Videos are one of the best ways to connect with an audience. They go past simple text to encompass two of our primary senses: sight and sound. They can communicate, tell a story, and inform an audience of a message in ways that text simply cannot do as easily.
A video’s communication capabilities go past a storyline and great characters to reach people. A competent video producer will know the impact that a video’s color scheme can have, too.
Consider Schindler’s List, for instance: a dark movie set during World War II that effectively uses a monochromatic color scheme to capture the dreariness and bleakness experienced by the Jewish people living in Germany and Austria during the Holocaust.
Colors are a powerful means through which a video’s message can be communicated. They can drive emotion and help viewers more easily connect to a video, as they can effectively capture a film’s atmosphere.
Let’s examine how to make videos that incorporate color theory so you can better connect with your viewers.
The Color Theory Explained
The first movie to incorporate color was The Wizard of Oz, a film that effectively started a revolution in film. According to color theory, using colors can impact our reaction to a movie and make us feel emotions.
For example, red can inspire anger or fear, while blue is calming. It makes sense, then, that the ruby slippers were originally worn by the sister of the evil Wicked Witch and that our protagonist’s iconic look is, in part, defined by her light-blue dress.
Colors go past simple emotions, though, as they can also help attract attention to detail or indicate a change in the storyline. Sometimes, filmmakers use color to represent a character’s feelings or specific traits.
One such filmmaker is Wes Anderson. He thoroughly uses color in movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel, which appears as a fairytale coming to life with its broad range of bright colors and deep saturation. The color creates an exaggerated video that’s mesmerizing to the eyes.
Aspects of Color
Three components contribute to a film’s color. These are hue, brightness, and saturation.
Hue refers to the actual color in use, which can be made of any combination of primary or secondary colors, including red, blue, yellow, green, orange, and purple. Saturation reflects the intensity of colors, through which video creators can mute the color’s vibrance by introducing gray undertones or allow the color to pop by increasing the saturation. Lastly, brightness refers to where the colors fall on a dark or light scale. An extremely light color will appear almost white, whereas darker colors will fall closer to black.
Determine Your Color Scheme
You’ll want to plan your video’s color scheme according to its objective. If you’re creating a short, creative film, for instance, you’ll want to consider its storyline and the emotions you’re hoping to evoke in your audience.
While there are no hard and fast rules in determining your color scheme, certain genres tend to use similar colors. Western movies often take on a warm, reddish hue, emphasizing the heat of the dry landscape, while in contrast, sci-fi movies usually stick to green or bluish hues. The color scheme of The Matrix is a defining example of such.
If you’re filming an educational or instructional video, your objectives are understandably different. You probably won’t want to detract too much from the information you convey to your audience, but you also don’t want to bore them. Instructional videos typically benefit from a color scheme that is true to life.
Commercials are another area where color schemes can be beneficial. Think of Apple’s commercials throughout the years. In the 1990s, Apple sought to disrupt the current PCs on the market by introducing the first iMac, a computer that wasn’t beige, boxy, and ugly and instead came in a curved frame in various colors, including turquoise, purple, pink, and green.
The commercials showed each of the iMac models in a white space, highlighting its bright aesthetic. If you’re creating videos to advertise a product, you’ll want to use color to emphasize the item’s features in a similar fashion.
Color Theory Connects You with Viewers
You can invoke your audience’s feelings and emotions with the right color scheme, and you can also use color to highlight specific aspects of your video, like a change in scene or a product’s features. People remember how they feel when they watch a video, so during video editing, consider your objectives, and choose a color scheme that will help you reach your goals.
