Research: The Pleasantville Effect (Secondary Colour Correction)

Lynda.com Article:

• Secondary colour correction isolates "a range of colour, saturation and brightness values and make adjustments in only that range" 

- Kennedy, A (2014), Beyond Pleasantville and Sin City: Secondary Color Correction, https://www.lynda.com/articles/secondary-color-correction-sin-city

This article helped me to get a better understanding of what the Pleasantville effect actually is in technical terms. Thus, it helps me to explore the possibilities of using this effect in my short film.

Films that use the Pleasantville Effect:

Pleasantville:

Where the effect gets its name from. the use of colour in the film is limited as the protagonists enter the sit-com "Pleasantville" and more colour is added as more rules of the world they are in get broken. Colour is this form is used as a method of literally standing out from the world in which the characters are in.

This is highly useful for our short film as the protagonist does not belong in the world she is in. Her love of creation in a world where it is illegal confines her to the space of her own make shift art studio and so using colour to make her stand out as in Pleasantville is a highly effect use of contrast with this visual component.

Sin City:

A more obvious use of the Pleasantville effect in Sin City is to isolate the colour red and de-saturate all other colours to make the red much more outstanding when it meets the audience's eye. The director's may have chosen to do this as an emphasis on the colour of blood marking the foreshadowing of the violence of the film or to add on to emotions of anger and lust.

This way of using the effect can prove useful for highlighting the red of the blood in our short film. As the protagonsit is painting with her own blood, having red as the only saturated colour will make it much more horrific to the audiences eye; by the means of contrast in saturation of the visual component colour.