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MY ORANGE AND TEAL NIGHTMARE
Everywhere I turn I see Orange & Teal. After you read this thread, you will too.
⚠️ You have been warned. ⚠️
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It’s impossible to watch any form of media these days without being assaulted by oranges and teals: movies, television shows, posters, book covers, screensavers, advertising.
There is no escape.
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Why are Orange and Teal all the rage?
They are complimentary colors, opposite each other on the color wheel.
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Flesh tones can be found mostly in the orange range. And since most movies and television shows feature people, directors favor the combination of orange & teal so that the faces of the actors will pop out.
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Also, many believe that the color combination adds energy.
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As far as I can tell, the earliest example of the use of color grading is the Coen brothers movie, O Brother Where Art Thou.
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O Brother was the first movie to use the process whereby a movie is shot on film and then converted to digitized images, allowing special effects, animation or color grading to be added in post-production.
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You can do this in Photoshop. Here I took a photo of Amy Adams walking with her family and played around with the orange and teal colors.
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Color grading heavily orange and teal can have the effect of giving a person a more healthy and vibrant appearance.
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Here is a poster for the movie Bliss.
Through the use of color grading, the faces of Selma Hayak and Owen Wilson are made to appear happy and healthy in the middle of the poster; sad and tired on the margins of the poster.
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I can’t help but think of the “Orange Man.” Did he intentionally go for the look in order to stand out? 🤷♂️
Better to be orange and noticed than pasty white and unnoticed, I suppose.
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When the Coen brothers used this process in O Brother, the tones were muted. They were attempting to create the feel of Depression-era Mississippi.
The Coens told their cinematographer, Roger Deakins, that they were aiming for an “old, faded postcard” look.
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So in O Brother the orange and teal colors are subtle and muted.
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Deakins also worked with the Coens to create their masterpiece, No Country for Old Men.
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My favorite shot from NCFOM is of the main character, a Texas good ol’ boy who stumbled upon a satchel of drug money, crossing the border with $2 million and a hitman on his tail.
His tortured face does, indeed, pop out in the dark night.
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(An observant viewer on reddit noticed that the briefcase holding the money in No Country for Old Men is the same briefcase used in the Coen brother’s Fargo. Easy money inevitably leads to certain doom in the Coen universe.)
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Unfortunately, most filmmakers aren’t as skillful as the Coens.
And the use of orange and teal is as omnipresent as ever.
If you doubt me, just look around. 😬
END
Addendum: Originally attached to the tweet about "adding energy." twitter wouldn't allow it to go through for some reason.
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