In her 03 minutes and 42 seconds video-essay named “Color Psychology”, Lilly Mtz-Seara presents the use of color in different scenes of more than 60 movies. Personally, I found this video-essay impressive because for each color, she used 5-6 scenes from several movies, and they are all significant (“Significant” here means that we can identify immediately the movie just by the chosen scene, of course, as long as we have seen it). Since movie is a combination of languages: words, sounds and images, it is obvious that the use of color psychology will create an impressive effect on audience.
As a non voice-over video essay, “Color Psychology” is a combination of continuous scenes, each one lasts around two seconds. The use of various scenes with short duration can be seen as a contribution to audience’s comparative observation and analyze, on the other hand, states and proves for Lilly’s argument. From “Sweetness” to “Fantasy”, she leads us through different color patterns. Each color is the “ambassador” of one emotion, one characteristic, or rather one symbolic state that the scenes intended to imply. Through her super-cut technique, Lily Mrtz-Seara explained color’s employment in movies: Pink is for Sweetness, Femininity, Red for Violence, Passion, Orange for Sociability, Warm, Yellow for Youthfulness, Madness, Insecure, Green for Nature, Immaturity, Destruction, Blue for Calm, Remoteness, and Violet for Fantasy.
However, the most interesting element in this video essay, in my opinion, is that Lilly did not just present color’s meanings in movies: she also pointed out that different tones of one color can bring different meaning and create a new image symbol. For example, to explain psychological symbol of green color, she begins with “nature” – which is a simple, clear green. Then, she continues with “immaturity”, in this case green is usually used with brown and white. After that, green in the psychologically symbolic world became a sign for “destruction” – where it is mostly associated with black (I really like the fact that she took scenes from Maleficent and Harry Potter to state this argument, since in both movies the “evil” usually appears with green fire/light).
I also really appreciate that she took advantage of this element to make transitions between different colors in her video-essay. The last tone of previous color is usually its combination with the next one. For example, the orange color is firstly described as symbol for “sociability”, then “warm” and some first scenes of “youthfulness” – where we can see a “blend” between orange and yellow, the next color. Or when the color blue is changed from the symbol of “calm” to “remoteness”, the chosen movie scenes are darker, which lead us to the last (and also the darkest color in her video-essay): violet. To emphasize the emotion brought by different colors in movie scenes, Lilly used tense music track, which related to fast-changing images and specialized its effects in the violence scenes (Red color). By that, she also kept her audience on track, focusing on her video until the very end.
“Color Psychology” Video Commentary
In her 03 minutes and 42 seconds video-essay named “Color Psychology”, Lilly Mtz-Seara presents the use of color in different scenes of more than 60 movies. Personally, I found this video-essay impressive because for each color, she used 5-6 scenes from several movies, and they are all significant (“Significant” here means that we can identify immediately the movie just by the chosen scene, of course, as long as we have seen it). Since movie is a combination of languages: words, sounds and images, it is obvious that the use of color psychology will create an impressive effect on audience.
As a non voice-over video essay, “Color Psychology” is a combination of continuous scenes, each one lasts around two seconds. The use of various scenes with short duration can be seen as a contribution to audience’s comparative observation and analyze, on the other hand, states and proves for Lilly’s argument. From “Sweetness” to “Fantasy”, she leads us through different color patterns. Each color is the “ambassador” of one emotion, one characteristic, or rather one symbolic state that the scenes intended to imply. Through her super-cut technique, Lily Mrtz-Seara explained color’s employment in movies: Pink is for Sweetness, Femininity, Red for Violence, Passion, Orange for Sociability, Warm, Yellow for Youthfulness, Madness, Insecure, Green for Nature, Immaturity, Destruction, Blue for Calm, Remoteness, and Violet for Fantasy.
However, the most interesting element in this video essay, in my opinion, is that Lilly did not just present color’s meanings in movies: she also pointed out that different tones of one color can bring different meaning and create a new image symbol. For example, to explain psychological symbol of green color, she begins with “nature” – which is a simple, clear green. Then, she continues with “immaturity”, in this case green is usually used with brown and white. After that, green in the psychologically symbolic world became a sign for “destruction” – where it is mostly associated with black (I really like the fact that she took scenes from Maleficent and Harry Potter to state this argument, since in both movies the “evil” usually appears with green fire/light).
I also really appreciate that she took advantage of this element to make transitions between different colors in her video-essay. The last tone of previous color is usually its combination with the next one. For example, the orange color is firstly described as symbol for “sociability”, then “warm” and some first scenes of “youthfulness” – where we can see a “blend” between orange and yellow, the next color. Or when the color blue is changed from the symbol of “calm” to “remoteness”, the chosen movie scenes are darker, which lead us to the last (and also the darkest color in her video-essay): violet. To emphasize the emotion brought by different colors in movie scenes, Lilly used tense music track, which related to fast-changing images and specialized its effects in the violence scenes (Red color). By that, she also kept her audience on track, focusing on her video until the very end.
Video Commentaries
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