![]() Six Feet Under, Ball’s acclaimed series for HBO, featured a color palette that defined and linked all of the major characters (Nate, David, Claire, Ruth and Brenda were associated, respectively, with brown, red, purple, green and blue). These symbolic meanings have been used since the creation of color technology in cinema to enhance visual storytelling. But certain colors’ characteristics have been deemed universal to the emotional impact of color upon human emotional response: for example, greens and blues are calming pink is soothing and inspires romance red excites and implies danger yellow stimulates and serves as a visual warning. Different colors have different meaning across cultures: for example, green is considered lucky in the West but not so in the East white is associated with weddings in Europe and funerals in Japan the color black is considered somber in some societies, chic in others. In books like Color by Vittorio Storaro and If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die by Patti Bellantoni, the mechanics and complexity of color design in cinema are explained via the emotional power and deeply-rooted cultural symbolism of color. ![]() This intricate and pervasive use of color enhanced an already powerful narrative and underlaid the film with greater pathos and emotional subtlety. ![]() Red is all about lust and passion: we see the teenaged temptress of Kevin Spacey drenched in red rose petals, and the roses tended by Annette Bening demonstrate the anger beneath her cold exterior, the passion of her marriage subsumed to her careful domestic ministrations. White stands for innocence, inviolability, and perhaps most of all the pristine sterility of the main characters’ home. ![]() These colors are not merely “patriotic” expressions of America, but portray specific emotions and qualities of various characters. Alan Ball’s work is notable for its heavily-symbolic use of color: the film American Beauty, written by Ball and directed by Sam Mendes, had a very strong red, white and blue color palette, befitting its topic. The artful direction and cinematography of Six Feet Under was notable not only for its dynamic beauty, but for the complex symbolism of the production design, including a creative and strategic use of color. ![]()
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