"The Psychology of Color Always Influences How We Perceive a Film." Director Ihor Darovskyi on Color in Cinema
A long interview with a Ukrainian director.
Ihor Darovskyi is a director, film reviewer, former instructor at the ProCut film school, and author of the blog “Fincher Zadarma”. The specialist spoke to DeTalks in an exclusive interview about the psychology of colour in film, the interplay of light and shadow, and directorial technique.
How did your path in the world of film begin?
“I've been interested in film since childhood, but I didn't realize you could actually work in it. Later, I started working as a director and editor-in-chief on TV projects, and eventually, we opened a production company and started making documentaries. So my speciality now is documentary filmmaking, commercial documentaries in particular. We made portrait films, for instance, about architect Serhii Makhno — «Life of Ideas».
My experience with narrative filmmaking wasn't very pleasant, since by the end of shooting, it turned out to be more of a producer's project than a director's. What came out wasn't at all what we wanted.”
How did the idea for your blog come about?
“When I worked in television, my main idea was: 'you have to make a product that we ourselves like first, and only then will it find its audience.' Unfortunately, though, this industry has a different approach: 'find something that's already sold well somewhere, and do the same thing.' No one does anything of their own.
There are, and always have been, many producer-driven projects. But producers don't understand art the way they understand finances. That's what film schools teach too: how to make money without understanding how it works or why. Genuinely authorial, creative projects, unfortunately, are very rare.
It became clear to me that things were bad in the film industry and needed to change. I spent a year and a half teaching a videography course at the ProCut film school. That's where the idea came to me that there are many people who genuinely want to learn — they just need to be given the chance.
That's how I created the blog, and I truly hope it eventually grows into a full-fledged school. I already give free lectures from time to time now, sharing knowledge about how to think differently and look at film from another angle.”
A few words about the Oscars?
“I think Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two is one of the best films of the last 20 years. Everything about it is perfect: the cinematography, the direction, the design — every detail is thought through. So when the Oscars didn't even nominate it for Best Director, that was frankly laughable.
And besides, why, for instance, did Brady Corbet's The Brutalist win the Oscar for cinematography? It was shot on an old film camera in VistaVision format — that stretched, boxy frame popular in the '50s and '60s. The cinematographer found an angle, locked off the camera, and the shot looked static, whereas in Dune, it's not just a beautiful image, everything is also moving dynamically. That's much harder to pull off.”
Let's talk about our topic — the psychology of colour. Can films influence our subconscious through colour palette, even if we're not aware of it?
“Honestly, a lot of this works on the subconscious level. I have a professional deformation, for instance, since I watch films differently — how the camera moves, how a cut happened in editing, and so on. That's not really the right way to watch. But as for the psychology of colour, it does affect how you perceive a film while you're watching it.
If it's horror, you'll get dark tones on screen. In James Wan's Saw, for instance, there are cold blues with a touch of green. But on the flip side, there's Ari Aster's Midsommar. That's also horror, but everything is reversed there — bright colours make you think it's a light comedy about friends on holiday, when actually, something terrifying is starting.
Good directors do this — they trick your sense of reality. By the way, one psychological interpretation of that yellow colour in Midsommar is sickness.”
So what are the standard meanings of colours on screen?
“Let's clarify right away that we'll be talking about the European colour palette specifically, not any other. Because, for instance, in Asia, the meanings of colours can differ: white, which in Europe and America signals neutrality, is a mourning colour in Far Eastern countries.
So we'll stick with the European tradition. And actually, most of these colours come from purely natural associations. A dangerous night is black, so black signals something dangerous. Red is also about danger. Orange and yellow are the sun, so they signal something pleasant.”
Red
“The stable association with red is love and passion, but at the same time, violence, danger, and anger. We can use it to convey love — through roses or hearts — just as easily as power, through the purple robes of kings.
For instance, a shot from Sam Mendes's American Beauty, about a romantic relationship between an adult man and a minor girl, is very symbolic: from the colour red to a biblical connotation. It's a pose evoking Jesus Christ, and red petals turn into blood.
In Gaspar Noé's film Irreversible, meanwhile, red is pure violence. There's a horrifying rape scene shot entirely in red tones.”
Orange
“Orange is the warm sun, friendliness, youth. But there are exceptions. In George Miller's Mad Max, for instance, orange gets a touch of red added to it, and that combination can create a sense of the apocalyptic, of loneliness, and even danger.
An example of orange as a colour of loneliness appears in Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, when the protagonist walks into rust-coloured fog, as if into emptiness. There's no apparent danger, but there is sorrow.”
Yellow
“Yellow is money, gold, and also joy, naivety, sickness. It's an element of joy and carefreeness in the fairy-tale world of Tim Burton's Big Fish, for instance. A slightly different shade of yellow in Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, meanwhile, already creates an atmosphere of madness.
The colour palette of Maria is also yellowish. But sickly yellowish, since it shows the protagonist's difficult emotional state as she loses touch with reality.”
Green
“On one hand, green is nature, and in colour theory, it's fairly neutral. In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, for instance, there's a lot of pleasant green. But there's also Brad Anderson's The Machinist, which is greenish-black, and with its worn-down locations, also signals something sickly.”
Can directors themselves establish meaning for a particular colour?
