Channel Frederator Blog

The story behind the color film is a tough one. At first, I thought a color film would be easy. After all, we associate colors with feelings all the time. I thought I’d just grab some colors at random ad then make them act the same way we feel about them. Blue might be sad, red might be angry, etc. I also wanted to make a film that would work in non-English speaking areas, so the film has no dialog. After doing some more research, I found that it does have language in it though, the language of color. This is very specific to the region you live in.

For example, in South Africa, red is the color of mourning. In Russia, red means beautiful. The Bolsheviks used a red flag as their symbol when they overthrew the czar in 1917. That is how red became the color of communism. Basically, what colors mean in the US is not what they mean in other places in the world. I couldn’t rely on some of the connotations of colors for the story in this short.

The one thing that doesn’t change from country to country is how colors mix together. Speaking in subtractive color mixing, yellow and blue make green. This is true from Alabama to Zimbabwe. This would be the key to a universal story involving color.

In the story, we see little furry creatures who are solid colors. They inhabit a very bland world, pretty much devoid of color. The story in this film revolves around how they interact with each other, and how new colors are made. There will be no dialog, which makes it a bit tougher. The animation will have to carry the action, as I won’t have the dialog to help me out.

I’m nearly finished boarding the short. I have one small section left, the big finish. I’m not going to disclose the ending just yet. I’ll most likely save that for the film itself.

Keep watching this space!
Floyd Bishop
Click here to learn more about the psychology of color.
Click here to learn more about additive and subtractive color