Example 1

Colors: An important element in the movies. But, what about our culture?



When I think in colors, I think of life.  Life is not wonderful if we do not have colors. Why? Because colors  make the life easier with a meaning and sense. To explain it, we have many examples, nevertheless, I am going to emphasize in the genre of movie. What could we infer about silent movies and white and black movies were changed by colored movies?  In my opinion, I think due to colors are one of the most important elements to set the atmosphere that the Director and the producers the movie would like to show.  Unconsciously, colors in movies, give us a better understanding about the message producers show us. The way we understood the movies, may be influenced by the meaning of the colors in our country or culture and we never realize it. Therefore, this brief essay is going to explain why colors are important for the movies and in our lives.

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First, I am going to explain one scene from one movie: Down with Love. We can see as the director uses the colors and he shows the appropriate colors according the message of the movie. Second, I going to describe with a photo where I tried to show this scene doing a little picture, and finally, I am going to show, as an example, how colors are important in our lives; hence, I will explain if the colors showed,  have an important meaning in my country, in my culture.

In the case of Down with Love, we could see a clip where two beautiful and elegant ladies are in a white mansion with colored furniture and they were wearing pastel colors like light blue, light pink. One of these women- Barbara- is famous because she wrote a book named Down with Love. She wanted to present the free women and teach them to enjoy sex without commitment. The clip showed us how she tries to promote her book, having a meeting with an important man who writes in a ladies magazine – Mr. Block. Nevertheless, Mr. Block always postpones the meeting giving her an excuse until she realized he is making fun of her because he did not want approve or accept her book. In this movie, we could see pastel  and light colors, with 60´s fashion clothes, so  we could infer the director or producers want to show a movie where some behaviors were taboo at this time and those kind of colors were worn by people,  because in those years women were more “shy”. Therefore, as I said before, in the case of movie, colors are one of the most important elements to the directors and producers because of it express details about the films. Although, Barbara wanted to write an open mind book, I noticed her personality was more conservative; she can not became as the other women, and I think the director wanted to explain that in that period was difficult to know how was the best way to behavior, on one hand; we can notice the liberal form and in the other hand, we can notice the conservative one.  The 60´s was a very controversial period in the world, where hippies, colors, drugs, music, peace symbols, grease, were the most popular behaviors of the people. But, some people did not accept it.



Second, I tried to show in this picture, the colors of the movie, the pastel colors. You can see in the picture, the scene where Barbara was taking a dinner with her friend and partner of work and the man who worked with Mr. Block, it is showed by two triangles (women) and by a chart. In the other side, you can see a magazine and one interrogation mark, so I tried to explain that Barbara was waiting for her interview but at the same time, she did not know what had happened. Beside, you can see an old phone, a bed with two rectangles: one grey bigger than the blue one; it means the women who were with Mr. Block, they had extroverted personality and open mind and the phone because Mr. Block always called to Barbara when he was with the women.



Therefore, the pink means usually the woman color and blue means usually men color, that’s why I glued little circles with both colors. Nevertheless, the women who were with Mr Block were wearing blue clothes, so I think I was because some women were as liberal as the man was. It was a controversial period in the world, but also an important and unforgettable time in the history.



Now, taking account the colors we saw on the  scene have not a meaning in my country, Colombia, I think we are a liberal country in this way.  The dilemma that I had thinking about it is that Colombia has five regions with different costumes, gastronomy, accents, music, weather (hot, warm and cold), and religions. So, it makes easier (I think) that each people wear different colors. It depends of your city, region or the most import: it depends on the weather. For  a woman, if you are going to a party, you can wear bright colors at night and pastel color at morning, but I think, as I said, it is about which city you live and which are your costumes.



However, in conclusion,  I could say that we have four important colors which appeared in both movies: Yellow, blue, red and white. Three of them are the colors of our flag, the yellow means the sunshine, the gold we have in our mountains and the t-shirt of our soccer team. The blue color means our seas; Colombia is the one country in South America that has exit to Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Also it means our sky and Colombia is one of the most important countries with water resource in the world. The red color means the blood of our soldiers in all our history, since the independence until nowadays with our conflict against the non-legal groups. Also we have on September one special day for love and friendship and all is colored with red. Finally, the white color means peace, we usually wear white clothes when we walk around the streets looking for a special objective, most of them against the problems of violence, we take into account the white dove as a symbol of peace.



For me, Colors means life, mean happiness, I think without them our life is boring.