La La Land, Damien Chazelle (2016)
La La Land throughout the most part of the film uses vibrate highly saturated colours. In the words of Chazelle, La La Land is like a love letter to LA. I focused specifically on how colour was used to introduce the lead actors; Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
Emma Stone's character is introduced with high vibrant and saturated colours. As well as this, the traditional Hollywood orange and teal appear frequently in shots with her in the opening scenes. This gives the impression of her character being bubbly, bright and aspiring to make it big in Hollywood.
Take Ryan Gosling's character on the other hand and there is a huge contrast. Nearly all saturated colours are taken out of the frame. Plain grey walls and a lot of affinity of tone in grey scale. His character is introduced to be very basic; a more realistic version of people who don't have the LA dream that's so wonderfully glamorised.
When the two of them first see each other in the restaurant. There is another shift in colour. They both wear blue and are surrounded by red. This makes them stand out as points of attention for the audience. And as they are both wearing blue in a scene of all red; they are set up to be meant for one another.
After the two of them get the chance to properly introduce themselves; the musical number they dance in consists of yellow, blue/purple and white. Yellow is a complementary colour of blue/purple and white can fit well with any of these colours. Emma Stone's character wears yellow to show her joy an intellect as a smart woman whilst Ryan Gosling's character shows his more light side when he is around her; he's breaking out of his shell more to get to know her.
The character introductions are complete at this point. Using colour Chazelle has set up two completely different personalities in two completely unalike characters (vibrancy and saturation) that suddenly have an attraction (red and blue) to getting to know one another better (complimentary colours)
I would seek to use colour in this way; to associate certain emotions with certain colours. For example, lush green being associated with freshness of a new start for the protagonist in my film.
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