Jada Lowman

ARTG 270
Prof. Chuang
3/24/25
Color in Film
​ Color is one of the most important components of filmmaking. Choosing the right color
and the meaning behind it is so crucial that hiring a professional colorist is essential. It’s a
powerful storytelling tool that filmmakers use to excrete emotions, set moods, and lead the
audience's perception. They use color psychology, understanding how specific colors can trigger
certain emotional responses. There are even times when they use colors that you wouldn’t
normally associate with specific emotions. For example, in Midsommar, one of the movies I
studied, the main color that was shown was yellow. Though, it wasn’t used to represent
happiness as most would guess, but uncanniness, envy, and foreshadowing. It managed to change
how we the audience saw the color yellow.
​ The first movie I investigated was Midsommar, a 2019 horror film about a couple who
travels to Sweden to visit their friend's rural hometown for its fabled midsummer festival. Taking
place in the midst of an idyllic retreat, a pagan cult quickly turns the retreat into a bizarre and
violent competition. I chose this movie because of how colorful it was for a horror film. I’m used
to the dark and eerie color palate opposed to the bright and colorful palate Midsommar used. The
colors I observed were yellows and greens. For the scenes where the main characters would be in
fields of grass it would always be this bright green which is very contradictory to what’s
happening in the story. The main color, yellow, seemed to show up pretty often. This pop of
color—again, contradictory to the story—showed up to elicit an uneasy feeling. A warning of
what’s to come.
​ The second movie I looked into was Se7en, a movie I’ve actually seen a few times. I have
always believed this movie to be in my top ten. As unsettling and dark as it was, the storytelling
and acting from our main stars kept me hooked. Se7en is about a retiring police Detective,
William Somerset, who tackles a final case with the aid of newly transferred David Mills. They
discover a number of elaborate and grizzly murders that eerily represent each of the seven deadly
sins. So, when I found out that, unbeknownst to me, this movie utilized color as well, I was
highly intrigued. As I rewatched the movie, there were two colors that seemed to show up the
most. Red and green. Putting my critical thinking skills to the test, I gathered that the constant
hints of red and green were meant to foreshadow the last two sins of the seven deadly sins. Wrath
and envy. It was somewhat of a buildup to the very end when the serial killer reveals who the last
two victims are, our main character and his wife.
​ The third movie I did was La La Land which notoriously uses color to elicit the
audience's emotions. Although there are plenty of colors used throughout the movie, I decided to
focus on one which represented love. As I rewatched La La Land, there was one color that stirred
up the emotion inside of me and that was purple. Mostly because it represented love. And it’s
shown in one of the most iconic scenes when Mia (in her yellow dress) and Sebastian are
dancing into the night. The backdrop of LA is this gorgeous deep purple. My initial approach
was to tackle red and blue since it came up all throughout the movie until I realized how
powerful purple was. It was a mixture of the two colors and represented Mia and Sebastian’s
connection getting stronger. Their love for each other.
​ Joker was the first movie I tackled with three colors. Even though I was against it at some
point, as I rewatched the movie I realized how important all three colors were to the story. They
all served purposes that helped me better understand the main character, Arthur Fleck. The three
colors that I observed were primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. The first color I noticed was
blue. I couldn’t completely put it together but I knew it represented the character’s struggle. Not
only were the people involved with his struggles wearing blues but Gotham is blue. When Arthur
is in the hospital visiting his mother the scene is entirely blue. Everything that goes against the
main character is blue. The second color that showed up was yellow. It was difficult to figure out
exactly what this meant but it showed up a lot in the movie. After doing some research, I found
that the yellow meant our character’s descent into madness. It represented him losing his grip on
reality. But it also represented his strength and resistance. In the opening scene, Arthur gets his
sign (yellow) stolen by a bunch of teenagers (wearing blue). As they lead him into an alleyway to
beat him up one of the kids breaks the sign over his head and Arthur’s strength and resistance
goes along with it. Red is the last color I noticed but it was the easiest to tell what it meant. It
represented love, healing, and sanity. Arthur’s neighbor whom he imagines to be in a relationship
with is constantly dressed in red. There were two profound scenes that stuck with me ever since I
began investigating the color in this movie. The first is when Arthur visits his neighbour, Sophie,
to kiss her. The colors of her clothing are blue and red, but the walls of her apartment are yellow,
a symptom of Arthur's descent into madness. It was something that I had never noticed before
but made the scene that much more intense. The second scene is towards the end when Arthur is
in his acceptance stage. His final suit is entirely red with a yellow vest. He’s achieved balance.
Through accepting his differences, he has found healing.
​ This journey of watching movies, analyzing the colors and deducing what they represent
has been incredibly interesting. Mostly because of how much insight it gave me on not only the
story but the characters and their relationship with other characters. It was cool to see how color
was used to represent different things depending on the movie I watched. For example, in Se7en,
the colors were used to represent two of the seven deadly sins but in Joker each color we saw
directly dealt with the main character and his feelings and how outside things affected him. It
was after this project that I realized how fun color is. Even in the simplest of movies you can find
the use of color and how it can further a story. How it can manipulate how we as an audience
feel. It really makes you wonder how in the world a color can make you feel things. Especially a
color that originally gave a different impression. For another example, I have to recall
Midsommer for how it changes the way you see yellow. It alters that part in your brain that
interprets yellow as a happy color into it being a color that elicits fear.
​ In closing, I have learned a plethora of things as I went through eight movies, analyzing
what each color was supposed to mean. I learned that red can mean love, wrath, and loneliness
depending on how a filmmaker depicts it. Furthermore, you can convince your audience of the
meaning of any color you want. Which was an exciting revelation. Color breathes life into
movies and makes going to the movies and movie nights that much more enjoyable.
WORKS CITED:

Cosey, Felicia. “SPECIAL ISSUE | Color, Horror, and the Uncanny: Ari Aster’s Use of Color in
Midsommar .” PopMeC Research Blog, 2 Nov. 2021, popmec.hypotheses.org/4782.

Millman, Zosha. “Never Shined so Brightly: The Use of Color in “La La Land.”” Film School
Rejects, 22 Feb. 2017, filmschoolrejects.com/color-in-la-la-land.

Philipp Höhnel. “Mooncube - the Significance of Colour in Joker (2019).” Mooncube.space,

mooncube, 2019, www.mooncube.space/blog/the-significance-of-colour-in-joker.html.

“Symbolism of Colour in La La Land.” Medium, 20 Jan. 2017,

medium.com/@theeighth/symbolism-of-colour-in-la-la-land-83b1d71892d.

Weatherhead, Shaina. “How 'Seven’s Use of Color Foreshadows Its Ending.” Collider, 29 July
2022, collider.com/seven-david-fincher-use-of-color-foreshadowing/.