Color is one of the great distractions of the modern era.
When you remove color from film or art, you consciously remove an element from your work. Color is most frequently associated with emotion, so we are removing one of the methods we frequently communicate emotion from our work. When we lose something, we work harder to communicate that with other means.
It is important to realize that color is not needed in books. Almost nobody in fiction uses a paragraph of red text in a book to communicate anything, and color is generally seen as a distraction when publishing fiction. It is interesting to place books in the Noir medium because of this lack of color, and there are many similarities.
With books, we have to tell people the color of her eyes by saying "her eyes were blue." With black-and-white films, if we mention color at all, we have to use the same methods, "Your eyes remind me of the bluest skies." Color information, if needed, needs to be told to the audience directly in both books and black-and-white films. Communicating color information in black-and-white films tends to be rare because directors don't want to draw attention to the fact this is a black-and-white film, and frustrate the audience with "if I could only see that!" feelings. With books, we drop color hints all the time freely. There is a difference between the mediums, and in film, it is interesting to note color information is rarely mentioned or used because it creates this distraction.
With film, it is different. Some people can't stand watching black and white films, we are per-disposed to color from our earliest moments as children with our experiences with media, and we live in a color world. I love the starkness of black-and-white, but the movie maker has to be taking advantage of the lack of color and film accordingly. Noir does the best job at this, because the medium does not rely on color to deliver its message, and this is why Noir films have tended to survive (artistically) and age better than other black-and-white films.
I find when I watch black-and-white films there are some things I feel I don't want to see. A bright sunny beach looks plain and washed out without color, and my first thought is, "I wonder how blue the sky and water are?" That absence of color becomes a distraction, and I am taken a step out of the film. With scenes filmed in the snow, I don't mind losing color because there isn't that much color to begin with. I had a photography professor once who said shooting in the winter with color film is typically a waste of money and time, because there is so little color to begin with. Our first thoughts with a winter scene are not based in colors and vivid images, only the starkness, form, shape, and shadow - all of which play to black-and-white film's strengths.
Never let color, or the absence of, become a distraction unless this is really, really what you are shooting for.
Now here is a question: if you were writing a hard-boiled Noir-style novel, how would you deal with color? Would you want readers to think in black-and-white, or would you want them to think in color? Would you spend extra time making a scene come alive with colors, or would you purposefully paint your world in shadows and black-and-white tones? I am talking metaphorically, not, "Her lips were like a shade of gray between light and dark, like a gray if you would have taken all the color out of a cherry." No, not that. I am talking about the difference between the use of color to highlight things versus using other methods.
For me when I write a Noir-style book, I would use color, but carefully. If "she wore a red dress to the funeral" was a line I wanted in there, damn it, I would put it in there. For the most part, in a Noir world, color doesn't matter except for the very important mentions, like the color of her eyes, or the color of a dress during an important scene. I want to be aware of colors and their uses, and carefully use color to communicate emotion, but not overdo it so much the communication of color becomes a distraction.
I want to be careful here, because in film color is removed and the mention of such is removed to avoid distraction. With a book, I feel you don't have to remove mentions of color, but you do have to carefully measure your use of the vibrant paints on your palette. Shadows and shapes, yes, go to town, those are a part of the language we are using. Color? We may need to be careful, and not paint a technicolor world so picturesque that what we are trying to communicate becomes lost in the vivid hues. Like everything, you can carefully use color, and it can be overdone.
You can overdo it the other way and strip color information out of your book so much the world becomes bland and lifeless. Then again, that is exactly what you may be trying to do. You don't want to get too cute by avoiding the mention of color in a book just because "there isn't any color in Noir films", but if you are shooting for an artistic effect and know what you are doing, it is a method to the madness you are using for a specific effect. You don't want to be silly about this, but it is important to realize that color is used to communicate emotion and many other types of information.
To me at least, the mention of color in fiction is something I want to be aware of and use carefully.
When we use color when we write, we are either telling people a worthless fact, "the sky was blue," or we are telling them a fact that relates a color to something else, "the sky was the same shade of blue as her eyes." In the former, really, so what? In the latter, if she was gone, then that is a great linking of a color to an event and an emotion in our work. Perhaps we could subtly work the color blue into every scene where he misses her, and avoid mentioning it anywhere else. We could do that to subtly create a color association with blue in the reader's subconscious mind, and then when a critical scene comes up, bam, we hit the reader with a shade of blue and those feelings come back. We don't even need to overdo it and mention him missing her, the color would do that for us.
Color cues are used in advertising and video games to communicate ideas and direction, so it may be worth thinking of using color cues, subtly, in your book to do the same.
The use of color is worth thinking about, and this is also something you can go horribly overboard playing with. It does have great effect when used in books, so it is worth taking a second look at your use of color when writing. In film, it is worth not mentioning color or filming scenes where the absence of color would distract the viewer, unless that is your goal. But thinking about color and its use is critical to establishing those connections and moods, and with Noir, the lack of color creates challenges and opportunities in both the written and filmed worlds.
