Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea

Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo will be my last addition to this blog.  The movie was released in 2008, and it was one of the most beautiful animation I've ever seen.  Not just beautiful, but it has a good story too. Without further ado, here is some of the screenshots:

The above pictures shows that the town they live in is quite a lovely town.  The sun is shining brightly, the trees, the rocks, the houses and the seas looks so bright, so high in saturation.   It is like having a peaceful and happy life.  Noticed that blue and green are dominating the images above.  They seem to be giving out a cool and friendlier color.  We don't see a lot of highly saturated red or yellow or orange to keep us alert.  The blue and green help us feel easy and relax.

The next one is where the father break his promise to go back home and meet up with his family.  He spent the night on the sea with the rest of the ship's crew.  The father and Sosuke decided to use morse code to speak to each other.  They uses the light in the house and in the ship.  Then the father tries to apologies to his wife by using all sorts of beautiful light that is available on the ship.  This scene was quite captivating, as there was suddenly a bright light in the middle of a dark sea.

The last image that I want to talk about is the one where Ponyo finally escaped his father place and tries to see Sosuke.  The ocean started to rise, waves are racing each other to hit the land and the storm is getting heavier.  The people of the town are getting afraid of the tsunami.  The colour is starting to desaturated in here.  It become a lot more grey, and the we also feel that something dangerous is happening or about to happen. 

Lastly, I would like to say that this colour class I have been attending is quite good.  I never actually spent so much time paying attention to colour.  I believe with the right understanding and careful choice, I could hopefully produce a good film in the future.  It is not just about how good the animation or the drawing, or the rendering or the modelling are; every aspect has its own part and importance.  Finally, thank you very much for the attention for all this time.  Have a good day. :)

Aladdin

Another one of Disney's movie, Aladdin.  As always, Disney has done it again with its movies.  Aladdin has a lot of colourful scenes. 

At the beginning of the film, Jafar the royal advisor is seeking for the genie in the lamp.  He collected the key to open the dungeon that withold the magic lamp.  As soon as the dungeon appears, it shows another color in the dark blue-ish savannah.  The inside of the cave (the mouth of the animal) has a bright red and yellow glow, a complimentary colour to the environment. 

And again, when Aladdin bring Jasmine to his place, he showed her that eventhough his place is quite dirty and messy, he has a wonderful view of the sultan's palace.  Thus we have another good colour mood.  The blue-ish dark sky in the environment and the bright white and yellow-brownish palace.  It is indeed a magnificent view.

Another example is when Jafar is trying to find somebody worthy to take the lamp from the dungeon.  He is an evil character, an evil sorcerer about to do something bad to Aladdin, and in here, the scene is feel with a red glow that signifies something bad is happening or about to happen.  While tha last picture shows a cool and comforting blue atmosphere.  The only bright light is on the top of the stones, shows the importance of the lamp.

Ivan Aivazovsky

These last 3 entries of my blog will talked about colour mood and narrative.  In this particular entry, I will show you some paintings of Ivan Aivazovsky.  He is a Russian painter that is well known for his seascapes paintings.  I have look a lot of his paintings and indeed the sea paintings are awesome.  The mood and atmosphere was set up beautifully in the painting.  He was born in July 29, 1817 and died at the age of 83.  And now let's take a look at his paintings:

A beautiful painting called 'Moonlit Seascape with Shipwreck'.  I think Ivan really did a magnificent job in this painting.  You can easily tell the drama in this painting.  There are several people looking at the shipwreck in the middle of the sea.  But they can't see it clearly because it is dark in the night.  There's a strong contrast between the silhouette of the ship and the sky and also the watch tower and the sky.

This one is also immensely wonderful.  A great battle takes place in the sea, and several ships are destroyed and burned.  The fire roars and burns mighty high in the sky, coloring its surrounding.  This fire really captures our attention because the environment is quite dark which creates a great contrast in stauration.

These paintings has a lot of different mood and atmosphere to each other, but they all have strong emotions tied to it.  Like a sunset, a sunrise, a misty sea and a really cold mountain.  The exaggeration on the atmosphere really speaks to us, the audience.

Beauty and the Beast

 Another of Disney's production.  I find it easy and good to use Disney's movie as an example for colour theories.  As you might notice in Lion King, they tend to have a lot of colourful animation.  And this next one is Beauty and the Beast. 

If you can still remembe at the beginning of the movie, Belle (the girl in the blue dress) is singing outside her house and around the town as well.  After watching it the second time, I noticed that she is the only one who wears blue in this town.  The rest of the residents are wearing pale orange, pale brown, pale red or pale green.  I think this is to help children so that their attention won't dawdle into another place.  

