Colors, Type and Comedy Film

Color

Our understanding of color begins with black and white or dark and light.  The next color to be identified is red.  From there different cultures react to and identify colors in different ways.  Understanding color requires a scheme that is useful for the communicator as well as the user and in the digital age it requires a scheme that can be easily understood by the computer.

The subtractive primaries are red, yellow and blue.  They are subtractive because when you add them to each other they become black.  They are seen by the fact that their particular color of light reflects off of them.  Thus when they are combined then all of the light is absorbed and no color is apparent.  They are used for painting and printing.  The subtractive secondaries are orange, green and purple (violet).  These are understood in the digital realm as CMYK or four process color.  C-cyan, M-Magenta, Y-Yellow and K-Black.  They are expressed in color finders as the percentage of each element present in the color you are using.

The additive primaries are red, green and blue.  They are additive because when you add them together they combine to create white.  These are radiant and not reflective colors.  They come from a light generating source.  We see these divisions in a rainbow as the white light of the sun is divided into its color elements by passing through drops of water.  Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet are the colors we can identify in this division but it only requires red, green and blue to combine and create white light.  These are understood in the digital realm as RGB colors.  They are expressed in the amount of each color in a number from 0-255 or 8 bit color.  This is actually 256 different colors event though I said in class that it is 255.

Munsell's scheme involves a color solid that provides the three dimensions of color: Hue, Saturation and Brightness.  Hue is the identification of the "color" or "chroma" and all possible hues exist on a 360 degree circle.  Saturation is the amount of hue in the color and it is considered as a percentage from 0-100% where 0 means no hue is present and color appears as its underlying white, gray or black and 100% means pure hue and the color is the most intense that it can be.  Brightness is the amount of Black, Gray or White in the color and it is expressed in a percentage with White being 100% brightness, Black being 0% brightness and Gray being anything in between.  This conceptualization of color makes it possible for the human and the computer to understand exactly what color they are both dealing with and to build color schemes through mathematical variations in any of the three elements.

Check Munsell's Color Form to see these different combinations that can be built mathematically.

Typography

Looking at The Anatomy of Type you will get the fundamentals for understanding the differences and similarities between the different type faces used in design and the different typefaces we will review through history.  Printing technology created the opportunity for creating typefaces and it became an area of dramatic creativity within the first 100 years of the western invention of the moveable type and the printing press.  It is still an absolutely important area of creative endeavor and invention.

Movies

Comedy is probably the most universal of the film themes and motifs.  The first group of comedy films we have looked at express the very physical forms of comedy.  In silent films this was necessary because there was no sound to create witty discussions and jokes.  The jokes all had to be visual.  But this carries on even with the inclusion of sound and it is something that can still make us LOL.  But making people laugh can be very cultural and it requires a great deal of practice.  The Marx Brothers practiced their bits in public to see what was funny long before they put it on film.

We also looked at Sergei Eisenstein and his sequence "The Odessa Steps" from "Battleship Potemkin."  Eisenstein is credited with creating the grammar of the moving image where there is variation in the Field of View: wide shots, medium shots, close ups--and angle of view.  He was the first film maker to use the medium to create the sense of a three-dimensional space rather than use the camera as a simple observer of what could be done on a stage in a theatre.  We then saw two homages to the Odessa steps, one that is very violent and a second that is very short and funny.

Any questions?

- Dr. W -

First Moments of Video & Visual Lexicons

Hello Students,

Everyone needs to understand that there is a strong connection between technology and communication design.  Technologies are what make it possible to communicate and different technologies make different approaches possible.

Communication Technologies include writing, printing, painting, photography, motion photography, sound recording, computers and a whole lot of other things.  With the introduction of a new technologies come new possibilities in communication design.

The motion pictures we watched and why:

Muybridge Motion Studies made way for the development of motion pictures.

Silly Boxing, The Kiss, Pillow Fight and the San Francisco Earthquake because they are all firsts in terms of motion content.

Lumiere Brothers Gardener story: It is considered the first motion picture story as there is action, consequence and then revenge.  In reality the guy with the hose got punked and then he got revenge.

These all show that everything that is touted as new has roots in something that has gone before.  Even these short-short films have their roots in stage productions.

Ben Hur is important for a number of reasons:
1. The story migrated from book to stage to film to animation (though we didn't see the animation)
2. It has been successful by many different measures in most of these forms.
3. It is an epic story that created the opportunity for innovation and creativity in production, on the stage and on film.
4. The use of the content by the first filmmakers created the precedent for the protection of intellectual property for book authors when their work is used as the basis for a film.
5. The Chariot scene in the 1960 film has stood the test of time as a well produced moment in movie-making.

The Great Train Robbery is important because it is the first Western Movie and it is also the first motion picture blamed for inciting violent behavior.  It also demonstrates the single camera aesthetic of early films with continuous action and a minimum of cutting.

Birth of a Nation is important as the first large scale scandalous movie.  DW Griffith used this scandal to promote the film and get people to the theatre to watch it.  It also shows a transformational aesthetic where lighting techniques and masking are used to help the audience focus on specific characters and an increased dependence on visual editing to tell the story.  It also sets the standard for branding one's own intellectual property.

Gone With The Wind is another movie based on the US Civil War, but in this case the focus is on the characters involved and the social situation is the context for the action and not the focus of the action.  Like Ben Hur, GWTW is based on a very popular book.  The movie itself if beautifully shot and brilliantly acted even though we didn't see enough of the move to demonstrate that point.

Next week we will get into Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, The Odessa Steps and Comedy.  We will also take a look at Color Theory and get our first look at the history of Typography.

Visual Lexicons are due on 20 October so get to work on them.  You need to have 50 entries that include all of the elements found in the guidelines.

Also remember to make entries in your Visual Diary (Personal Blog).


- Dr. W -