Using Color To Define A Character Film Studies Essay

Edward Sissorhand, Moulin Rouge, Hero. Compare/contrast color and meaning how color define character. Color has an important role for a movie. The colors have many meaning such as love, happiness, sadness, cheerful…. so that it will make the film more interesting. “Understanding color meanings, it helps with mixing and matching colors to know the relationship of adjacent, complementary, and clashing colors” (color meaning). In addition the characters also have an important role. Every movie will have a different meaning of the colors form that the audiences will know clearly what the director want to define about the characters for that movie. The combination for all of them will make the scene more harmonious.

“Edward Scissorhands is a 1990 comedy-drama fantasy film directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp” (Wikipedia, film). “The inventor was inspired to make an artificial man due to the anthropomorphic appearance of his other inventions. He raised Edward as his son and tutored him in various subjects, but died while in the act of offering a pair of hands to Edward” (Wikipedia, film). He lives alone in the ancient palace for a long time. Later there is a woman who name Peg comes to the ancient palace and she takes him come back with her like a friend. Now the audiences will know Edward is the main character in the movie. As the main character the director pay attention about his color that in the beginning he just has black color. With only one color he looks so lonely and melancholy, but later by the point of director he has black and white with the changing he became friendlier.

The scene is in the garden of the ancient palace, after Edward left the town and say goodbye with Kim before he comes back and live in the palace. Edward is going to go down form the stair to the garden. Now he comes back with only black color for the whole body, this point will make the audience pay attentions to him, because he just say goodbye with Kim so they want to know how Edward is felling now. The background is divided with a part was palace and a part was blue sky. The scene is in a beautiful garden with many colors, most of it is green because it has a lot of grass and statue of a kind of animal in front of the scene. Edward only has black color and he is standing in a place with many colors so the first thing makes the audiences pay attention is him and he also is the main character. There is still had another thing made Edward in this scene become important that is the tone. In fact green and blue are stand for happiness but the tone is sad so that it makes the green and blue also sad, it also makes the main character become more important because there is only him in the scene. The tone is showing the main of point of the director for the feeling of Edward in the scene.

“Moulin Rouge is a 2001 musical film directed by Baz Luhrmann, based largely on the Giuseppe Verdi opera La Traviata” (Wikipedia, film).. This movie talks about the music and dance. “Christian is a young Bohemian poet living in 1899 Paris, defies his father by joining the colorfully diverse clique inhabiting the dark, fantastical underworld of Paris’ now legendary Moulin Rouge” (movie yahoo). Satine is an actress and a singer; in Moulin Rouge she is a character who is very famous. The main colors of this movie are red and blue; red stand for sadness and blue stand for happiness. Every time the scene has red color it will have something happen to the main character-Satine. As the point of the director red stand for sadness and Satine’s hair also is red so she becomes the first main character of the movie.

This scene is in the stage with many people are dancing and singing. All of them are very happy. Two main characters are very happy and they are singing the love song. The blue now look like cover the whole stage, as the point of director blue to stand for happiness. So the audience will think Christian and Satine will become a love couple after the performance. However the color suddenly changes to red. There are a lot of confetti falls down from the ceiling into Christian and Satine, it is red and then everything also turns into red. Christian and Satine still sing their song and they look very love each other. The audiences will think in this scene red will stand for the win and color of love, but from beginning red stand for sadness. In fact blue is stand for happiness and red stand for the win but in this movie red stand for sadness. After they finish the performance the curtain close up Satine dies. Now the sadness is breaking the plot of the audiences. Everybody after the curtain are crying however the people out side are laughing and clap hand mean for they have a successful performance.

“Hero is a 2002 Chinese martial arts film, directed by Zhang Yimou with music by Tan Dun” (Wikipedia, film). The movie has a group of assassins those are Flying Snow, Broken Sword and Long Sky. All of them have sworn to kill the King of Qin. Nameless is the character that will kill those people. [When he finishes his mission he] “come to the palace bearing the legendary weapons of the slain assassins, the King was impatient to hear his story. Sitting in the palace, only ten paces from the King, Nameless told his extraordinary” (Hero [2002] [US Version]). The main colors of this film are red, blue and green each color have a different story.

This scene start in a bookshelves room, there are three characters Nameless, Broken Sword and Flying know. The main color in this scene is blue and the clothes of the characters also blue. This is the best point in this movie because in each story the color will be changed. Now they are in the mountain the tone in this scene is sad and it makes blue also sad, in fact blue stand for happiness. By the combination of director blue in this scene become sadness. Suddenly, Broken Sword wants to use the sword stab Flying Snow but Flying Snow has stab him first, but he doesn’t die it just make him feel tire. Flying Snow goes alone and Broken Sword follows her but he can’t catch her up. It makes this scene become important because they are in the mountain and around it is sand but there is still has a horse-a white horse. That means the horse is prepared before by someone. As the point of director, there is only a horse and Broken Sword is injured so Flying Snow will ride the horse.

The colors of those three movies are stand for sadness; each director will have different way to express the content and the emotion for their movie. Although, the colors in the movies stand for sadness, but the audiences will have different feeling when they watch the movie. In fact those colors all are stand for happiness. In Edward Sissorhands and Hero, both of directors’ use blue to express the sadness in the scene. The tone also is also using to increase the sadness for the main character. However, in Moulin Rough is different, the director uses red to express the sadness is better. Because at the end of the film the plot is broken, and the main character Satine dies so the feeling of the audiences suddenly change to sad. While before a few minutes two main characters Christian and Satine and everyone in the state are very happy dancing and singing. Therefore, breaking the plot to express sadness of the red color is better than those two movies.

In conclusion, color is an important role for making a film. The color will stand out the main point of director. The audiences will know the feeling of the characters then they can guest what is the next happen will have for the main character when they see that color in the scene. Every film has a different meaning of the color so we can’t know which the best is. In addition the tone also effect to the color so it depend on each person when they watch the movie.