If you can also recall, There's a scene where the house servants are preparing the dinner for Belle.  They throw her an amazing entertainment too.  Songs, dances and beautiful, highly saturated colour everywhere.  I believe they have this kind of scene in a lot of their movies.  To make everything more lively. 

Anthony Van Dyck

Sir Anthony Van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England.  He was born in March 22nd 1599 and died in December 9th 1641  He is most famous for his portraits of King Charles I of England and Scotland and his family and court.  But in these paintings that I'm going to talked about are not the paintings of King Charles and his family. 

 (Saint Ambrose and Emperor Theodosius)

(Virgin and Child with Saint Anthony of Padua)

The above paintings here, has a lot of objects in it.  But when our eyes first look at it, we fixated our eyes on a certain objects or colours.  The first painting is kind of leading to the middle.  We can see that everybody else in the paintings are looking to the middle and the painter (Anthony) is also giving a more saturated colour to the two people standing in the middle rather than giving a brighter colour to the rest.  Therefore the main focus are the two people arguing in the middle.  The same thing can be said for the second painting.  With such a darker and more natural colour on the background, our gaze immediately focus on the virgin holding the child.  And if we look carefully, there seems to be a yellowish glow near the head of the virgin and the child.

Lion King

This week, I'm going to look at the color proportion in the Disney's Lion King.  I've watched this movie in DVD long time ago, when I was still in my childhood days.  I can't really remember what's the story about and the great songs in it.  But luckily for me, the movie was shown again in Odeon in these past few days.  Since I've been enrolling in cinematography class and colour class too, watching a movie nowadays is not the same as before.  I started to pay attention to the light, the cut, the edit, the colour, the composition.  It might be good for me to understand cinematography but it's a bit hard to get absorbed in the movies now.  Anyway, I've seen some scenes in Lion King that's worth talking about in here.

In the first few seconds or minutes of the opening of the movie, we're shown with a great scene of the sun rising.  At the moment, the environment is covered in red.  And as the sun rising, it burns brightly yellow  to the environment.   Because of the environment is covered in dark red, the focus of the eye suddenly goes to bright sun peeking in.  And as the sun rise higher and gets bigger in the screen, the color of the environment is changing to a brighter orange.  And thus we have a nice transition of color proportion.

In these scenes, they are both a bit dark and a bit dull.  But you can notice that the look and feel of the forest or savannah is natural.  In the first picture, the lone tree in it has a brighter green compare to the grass in the foreground and the background.  And there's also a hint of yellow on the ground.  Even though the yellow is bright, because the size of the color is not that big, it still fits to the colour proportion nicely.

On these next scenes; it's where Simba is trying to ran away from Zazu, they all started to sing in the middle of the jungle, and the colour of the jungle suddenly changes from a dull boring but natural colour into a bright highly saturated colour.  And it's a really bouncing colour.  For example, to put green with red together and then blue and yellow and many more.  It gives a dynamic, bright, happy and powerful feel to the atmosphere.

A Christmas Carol

A few months back, I bought a disney movie called A Christmas Carol.  I was looking for a good 3D movie and this is one of the 3D movies that I like to watch again.  Still talking in a saturation and color value subjects, this movie actually has a good examples about those subjects.

If you could remember, in the beginning of the movie, when Scrooge's partner has just passed away, the color in that particular scene and on forward is duller and more desaturated.  It's a pretty sad and grey in the beginning of the movie.  But then, the color is getting brighter when the ghost of the past shows Scrooge of his past when he met a beautiful girl; she became his lover for a while, in a dance festival.

And then, it's back again to a more gray atmosphere.  This keeps on going for a few times.  Whenever there is a happy memories, the color will get a bit brighter.  Another example is when the ghost of christmas present make his appearance.

He sits so high above a mountain of presents.  The room is also brightly lit and decorated.  It gives a richer and merrier christmas.  And then again, the color beginning to diminished near the end of the ghost of the christmas present departure.  It keeps on getting darker, and duller when the ghost of christmas future or death visits Scrooge.  But in the end, it all went a lot better for Scrooge and his clerk and his clerk's son.  Scrooge started to enjoy christmas like everybody else and he become like a second father to his clerk's son, tiny Tim.

Making the movie in this way; from a dull color into a brighter and more saturated color at the end of the movie, helps the audience to enjoy it better.  To me it feels like it enhances the mood or atmosphere better when they (the cinematographer) pay a lot of attention to the lighting and color, like in this film.