Characteristic Color Usage in Different Film Categories

• Main Authors: Fang-Yi Wu, 吳芳怡
• Other Authors: I-Pen Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99306988911555070286

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 應用藝術研究所 === 95 === Since the invention of color films, color has become a crucial element in the languge of films on both the aesthetical and expression accounts. The typical usage of color in a film includes realistic color rendering, shaping the psychological atmosphere, and abstract expression, etc. The purpose of this study is to find out the characteristic color usages in different film categories through analyzing the color content of films in each category. Films are classified into five main categories, i.e., Romance, Comedy, Horror & Thriller, Sci-Fi, and Action & Adventure. From each category, 30 films produced in the past 10 years were sampled for analysis. The content of a given film was sampled at a rate of 1 frame/10 sec. A custom made software, Color profiler 1.02, was used for extracting the contrast, saturation, brightness, red, green, yellow and blue values of all the sampled frames. The extracted color information was then subject to further statistical anlysis. We found that among the chosen five film categories, the patterns of coloring can be divided into 2 groups－ one comprised of Romance and Comedy, another Horror＆Thriller, Sci-Fi and Action＆Adventure. The color usage and color information in these 2 groups differs significantly. The result shows that colors in Romance and Comedy tend to be of higher contrast and luminance and are rich in red and yellow while that in Horror＆Thriller, Sci-Fi and Action＆Adventure are of lower contrast and luminance and are more balanced in blue and green. Nevertheless, the latter group shows similar strength in red, yellow, blue, and green, which means that except for the blue-tinted Sci-Fi, Horror＆Thriller and Action＆Adventure have no distinct color tone. Sci-Fi films usually show highest average standard deviation of luminance, red, green, yellow and blue in these 5 categories. This indicates that colors of Sci-Fi films tend to vary greatly as the story progresses. Every category shows lowest value in green and there is no significant difference in saturation across categories. The green color is the least used in all types of films and the saturation of color is impartial to all categories.