Thread by @WIRED

Lights. Pixels. Action! Lighting a computer-rendered @Pixar movie isn't like lighting a film with real actors and real sets. At #Pixar, the virtual cameras can see an infinite spectrum of light and color. wired.trib.al/qKg0WOa
🎨: Simoul Alva
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#Pixar precisely deploys calibrated color and light to convey narrative and emotion. From the near-total absence of green in ‘WALL-E’ (until postapocalyptic robots find the last plant on Earth)
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To the luminous orange marigolds that symbolize Miguel's trip to the magical Land of the Dead in ‘Coco’ through the contrast between the cool blue luminosity of the afterlife with the warm, snuggly sepia of New York City in last year's ‘Soul.’
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In fact, almost every Pixar movie works within a specific color palette, a story-specific gamut that filmmakers pull from and use to plan the look of each scene, a road map known as the color script.
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Control the lighting, control the colors, then you control the feelings. That's filmmaking. But when it comes to wringing emotion from color, Pixar cheats.
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You saw it in ‘Coco,’ but the movie where it might have made the most difference was ‘Inside Out.’ That's the one about personified emotions living in the brain of an 11-year-old girl.
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During one scene in that movie, filmmakers kept adding green light, subtly, in a very specific wavelength. Then, at a key moment, dropped all the green out all at once.
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At that moment, viewers imagine they are seeing a specific color red but it’s not projected on the screen. Instead, it’s a neurophysiological hack. wired.trib.al/qKg0WOa
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