COLOUR THEORY FILM LANGUAGE ESSAY (draft)
How is colour used to evoke the audience in ‘Ocean Waves’ and ‘The Florida Project’?
Colour is a very key element within films and can be used to convey a variety of effects to the audience. Two films that use particularly stylised colour palettes are ‘The Florida Project’ directed by Sean Baker, and Studio Ghibli’s animation ‘Ocean Waves’. ‘The Florida Project’ is centred around a little girl, her young mother and friends living in a poverty stricken holiday inn located just next to Disneyland, Orlando. ‘Ocean Waves’ is focused on a teenaged boy who meets a girl that has recently been transferred to his school, and how they communicate with one another. Both films focus on the subject of growing up and maturing and have a similar use of colour palettes to help convey this. In 1993, Studio Ghibli released a film called ‘Ocean Waves’ which revolved around the protagonist, Taku, and a new girl who transfers to their school called Rikako. A love triangle forms between the two main characters and Taku’s close friend Yutaka resulting in some heart break and severed relationships. At the end of the film, the characters have a reunion and rekindle friendships, and Taku and Rikako meet again. Throughout the film, subdued colours are used on both background and characters. The main character, Taku is usually dressed in a plain white t-shirt and blue jeans, with a bold red jacket over the top. In both western and Japanese culture, red is considered to connote ‘anger' and 'danger’ (Mtz-Seara, 2017), which as his character starts to communicate and get more involved with Rikako, starts to come to the surface. In the screen grab to the right, after Taku reunites with his friend after not talking to him for a long time, it is clear that his attire has changed to a much more calm subdued version of his previous clothing which can be interpreted as suggesting ‘femininity’ (Mtz-Seara, 2017), showing his emotional maturity and growth in understanding, particularly since he was not so with Rikako before they fell out. The screen grab above shows Taku and his friend Yutaka looking out onto the sea towards sunset. The colours of the background suggest this with the yellow and grey-blue tones used. Among other things, yellow can connote wisdom and knowledge; and in this context it seems to symbolise exactly that, with the audience gathering that the both of them have aged physically and emotionally.
'The Florida Project', directed by Sean Baker is about a little girl named Moonee and her rebellious and detached mother, Halley, who live in Orlando in a bright lavender coloured castle themed inn. Moonee makes friends with another little girl who lives in a neighbouring and equally tacky holiday inn down the road, and Moonee starts to become a bad influence on her, teaching her how to spit and be rude to people in a similar fashion to her mother. The colour of the castle's walls being purple suggests a the element of 'fantasy' according to Lilly Mtz-Seara's video about colour theory in films, contrasting the tragedy of some of the story's themes including poverty, neglect and abuse. Interestingly, according to the 'Empowered by Colour' (2017) article about cultural differences with colour connotations, in Japan, purple can mean privilege and wealth which further enforces the thought of the ironic fantasy that the people of the inn are living. The image below is a screen grab from the film showing the children visiting an ice cream vendor in a park surrounded by trees. The colour green symbolises a natural setting, juxtaposing the very fake looking ice cream stand in the centre of the frame which is shaped like a huge ice cream cone thus further confusing the audience with the surreal elements of the children's surroundings.
Comparing the two films style wise, they both breathe a certain reminiscence into their stories. As it is an animated film, 'Ocean Waves' uses very muted and clearly simple colours so that it's easy to apply continuity editing to. 'Continuity editing is important for the management of... spatial and temporal ellipses' says Magliano and Zacks (2011) in their article about the impact of continuity editing on a film's narrative. This applies to the way Studio Ghibli uses a minimal level of detail to achieve a better flow of their narrative, as in animation continuity editing is particularly more key to making it comprehensive for the audience. For example, our main character, Taku is given the same hairstyle even when he has matured physically so that the audience understand that he is the same character. However, as 'The Florida Project' is a live action film, the same rules don't apply in exactly the same way.
In conclusion, both films use colour to successfully evoke the audience. However, while Studio Ghibli uses muted and subdued colours in their film in an effort to cast a realistic light onto the narrative, the opposite is achieved in Sean Baker's 'The Florida Project' as bright and saturated colours are used to enhance the fantastical elements thus giving the film more of a child's ignorant perspective onto the issues dealt with throughout the film.