- I read a tweet yesterday,
in which the woman was like,
"[beeping] Todd Phillips,
[beeping] Jimmy Kimmel,
"and [beeping] Lawrence Sher
"for disrespecting Joaquin
Phoenix on that outtake."
And I'm literally like, "it's fake,
"have you not read about it, it is fake."
My mom thought it was real
and she was very embarrassed for me.
[claps]
[beeps]
Hi, I'm Larry Sher and
I'm a cinematographer.
Today I'll be talking
about color and film,
and how cinematographers use color
to help tell an effective story.
[mimics slapping noise]
For example, how does certain
colors contrast on screen
to create depth, separation, and mood.
You probably noticed some
changes just then right?
Let's take it back a second.
So this flat, desaturated
image is a result of us
shooting on a digital camera
in something called LOG.
This camera shoots in S-LOG3.
You can basically think of
it as a raw digital negative
before the color grading has happened.
Shooting in LOG lets us
retain a wide range of colors
recorded by the sensor,
which an editor or colorist
in post-production can
grade anyway they want.
Much different huh?
We added blue variance,
dimmed up the orange
to compliment the blues.
I know it's all technical,
trust me, you don't have to
think of it as technical stuff,
I was an economics major,
I don't know any of this stuff.
[claps]
[beeps]
Color in film is comprised
of three main elements.
The color or hue itself, the saturation
or intensity of that, and the brightness,
sometimes referred to as value or tone.
Saturation is probably
the most subjective part
of modern film making.
Values of color refer to
shades or brightness levels.
One way to create depth in an image
is to use complimentary colors
or colors opposite each
other on the color wheel.
Blues go with oranges, reds with greens,
yellows with purples, and so on.
You can play around to create
different color schemes.
So, how does a cinematographer choose
what colors to use in a movie?
It's hard to talk about color
in motion picture photography
without thinking of the legendary
cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro.
Seriously, after this is over,
go watch "The Conformist," "Last
Emperor," "Apocalypse Now."
He uses color as imaginatively
as anybody in film history.
He actually had a whole color theory,
and would assign colors to
different moods in the movie.
The emotions, the characters.
We all have associations
with color, memories,
how we think about color, it's subjective.
For example, green is a color in nature.
It may evoke tension, or envy, or greed.
Or it may represent power of
transition for a character.
Whereas warm, yellows and oranges,
may evoke emotion like comfort,
and home, love, tranquility.
Or not, I don't know.
It may make you wanna go to the bathroom.
[claps]
[beeps]
So color has meaning in film,
but it's an aesthetic choice.
And some masterful filmmakers
choose not to use color
in the same way as perhaps
Storaro or even myself.
And they use a limited color pallet
or a desaturation to tell their stories.
I've always appreciated
how colors contrast
within the same image and how
they can be used in movies
to help evoke certain
emotions and tell the story.
Let's look at some examples.
- [Man In Film] Andrew,
this is your father.
Hello?
- In "Garden State," the
movie opens with him literally
in a colorless world, he
lives in a tiny apartment
with all white walls and white furniture.
We're trying to limit the
color space 'cause his life
is a bit colorless in
this stage in the movie.
He opens up his mirror, very
little color, only the pills
are the only color that
breaks up the scene.
He drives to work in a fairly
desaturated, busy highway.
So then the next contrast
in color when he goes here,
is an example of contrasting
colors against themselves
in scene to scene, not
just within a scene.
If you are willing to
embrace color as a director,
like Zach is, you're gonna
look for opportunities
to show color from scene to scene,
or certainly within the scenes.
Fun fact, when we shot this I said,
"has anyone actually done
this, this is so unrealistic."
Like driven away with the
hose still in the car,
three weeks later I did it.
- [Man In Film] I'm just saying
it's clearly marked, okay?
We are definitely not
supposed to be up here.
- [Friend In Film] Oh, come on.
- So this is a scene from "The Hangover,"
which was the first film
I did with Todd Phillips,
who directed "Joker."
And here we are shooting on
a practical rooftop in Vegas.
And in terms of the lighting in here
and the contrasting color of light,
some of it is not necessarily
motivated by emotion,
but it's motivated by the desire to one,
be authentic to the environment, but also,
to help separate the world
via contrasting colors.
