A current obsession of mine is the use of strictly defined colour palettes in films and television shows. Ironically this recent interest comes as a result of a late 90′s TV drama called “Once and Again” that my wife Jane has been watching repeats of on the PVR while she nurses our daughter. The thing is, I can always tell the show from the distinctly grey colour palette that runs through the majority of the scenes. Lighting, costume, and decor all contribute to this effect that is punctuated by out-of-scene reflections by the characters that are filmed in black and white. I find it all strangely curious especially when I consider that this monochromatic character of the program is what makes it seem boring and unremarkable to me.
Anyway I hope to explore this idea further in future posts. In the meantime, my research into this area has turned up Alan Woo’s Pie project which contrasts and compares the colour palettes of movies by running a Processing script that captures each frame of the movie and creates a ‘pie chart’ of the colours contained within.
