hey guys it's Dave here from creative path films
and in today's video we're going to be exploring the concept of color contrast
and how you can use it to enhance your visuals in film photography and design
color is an incredibly powerful tool that you can use as a filmmaker but sadly it
too often gets overlooked color can have a significant impact on our emotional state
and by using it carefully and with intention we can use it to support the mood of a scene
and manipulate how an audience is feeling when it comes to color theory there are
so many different avenues that we could explore and i could very easily create an
entire series around this topic today we're going to be talking about one very specific
aspect of colour theory and that is the use of colour contrast through complementary colours
we'll be exploring this concept and how it applies to both lighting as well as production and costume
design put simply color contrast is when you utilize two different colors within a scene
that contrast and complement each other visually this creates a sense of visual cohesion and helps
to make your images really pop complementary colors is just one of a range of different
color schemes or color codes that you can choose from some of the others include monochromatic
color schemes analogous color schemes and triadic color schemes for the purpose of this video we're
going to be focusing solely on the complementary color scheme if you'd like to see more videos
on some of these other color schemes as well as more content related to color theory in general
then let me know down in the comments below the complementary color scheme is a relatively simple
concept it's a tool that you can use to select any two colors that will both complement and contrast
each other so that you create images that are both harmonious as well as visually dynamic to
get started we're going to need a color wheel and a color wheel is a fantastic tool to keep on hand
as a filmmaker photographer or as a designer if you'd like a pdf color wheel that you can print
out and refer to i've included a link down in the description all right now that we've got our color
wheel let's start by selecting our primary color which in this example is going to be blue in order
to find blue's complementary color all we need to do is look for the color that sits directly on the
opposite side of the color wheel which in this example is orange now of course you don't just
have to stick to orange and blue you can use this tool to find the complementary color of any color
on the color wheel the main reason that i chose orange and blue is because it's the most commonly
used complementary color in film and video in fact it's become so common that this combination
borders on overdone particularly in the action genre but these two colors are chosen for a reason
as they are possibly the two most prevalent naturally occurring complementary colors that
you can find you'll find orange in the color of our skin in sand in sunrises and sunsets in fire
and also in household lighting fixtures such as tungsten halogen and incandescent lamps and blues
you'll find in the color of the sky as well as bodies of water blue and orange tones are also two
of the most common color temperatures that we've come to utilize in film and photographic lighting
first we have 5600 kelvin which is a common blue tone and this is the color temperature
of midday sun we also have 3200 kelvin which is our warmer tone and that matches tungsten
halogen light globes we can even go further beyond these values along the kelvin scale to
achieve even more saturated blue and orange tones if you're unfamiliar with the kelvin scale it's
the scale that we use to measure the color of light within the visible light spectrum between
infrared and ultraviolet light if you'd like to learn more about the kelvin scale as well as color
temperature more broadly we've done a bunch of videos on this topic so check out the playlist up
in the card up here and i'll also put a link down in the description if you'd like to learn more
by combining these two opposing colors within the same frame or within a sequence of shots this is
how we build color contrast alright let's have a look at an example the following scenes are
from a music video called friendly neighborhood poltergeist which we helped put together with a
local queensland pop artist rory webley in it we utilized complementary colours in a number
of different ways in our lighting costume and set design for this sequence shot in the hallway we
had our camera's white balance set to 4700 kelvin which is roughly halfway between our tungsten and
daylight values this value is 300 kelvin higher than that midpoint and what this does is that
makes those cooler tones slightly more neutral and it warms up those orange tones a little bit more
in the following scene we had a 5 600 degree kelvin moonlight positioned out the front door
at the end of the hallway where rory was standing we backed this up with a hair light positioned
just outside of frame behind rory's head which was motivated by that moonlight in the
deep background of the shot these two sources served as our backlights and as our room tone
in this hallway shot for the moonlight we used an aperture 120d with the two times fresnel
attachment and for the hair light we used a forza 60 boomed over the top of the shot
we also added a second forza 60 off to the right hand side of the wide shot to cool off this wall
a little bit and this created a checkerboard of contrasting colors orange blue orange blue
for our warm tungsten key we used a second aperture 120d this was positioned up the
top of the stands behind our actress amy as she made her grand entrance we applied full
cto gel to this lighting fixture which converts it to 2700 kelvin this is slightly warmer than
your tungsten value and matches the look of incandescent household lamps there were a few
wall mounted incandescent globes dotted around the location and we utilized these as practicals
in the background of certain shots this helped to motivate this color temperature choice so our key
never felt out of place we kept this complementary colour scheme going throughout the entire scene
and carried it over to the next scene as well if you want to make adjustments to the color
temperature of your lights you can do this using color correction gels either cto for orange or
ctb for blue and there are various grades available if you'd like to learn more about
color correction gels as well as gels in general check out this playlist up here
the second way that we utilized complementary colors throughout this video was in our costume
and production design because rory's character was an invisible lovesick ghost we really wanted him
and amy to feel separate but somehow connected to one another so in order to suggest this we
dressed our two characters in complementary colors for the majority of the video we always knew that
rory wanted to wear a pale pink sweatshirt for this video so when choosing the costume for amy
we went with a pale green cardigan pale green as you can probably guess is the opposite to pink
on the color wheel remembering that pink is just a desaturated red these two colors complemented each
other absolutely beautifully we also incorporated these same two colors into other areas of the
video's production design and if you'd like to check out the full video you can check out the
link down in the description so that's it i hope after watching this video you'll be able
to work this concept of complementary colors into your own productions and really help to enhance
their aesthetics if you enjoyed this video and learned something today you can let me know by
leaving this video a thumbs up and if you'd like to learn more about color schemes and color theory
leave me a note down in the comments thanks for watching guys and we'll see you in the next video