We had a practical concern,
which was we were shooting
up there for real, so
this is an example of how
production design and
cinematography are like entwined
as closely as they can be because here
as the cinematographer, I was
basically helping to design
the set by having us put
in those fluorescents
because we needed to light
them in an environment
in which we could shoot them
from far away, you know,
surround them, so they
have this cyan light.
Well, on the rooftops, that
red light is there as a way
for airplanes and other
things to see the rooftops
and to see the boundaries.
So those two contrasting
colors of cyan and red
made for just a really
wonderful way to separate out
the actors from their environment.
- [Man In Film] Cheers!
- [All] Cheers.
- [Man In Film] Short and sweet.
[mysterious music]
- [Man In Film] What now?
- [Alien In Film] We wait.
- This is a movie I shot called "Paul."
They arrive on the top of a
mountain to basically meet
the spaceship that's gonna take Paul home.
The moonlight is the dominate
source of light here,
which is blue with a little bit of cyan,
just personal preference as to
where I like moonlight to be.
They're supposed to see a
spaceship coming and in fact,
it's a misdirect because it
turns to be the baddie flying
in a helicopter to come take Paul away.
I've always been really happy
with the way this turned out
in part because we decided
to put these moving lights
on the end of a helicopter.
And when we talk about
color, and if we're talking
about here, the color contrast,
I love the way that yellow,
and that yellow is not a yellow
you see really naturally,
mixes with the moonlight in this scene.
That light that came through the trees
could've been anything,
so if we had kept it blue
or white light, I just think
it doesn't have the same power
and the same striking imagery
that I was looking for.
Another aspect of color in
film is color temperature.
It has to do with how
the color white light
looks like on camera
in a given temperature.
They're measured in Kelvin.
And you often hear about
indoor temperatures,
like 3,200 Kelvin, and
outdoor temperatures,
like sunlight, 5,500 Kelvin.
Lower temperatures are considered warmer,
and can give an orangish tint
to a white object on camera.
Higher temperatures are considered cooler,
and provide a blueish look.
So for example, at 3,200
Kelvin, if you introduce
something at 2,000 degrees Kelvin,
it would be very warm and
orange, like fire light.
And at 5,500 Kelvin, if
you introduce something
at 10,000 degrees, it
would be really blue.
- [Man In Film] You know,
I gotta hand it to you Stu,
this place is paradise.
- So this is from "Hangover Part II."
Here's a firelit scene,
right, so it's warm, inviting,
it's the calm before the storm.
So the first image as they wake up,
is gonna be them waking
up in a grimy room,
in the middle on Bangkok.
It's daylight, but the lights are all on.
There's a tungsten bulb
in there to show contrast,
there's uncorrected cyan fluorescents,
the warm light that's coming in there now
is representing heat, right,
'cause they're sweaty and hot.
One of the things that we
talked about when we talked
about color temperature,
is the way it shows up
in the form of like cool
white or warm white.
But the other thing that
really plays into lighting
that we see in our natural
world is the green spike,
or some lights may be very magenta,
but often with florescents they have
a very high green spike,
so it means in relation
to the 3,200 film stock, when it shoots
an uncorrected fluorescent as
I say, it's also showing up
with all that green spike
in the form of green.
So you mix that cool color temperature
with the green and you get cyan.
And that's that cyan that we saw
in the room when they first woke up.
[soft music]
In black and white you
can really see how depth
is created with shadows,
and contrast, and tone.
The ultimate contrast
being the silhouette.
[curtains fluttering]
Whoa, good job guys.
Obviously that's one extreme,
but there are different values
of exposure we can use to varying effects.
Famous still photographer, Ansel Adams,
made famous the Zone
System, which was a way
to think about exposure and
tonality in a film image.
The lowest value zero being total black,
and the highest value ten being white,
with very little information at all.
So you can think about
an image and think of
all the tonalities between
there in ten steps of exposure.
It's a good way to think
about the depth you can create
through shadow, light, darkness.
But another way to create that depth,
in a way I really
appreciate, is through color.
Two things can be the
exact same tonal range,
but if they're different colors,
they create depth within the same frame.
[phone ringing]
[character crying]
[phone ringing]
All right, here's a clip from "Joker."
He's suffering from severe insomnia
at this point in the movie.
He's going through this real crisis.
You know, because "Joker" in large part,
is a movie about opposite
ends of the spectrum,
two sides of yourself,
a shadow in the light.
And so, those contrasting
colors is a lot like
what's going on internally with Arthur.
And that color difference makes
a huge impact on the scene.
