The Importance of Color - Pt. 2

Thanks for coming back and checking out Part 2 of my "The Importance of Color" entry. If you are finding this and haven't yet read Part 1, then follow this link to get caught up to speed.

Last time we looked at how color is used in the corporate world to direct your attention or send a subliminal message, and this time I want to show some of my own work and either explain how I've used color in a deliberate way, or how the color available suits a setting or message, especially in terms of live music performances. This entry will be a little less methodical than Part 1, so let's just get right into some examples, shall we?






Here's a shot of performance artist LucretiaRenee Rathmann helping to open a Faith and The Muse concert. Her and her performance partner Aradia were doing a flowy dance demonstration during the intro music for the show. The song, called "The Woman Of The Snow," had a very tranquil feeling, hence the use of blue lights, while also sounding very traditional, to which the regal color purple lends itself in the accents.




This is Zach Myers of Shinedown from a show I shot back in 2009. Not to dive too deeply, as concert lighting changes constantly, but with bands that put on high energy shows like Shinedown do, you're going to expect a lot of flashing colors and strobes, but also lots of oranges and yellows. They're attention getters and they are associated with ambition, enthusiasm, energy, etc. Zach is clearly an energetic player on stage.




With this shot of Cradle of Filth guitarist Paul Allender, I purposely lit the room in red and hit him with pure white. I wanted as much contrast as I could get. The red symbolizes boldness and, of course, blood, since he has such a vampiric look about him. The contrast was a must because I really wanted that inky black effect to give depth to the photo and really bring out the "evil" vibe he had going on here. A photo from this series would later go on to be color corrected by Paul to having a blue tone and it was used on the packaging for his signature line of guitar strings. He chose blue, of course, to give it a cold, dead, corpse-like feel... like a graveyard by moonlight.



This video interview with Myke Hideous was shot in the basement of an apartment building to give it a really creepy atmosphere, amplified by the eerie orange light. I chose orange mostly because it's a Halloween color and this was part of a series of interviews we were doing for Paragon Music Webzine throughout the month of October. However, since Myke has a bit of a rough reputation out there, a lot of this candid interview was geared to show him for the honest, genuine guy and dedicated musician that he is, so the warmth of the orange was also very fitting in that sense as well.




Here we have a good example of pink being used to symbolize femininity or romance, while the color and placement of the black folding fan gives you a sense of mystery, and possibly even danger.



Finally, here is a still shot from the last film project I worked on. This client is an engineer and inventor and has quite a few products that he wants to bring to the public, and he is trying to raise money for them through Kickstarter. He asked me to help him create interview content for each Kickstarter campaign. When setting up for the filming, I initially wanted to use his company colors as a background splash since the walls were a bland gray color. Since his company colors are black and white, that wasn't going to work. We decided on blue, since blue promotes trust, and what better feeling to convey than trust when asking people to donate to your project?

Again, I hope this makes it easier to see the psychological effect color has. Even sometimes when it's accidental, as in the case of the ever-changing stage lighting at a concert, there can still be messages. This is especially true for national touring bands that bring their own lighting engineers on tour with them. Certain songs call for certain lighting conditions based on the lyrical content, tempo, and a variety of other factors. Color is not just a detail, it's what defines the visual essence and helps direct your personal viewing experience.

That's all for now on this topic, but if I think of any other gems I'll be sure to jot them down and share them on the blog or on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Be sure to subscribe to the blog, or Like and Follow me elsewhere to keep up with all of my current projects.

More soon,
-Rob