“Yes. In Murder on the Orient Express, for instance, director Sidney Lumet establishes blue as the colour of murder himself, since it's right after that colour first appears on the screen that a crime takes place. So it works like a Pavlovian effect: we see blue and understand that something bad is about to happen. This is how you can manipulate a viewer's perception and create suspense.”
Are there directors you associate with particular colours?
“Every Wes Anderson film is always associated, for me, with a certain set of colours. Asteroid City is retro yellow.
Moonrise Kingdom also has a warm palette. And there's an interesting compositional trick in this film too. In the story, the heroine spends a lot of time at a lighthouse, so Anderson makes her clothing the same colour as the lighthouse itself. In composition, this is called a rhyme — when you repeat something to echo something else. Here, he rhymed the girl and the lighthouse.
The Grand Budapest Hotel has a pink-red palette. That's Anderson's whole thing, really — tailoring the palette to the film. But far from every director does that, since they simply don't want to bother.”
Which directors do you associate with their own distinctive approach to shooting or visual choices?
“Michael Bay (Transformers) often uses the teal and orange palette — cool blue paired with warm orange. That's his signature colour-grading move.
There's also a fascinating colour split in the show Disclaimer. Past memories are warm and cosy, while the present is cold and realistic. It's the same sea, but entirely different because the characters lost their son. But we're shown that the same sea can hold different emotions.
And then, for instance, J.J. Abrams (Star Wars) really loves lens flares. He shoots with anamorphic lenses, which produce elongated light streaks. That's when you first shoot a squeezed image and then stretch it out. So while regular optics produce round flares, anamorphic ones produce elongated lines because stretching the image turns a circle into a line. It's very noticeable in his Star Wars films.”
What can a shift in colour palette over the course of a film signify?
“I call this gradation the hero's journey. In Albert Hughes's The Book of Eli, for instance, at the start, everything is almost black and white, desaturated, since the action takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. Colour gradually appears in the film: the closer the hero gets to his goal, the more colour appears on the screen. By the end, we see a fully colourful image, since the character has completed his journey.
Or take Todd Phillips's Joker. At first, it's cold, gloomy, blue tones. Lonely shots. Joker is filmed from a distance, through obstacles, and always from above. The only colour-warm place is his home, since that's where the character feels safe. But once he becomes the real Joker, warmer colours appear. Even the framing changes: the camera is placed lower, emphasizing his heroic stature. He's now in the centre of the frame.
There's also a fascinating example with the Harry Potter franchise. The first instalment, directed by Chris Columbus, is warm and pleasant, so it evokes associations with a Christmas fairy tale or the film Home Alone. But if you compare it to the later instalments, by the finale, we've arrived at cold, dark, almost black colours.”
What else can colour be used for in the film industry?
“Colour can be used to place emphasis in a film and highlight a certain detail, or, conversely, to divert attention from something important. Colour and its shades can also be used to direct the viewer's attention around a location.
In the Wachowskis' The Matrix, the red dress works as an accent, distracting the hero, and along with him, us. The camera follows her, and then Neo suddenly sees the gun.
In Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, which was stylized to look like a black-and-white comic book, there are also several accents. In this scene, for instance, there's an accent on a red dress that heightens the drama.
In Star Wars, the accent colour of the lightsabres helps you understand whether you're looking at a good or bad character. Everyone on the dark side has red sabres, while the light-side Jedi have blue or green ones.
And then there's Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie. That's actually one of the first experimental films, since, color-wise, no one had done anything like it before. The directors told a strange story about a strange protagonist using equally strange colors. The shades felt like something was off. And the heroine, in turn, lives in a world where something is 'off' too.”
For instance, in this shot, there's an accent on a blue lamp, but you have to be careful with this because if the accent is off to the side, we'll pay more attention to it than to Amélie.
And then, for instance, in Steven Spielberg's black-and-white Schindler's List, there's a clear accent on a girl in a coloured red coat being led to her death. It's a very sensitive moment, and the director wanted us to notice it. But despite the entire film being shot in black-and-white, the ending is in colour. That shows that after all the horrific events, life still won out.”
How do you work with accents in black-and-white films?
“First, black-and-white is the best format there is, since you can't hide anything behind colour. It's raw emotion, with nothing getting in the way. All you can work with is light, the actor, and the composition of the image.
For instance, George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road exists in two versions: the one everyone's seen, and a director's black-and-white cut. The latter has a thoroughly different atmosphere and level of perception.
In black-and-white, light and contrast always do the work. That's also difficult because you can't just shoot everything in colour first and slap a black-and-white filter on top. It doesn't work that way.
For instance, director Steven Zaillian, in the show Ripley, works only with light and contrast. In the scene where Ripley prepares for the commissioner's arrival, there's a lot of light at first, and it feels like nothing is happening. But then, as the light fades, some sense of mystery appears because his face grows dark. Black-and-white is a purer, more dramaturgically rich approach.”
If you made a film about your life, what colours would it be in?
“I think I'd go with teal and orange. Something cold, something warm. Definitely not the sickly yellows, and definitely not the reds with their danger.”
Would it be a long take like The Brutalist, or dynamic like Dune?
“Dynamic. If I made a film — and I truly hope I will, since I have three scripts I dream of bringing to life — it would definitely be dynamic. That pace and rhythm feel closer to me.”