Emily VanDerWerff brings up the subject of the lack of color in movies and TV shows these days. I thought it was just my eyesight going bad, or my outdated media devices. No, everyone has noticed it, but no one knows why. Perhaps there are too many reasons.
Digital filming, as opposed to old-fashioned film, offers a world of options for visual effects. One of these is simple color correction, which helps to make the project internally consistent. When half the action takes place on a sound stage and the other in a faraway setting, less color saturation makes the change more believable. Less saturation also allows for easier insertion of digital special effects. In other words, it's cheap and easy.
Less color could be a case of being stylish for the sake of being stylish. When one movie is filmed in muted colors and is a hit, more filmmakers try it, too. Before long, it's just a trend. Have you heard the phrase "gritty reboot" too much in the last few years? A lack of color makes a film look more gritty.
Or is it the subject matter? It's possible that moving away from bright colors is a statement that this movie, or TV show, is serious and made for adults (but not for adults with declining eyesight). However, lack of color does make one feel more doom and gloom, which some might see as a necessary element in stories about a world falling into dystopia.
For all these reasons and more, the colors of movies and TV have become less saturated and more consistent, and ever darker than before. Take a deep dive into the phenomenon at Vox. -via Metafilter
See also: Why Movie Dialogue Has Become So Difficult to Understand
#movie #color #saturation