If You're Reading This, It's Too Late

It’s not live action - it’s fully CGI animated, so there’s absolutely no excuse for poor color management.  Unfortunately, it seems to be a running issue with the new cinematic remakes of older Disney films.  They’re all pretty equally muddy and washed out because of whatever weird-ass art direction these filmmakers have agreed upon.  Even scenes that should be really elaborately colorful, like the ball from Cinderella - which is literally a magical life-changing evening for her - are only just kind of colorful.

Based on the on-set photos, it actually looks like there’s an intentional lighting direction to flood the scenes with orange, for whatever reason.  It covers everything with an unpleasantly dull haze which, as is apparent in this particular case (along with color editing in post, surely) completely alters the mood of the set and scene.

Good examples of use of orange and teal effectively. 

Here it’s not super obvious, but the only orange tone in this is the main focus of the frame. He’s front and center and is warm compared to the teal tones in the background. 

Here’s a fantastic example. Warm lighting against warm skin while the background is teal toned so make the character stand out. Orange works very well with skin tones when it comes to lighting, especially for dramatic effect. 

When used in opposite then the foreground looks cold while the back lighting is warm. Giving a very different mood to the scene. 

The entire point of this orange and teal thing is complimentary colors creating visual contrast. It’s more used nowadays, but even older films took advantage of dramatic light and shadows.

Entirely back lit with blues makes the scene colder and more jarring with the dark figures in the foreground.

No cool teal in this one, but the shadows here bring out the orange even better. 

It’s horribly sad that Disney isn’t taking advantage of dramatic lighting for such big named movies. The color in the original animated films are far superior. 

In this the majority of the scene is warm tones. Yellow, gold and orange, so they balance it with Beast’s blue jacket to keep your eyes center. It’s complimentary colors.

Like, consider Belle’s opening introduction in “Beauty and the Beast” where we meet her new little hometown.  The whole point of this scene and its associated song is that Belle is an outcast.  She’s the weird one who doesn’t fit in with everyone else, she’s the one who craves change but is stuck living in a place that thrives in monotony.  In the animated version, the coloration is used to help reflect that.  The whole town consists of warm, earthy colors - reds, oranges, browns, muted green, and even the blue sky isn’t as bright as it could be.  Belle is the ONLY person who wears blue.  This allows her to visually pop right out of the scene and stand in open contrast to literally everything around her.

In a nice bit of color-based characterization, this even applies to Gaston. He’s emblematic of his environment - the big hero of the little town.  He’s bombastic, he’s larger than life, he stands out.  His costume consists of those same reds and oranges as the town and villagers, but they’re saturated to the point of overwhelming the background colors.  He’s also the only character in town to have jet black hair and - in a similar visual drawing point that Belle’s dress serves - bright blue eyes.  These high-contrast elements draw attention and make him visually more important.  Further, Gaston is Belle’s visual opposite - she’s in cool blue while he’s in bright red.  When set side by side it immediately puts them in contradiction to one another and helps demonstrate their very different natures.

Compare that to the live action version.  Belle fits right in.  She melts into the background and there are plenty of colors that match her, making her seem less important visually in the scene.  And even then all those colors are still washed out equally.  Belle and Gaston don’t even stand out against each other, let alone against the rest of the scene.  Even in Gaston’s big “look how awesome I am” song number he still doesn’t visually pop out at all anymore because everything is so damn muddy.

The color-based storytelling from the animation continues through on that same vein through Beast and Belle later in the film.  Beast - in his boorish, cruel attitude at first - echoes Gaston in coloration.  Brown, orange, red, dark blacks and bright blue eyes.

But when Beast later improves himself and grows as a person his color scheme cools into purples and pale blues.  Belle’s color scheme, meanwhile, gradually warms in each of her costume changes -  green, pink, and finally to an intense yellow.  This is to reflect how she is acclimating to others and growing as a person herself, becoming more social with Beast and the castle servants.  The oatmeal scene in particular goes toward this end.  Beast and Belle each are in colors that directly contrast their base costumes - Beast has gone from red to green and Belle from blue to red.  Beast is a slob and Belle is demure.  But Beast puts in a genuine attempt to eat like a person again despite having the wrong anatomy for it and Belle, recognizing the effort, compromises by meeting him halfway.  The two share their own connection - toasting their bowls and drinking from them directly in a compromise between etiquette and ability.

As the two grow closer still, their colors and shades more closely compliment one another and the background they’re set in.

Their palettes grow more and more similar, and then cross over at the iconic ballroom scene.  There, Beast is wearing Belle’s colors and Belle’s dress is just as eye-popping as her original blue, but is a complimentary contrast both to her own base color scheme and to Beast’s new one.  Further, the entire ballroom matches their shared color scheme to help reflect how well the two fit into their relationship and company with one another.

At the climax of the movie, when Beast has lost all hope, he reverts to an echo of his previous color scheme.  Gaston, meanwhile, arrives sporting Belle’s iconic blue.  The opposing colors in capes help to visually set Beast and Gaston in contrast to one another while also representing their purpose in the scene.  Beast has given up and accepted his fate, albeit one that has been impacted by Belle regardless.  Gaston, meanwhile, is an impostor who’s presenting himself as a hero; his wearing blue is a bastardization of what the color has represented in the film thus far.

me: 

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i made this instead of studying for a midterm

fun fact the file name for this is bongoat, here’s a gif too have fun!

Such a catastrophe nearly occurred during Barack Obama’s visit to Australia. The world assumed that the purpose of his visit was diplomatic and, because of our ignorance of the history of music, no one batted an eye when the former president payed a visit to a small Gold Coast church.

Sadly, Father Philip O’Brian, the church’s priest, passed away several weeks prior and a replacement had yet to be found. During this time, the enchantments holding the church’s organ in place had significantly weakened, and Obama planned to seize this opportunity to attain for the US a weapon with far more destructive potential than anything in their arsenal.

Fortunately, Obama’s plan was thwarted by an inebriated kangaroo. After emerging victorious from a drunken brawl with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the roo was ready for round 2. Unfamiliar with Australian wildlife, Obama severely underestimated the marsupial. And, when he found the roo blocking his path while dragging the organ out onto the street, he tried to shoo the animal away. Big mistake.

“The roo beat the shit out of him,” says Bruce Jones who witnessed the altercation. “Serves him right, the bastard. Trying to steal from a church, how low can you get.”