If we drain the color out of this,
you can really see what
we're talking about
when we're saying values
and tonality of light.
But suddenly if we bring
all the color back in,
we're now creating
separation with the color.
The dramatic difference
between the sodium vapor in
the background, and the
uncorrected fluorescent, cyan blue.
[mysterious tone]
One way to achieve natural
color contrast in a movie,
is to exploit that 15 to 20 minute window
each day known as magic hour.
When the world is bathed in blue light,
and the balance of it mixes
with all the natural light
of the world, streetlights,
storefronts, fluorescents.
Anything that's in there is contrasting
with that beautiful ambient blue light.
[bus engine revs]
[dark music]
This scene from "Joker,"
is a perfect example
of Todd and I shooting at dusk.
We contrasted the build of the storefront
that Mark Friedberg, the
production designer did,
and added a bunch of
color contrast in there,
different colors to play off of the blues.
You can get some real beautiful stuff
if you're willing to
shoot in this tiny window
and if everyone is hyperfocused.
A funny thing happened though, in "Joker,"
on another shoot at dusk,
for some reason right as
we began to shoot, right
after the second take,
they just started handing out tacos
[chuckling] to the crew.
I went a little crazy,
'cause I went, wait a second,
we have 20 minutes to shoot this scene,
can we just [beeping] wait on the tacos.
[claps]
[beeps]
One of the fun things about "Joker"
was creating Gotham in
the 70s and early 80s.
And for me, a large part
of that was representing
what the cities looked like back then.
Well a big part of the cities back then
were the street lights.
And the street lights were sodium vapor.
You don't see sodium
vapor as much anymore,
and they're really going away.
That green, orange, gross light.
That's what we saw back
then, that's how the city
represented itself on film
but also in our memories.
A little bit gross, but
for me, quite beautiful.
It's an example of the blue
light that bathes the city
at this time of day and
then us adding these warmer
sodium vapor lights in those
positions on the building,
we turned some lights
on inside the building.
In the interest of the reality
of the space in the world
in which we live, we're
now adding another color,
this sort of warm white,
uncorrected fluorescent,
the yellow warm to his lobby.
And then, when he gets into
his home, that's the first time
we're introduced to some warm,
comforting, tungsten light,
it's lamps, it's warm, it's
inviting, and it's probably
the warmest, most gentle light
that's in the whole movie.
- [Man In Movie] Could it kill me?
[crowd laughing in movie]
Most guys we look at sex
like parking the car,
we're like there's a spot.
[crowd laughing in movie]
There's another--
- The fluorescent set existed back then,
and they were just gross
and ugly and they had
a green spike, and so in the
interest of being authentic
to the time, but also loving
the contrast of that cyan
to the yellow down stairs
and then to the red here,
this environment because we're backstage
was a real opportunity
to mix a lot of color.
- [Man In Movie] One more
time for Sam Guerrero, y'all.
- But he's gonna go into
an environment in which now
he has to perform with
all these red lights
that have shades over them,
and you can barley see
the people, the idea is
focusing on Arthur's struggle,
so in terms of lighting and
the tonality of the scene,
the people were meant
to be a bit invisible.
- [Man In Movie] Arthur
Fleck y'all, Arthur Fleck.
[crowd in movie clapping]
- This is really Arthur's
moment, almost for himself,
but this slightly dirty but
little bit cooler spotlight
was in the interest of
putting him in a very harsh,
almost an interrogation light.
Overexposed, certainly not
something that you can hide from.
And here he was exposing
himself in a really human way.
[crowd clapping in movie]
Let me make a preface
that I think is important.
Everything I talk about
is somewhat emotional
and intuitive to me, so I often talk about
contrasting colors like yellow and blue,
because they're on opposite
ends of the spectrum.
So all you people that
know about color theory,
yeah, it's complimentary.
I always say contrasting,
forgive me, I don't know much,
I'm just a simple guy
trying to make a movie.
Thank you so much for watching this.
If there's two things you take away,
one, all of this technical
stuff, don't worry about it,
just feel the scene, feel
the emotion of the lighting,
and try to express that as best you can
in whatever you're doing.
And second, I'm behind camera for a reason
so I apologize for all the
stumbling around this thing.
Use this in whatever way you
can and go make something cool.
Take risks, and remember no tacos at dusk,
come on people, shoot, small
window of opportunity here.
All right, thank you.
