" hues like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and the lack of subtler shades may explain why many Warner Cartoons look a lot less impressive than their more expensive contemporaries when it comes to color. Of course, a strong artist like Maurice Noble, Phil DeGuard or Hawley Pratt could turn these limitations into assets. And whoever was responsible for the color design of this cartoon did a great job integrating the few cel colors with the infinitely available background colors.

As we will see in Clampett's next cartoon, TALE OF TWO KITTIES, a similar color scheme is structured even more clearly around two black cats in pursuit of a naked bird with a characteristic speech impediment. 

* At least, due to the production process, the colors change slighty from shot to shot. Just think of how sterile these cartoons would look, if they were colored by a computer!