Why the palette of modern films is orange-blue

Jupiter Rising (2015) You

may not have noticed, but over the past 20 years in Hollywood, a steady course has developed on the orange-blue palette of the picture. This color scheme is also known as “orange and green-blue” or “amber and green-blue”. Do not believe? Let's check. I warn you right away - after what you see, it will not be possible to see it, you will notice this palette everywhere.


The Imitation Game (2014)


Into the Woods (2014)


The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)


Mad Max (2015) (a little more yellow than the previous examples, but nonetheless)

And, of course, let's not forget about the advertising posters. They must be bright and flashy, so their saturation is stronger - but the palette is the same.



Yes, this palette can be seen not in every scene of not every movie. Some directors prefer original color schemes. But everyone else gravitates toward orange-blue. One of the bloggers, having analyzed the trailer palette in 2013, deduced the following diagram:


Edmund Helmer - analysis of movie trailers in 2013

Digital coloring

The Wizard of Oz precedes the trend

What's the deal? Previously, the colors of the film depended only on the shooting conditions and the use of color filters of cameras, since all films were shot on film. Recolor the result could only be frame by frame.

Now all films are shot on digital cameras, and it is quite easy to give the image any desired look. But you still need to do this on purpose. And if the result is bad, then you will have problems.

The movie O 'Brother Where Art Thou (2000) is often cited as an example of strong post-processing. The Coen brothers wanted him to look retrograde, so the whole film is kept in sepia. The cameraman said: “They needed the film to look like an old picture, where the color intensity is determined by the scene, and the skin tones would be of all colors of the rainbow.”

But how did we move from all the colors of the rainbow to orange?



Modern video tools allow you to apply one color scheme to many scenes at once. The more movie scenes that look good with the same layout, the less work you will have. In addition, if filmmakers combine several different movie formats into one movie, using the same color scheme ties them together.

One way to find a good picture is to set the common denominator of most scenes. And it turns out that in the majority of the scenes the actors participate. And actors are usually people. And people - they are orange (well, almost). Most skin tones range from pale peach to dark brown, which leaves them in the orange segment of any color chart. And blue and cyan are at the opposite end of the circuit.



You might have heard that pairs of opposite colors complement each other. That is, being together, they create a good color contrast - greater than with any other color. And usually we get exactly a good contrast.

Therefore, the theory of the origin of the trend suggests the following: if you make the colors of the actors as warm and orange as possible, and the background colors as blue as possible, you will have a very contrasting picture and complementary colors. As Dan Seitz writes from Cracked :

This is not necessarily a matter of laziness. A color specialist needs to process a two-hour film, sometimes frame by frame, in about two weeks. You don’t have to pay too much attention to the deadline hanging on the calendar to clasp your hands and say: “Fuck it, everyone loves blue and orange!”

Each movie has its own look.

Blade Runner Blue with orange before it became a trend.

In general, this is just a theory. Although this color scheme has become popular recently, it has also been used before. Resource TV Trope notices:

Unlike other pairs of complementary colors, fiery orange and cold blue are associated with opposing concepts: fire and ice, land and sky, land and sea, day and night, humanism and indifference, explosions and futuristic views. This image enhancement method is used because it makes sense.

It makes sense or not, but now this way of coloring films has become generally accepted. However, as color specialist Stefan Sonnenfeld says : “There is no special process for choosing a color palette, in which we would sit in the room and say:“ We will use only these complementary colors to make a certain impression on the viewer. ” Each film has its own look. ”

Sonnenfeld is known for working on some of the most spectacular and one of the most orange-blue films of the last 15 years: the Transformers series.






Transformers are so orange-blue that one team of researchers, who worked on an automatic coloring algorithm, took their palette as one of the main ones. Their algorithm allows you to colorize the video in any of the palettes taken from any film:


Above - "Amelie", painted in the palette of transformers. Bottom - “Transformers”, painted in the “Amelie” palette.

The method is not fully automatic, you need to choose where the background is in the picture and where is the foreground. But the results are impressive anyway.

As colorization technologies develop, we can see new trends in the selection of palettes. In the meantime, look and notice orange with blue.