When you remove color from film or art, you consciously remove an element from your work. Color is most frequently associated with emotion, so we are removing one of the methods we frequently communicate emotion from our work. When we lose something, we work harder to communicate that with other means.
It is important to realize that color is not needed in books. Almost nobody in fiction uses a paragraph of red text in a book to communicate anything, and color is generally seen as a distraction when publishing fiction. It is interesting to place books in the Noir medium because of this lack of color, and there are many similarities.
With books, we have to tell people the color of her eyes by saying "her eyes were blue." With black-and-white films, if we mention color at all, we have to use the same methods, "Your eyes remind me of the bluest skies." Color information, if needed, needs to be told to the audience directly in both books and black-and-white films. Communicating color information in black-and-white films tends to be rare because directors don't want to draw attention to the fact this is a black-and-white film, and frustrate the audience with "if I could only see that!" feelings. With books, we drop color hints all the time freely. There is a difference between the mediums, and in film, it is interesting to note color information is rarely mentioned or used because it creates this distraction.
With film, it is different. Some people can't stand watching black and white films, we are per-disposed to color from our earliest moments as children with our experiences with media, and we live in a color world. I love the starkness of black-and-white, but the movie maker has to be taking advantage of the lack of color and film accordingly. Noir does the best job at this, because the medium does not rely on color to deliver its message, and this is why Noir films have tended to survive (artistically) and age better than other black-and-white films.
I find when I watch black-and-white films there are some things I feel I don't want to see. A bright sunny beach looks plain and washed out without color, and my first thought is, "I wonder how blue the sky and water are?" That absence of color becomes a distraction, and I am taken a step out of the film. With scenes filmed in the snow, I don't mind losing color because there isn't that much color to begin with. I had a photography professor once who said shooting in the winter with color film is typically a waste of money and time, because there is so little color to begin with. Our first thoughts with a winter scene are not based in colors and vivid images, only the starkness, form, shape, and shadow - all of which play to black-and-white film's strengths.
Never let color, or the absence of, become a distraction unless this is really, really what you are shooting for.
Now here is a question: if you were writing a hard-boiled Noir-style novel, how would you deal with color? Would you want readers to think in black-and-white, or would you want them to think in color? Would you spend extra time making a scene come alive with colors, or would you purposefully paint your world in shadows and black-and-white tones? I am talking metaphorically, not, "Her lips were like a shade of gray between light and dark, like a gray if you would have taken all the color out of a cherry." No, not that. I am talking about the difference between the use of color to highlight things versus using other methods.
For me when I write a Noir-style book, I would use color, but carefully. If "she wore a red dress to the funeral" was a line I wanted in there, damn it, I would put it in there. For the most part, in a Noir world, color doesn't matter except for the very important mentions, like the color of her eyes, or the color of a dress during an important scene. I want to be aware of colors and their uses, and carefully use color to communicate emotion, but not overdo it so much the communication of color becomes a distraction.
I want to be careful here, because in film color is removed and the mention of such is removed to avoid distraction. With a book, I feel you don't have to remove mentions of color, but you do have to carefully measure your use of the vibrant paints on your palette. Shadows and shapes, yes, go to town, those are a part of the language we are using. Color? We may need to be careful, and not paint a technicolor world so picturesque that what we are trying to communicate becomes lost in the vivid hues. Like everything, you can carefully use color, and it can be overdone.
You can overdo it the other way and strip color information out of your book so much the world becomes bland and lifeless. Then again, that is exactly what you may be trying to do. You don't want to get too cute by avoiding the mention of color in a book just because "there isn't any color in Noir films", but if you are shooting for an artistic effect and know what you are doing, it is a method to the madness you are using for a specific effect. You don't want to be silly about this, but it is important to realize that color is used to communicate emotion and many other types of information.
To me at least, the mention of color in fiction is something I want to be aware of and use carefully.
When we use color when we write, we are either telling people a worthless fact, "the sky was blue," or we are telling them a fact that relates a color to something else, "the sky was the same shade of blue as her eyes." In the former, really, so what? In the latter, if she was gone, then that is a great linking of a color to an event and an emotion in our work. Perhaps we could subtly work the color blue into every scene where he misses her, and avoid mentioning it anywhere else. We could do that to subtly create a color association with blue in the reader's subconscious mind, and then when a critical scene comes up, bam, we hit the reader with a shade of blue and those feelings come back. We don't even need to overdo it and mention him missing her, the color would do that for us.
Color cues are used in advertising and video games to communicate ideas and direction, so it may be worth thinking of using color cues, subtly, in your book to do the same.
The use of color is worth thinking about, and this is also something you can go horribly overboard playing with. It does have great effect when used in books, so it is worth taking a second look at your use of color when writing. In film, it is worth not mentioning color or filming scenes where the absence of color would distract the viewer, unless that is your goal. But thinking about color and its use is critical to establishing those connections and moods, and with Noir, the lack of color creates challenges and opportunities in both the written and filmed worlds.
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