Color theory is one of the things that a film director would do when they’re about to tell a story, whether it’s a pilot or a film. It sounds pretentious, but then again, there’s no way to say this without sounding pretentious.
But basically, you get together with your partners on the film, such as your cinematographer, production designer, costume designer, and discuss color with them. Sometimes, with one department, it could go into textures of clothing, the sheen of wallpapers, and lens selection.
Alfonso Gomez-Rejob explains, “It’s always nice to assign colors. At least, I like to do that to certain characters. For instance, Rachel in Me and Earl was yellow. And there was always a little something of that around her space. And sometimes you see it, and sometimes you feel it. And by the end, when she passes away in the hospital, my idea was always to hold on to the color yellow on-screen for five, six, or seven seconds — I forget how much it was. Hopefully, by the time you got to that point in the story, you felt her presence because you associate it, maybe subconsciously, along the way. Maybe, maybe not. That’s just how I think.”
In Hunter, Gomez-Rejob assigned colors to every world. But the colors were not assigned to characters but to feelings or ideas, like revenge, or blood, the Fourth Reich, honesty, or militancy. And the film creators would then avoid specific colors in some scenes and really saturate them sometimes in others.
Gomez-Rejob further emphasizes, “I think it helps the overall design of a picture. But it also helps make decisions along the way. For instance, if you’re choosing the right tie for a character, you may be presented with five ties. Only one is right because this is who the character is. Or you find a certain wallpaper that has color in it that is just right for this scene or the color carpet.”
Color vocabulary helps in decision-making for every department. It tells them what to avoid and what not to avoid. It also explains how to be a little bit more nuanced if you’re trying to keep someone from knowing that a certain person is a Nazi, which was always assigned red. Maybe the actor’s pocket square would have purple in it.
And it’s just a little something that also helps actors, depending on who the actor is. But it is an actor’s secret sometimes that they have a lining that no one else will see. But it means something to them.
Gomez-Rejob feels joy in using color vocabulary. He says, “And it’s just something that I truly enjoy in a fine arts way. You are never alone to do something because some of the best ideas are going to come from somebody else. And then see everyone take ownership of those decisions along the way and have a feeling almost of an arts and crafts camp that you’re the leader of. I mean, I own my title, but I also love the collaborative nature of making the film.”
For people entering the film industry or TV industry, it’s important to know that directing starts with these decisions way before you ever get to set.

“How do you communicate to people? How do you put that in celluloid? How do you do it? It must have style, unity, just something about it. You’ve got to wave away what’s not useful to that theme you’re focused on,” says Ang Lee.
“People look at film not like real life, but an escape from life. They go to that abstract world, where you can have a heart-to-heart with each other.”
I think filmmaking without heartfelt style and language skills—that’s pretty vain to me. I think you should have something to say, because you feel you have a need to express something.
“You don’t know why. But that’s the most precious thing,” Lee continues.
“Without communication, I cannot explain to my crew or the investors, test screen audiences, even friends and family. People will say, ‘I don’t get this. I don’t get that.’ So, you have to talk. And while you’re talking, you lose that artificiality. You must.”
“And somehow it all becomes a common thing. You just secretly hope to keep as much as yourself in there as possible. That’s my experience,” says Lee.
How Lee’s shot choices convey mood
“Then you have the key shots. Sometimes I can visualize a shot or scene, very vividly in my dream, or in my daydream. Or when I see something, I must have that shot, no matter what. So, from there, you just fill in the gaps,” explains Lee.
“Most of the shots in the movie, there are actors talking. I just find the best way to portray them. If it’s emotional, if it’s warm, usually, I place the camera a little lower. If the camera’s high, it looks more like they’re thinking. Shot that’s more face on, that’s more direct. And of course, more sideways, it’s more objective.”
Many times, I would like to take the audience out of the movie, and have them just think about it, instead of just engage in the storytelling, the emotional ride. I want them to think about it. So, at these times I’ll do a high angle also.
“You mentioned big establishing shot. That’s when it’s not emotional. Then, I want to reset before I get engaged into the next paragraph or statement or what have you. But sometimes, I think it’s good to have an audience think about it objectively and engage subjectively, emotionally. I like to combine both,” Lee ends.
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”We use examples from classic and modern cinema to illustrate points for filmmakers about how things work,” Explains David K. Irving. “The best thing to do is find movies that themselves work. There are a bunch of classic films that we often refer to for filmmakers to study. Every great filmmaker constantly looks at films over and over again in order to see what got them excited about cinema and what works for them.”

One of the great films in cinema that Irving always encourage students to look at is Carol Rice’s film The Third Man. The Third Man is a fantastic film because the script is so tight. It’s a wonderful story that takes place in war-torn Vienna. The allies have divided the city into four distinct areas, so there’s a lot of illegal trade going on.

“What’s beautiful about the film is that Joseph Cotten comes to Vienna to find his friend Harry Lime, whom we talk about through the entire film. He’s talked about, talked about, talked about. He’s the third man, and we don’t reveal him until very, very late into the film. The arc of the story where we’re trying to find out who this third man is, who the third man finally gets revealed to be, and the twist on why the third man isn’t this wonderful character, which was cast as Orson Welles because he’s such a jolly fellow to play against type. It made for a wonderful arc in the film,” Irving says.

There are so many things about the film that are worth pointing out. One is that the final chase sequence takes place in a sewer. What better location to have a character who’s really displayed as a rat than in a sewer? The reason Irving likes to show this particular sequence is it’s a long chase sequence, but the director does such a wonderful job creating pace in this chase.

There are fast sequences, slow sequences, close-ups, long shots, breathing space, up, down. It has a rhythm that can’t be beat, and all of it takes place in the sewer. One of the other advantages of shooting in a sewer is that the camera gets this wonderful forced perspective down these long tunnels. At the end of the sequence, the character trying to escape the tunnel brings his finger up through a sewer grating, and the close-up of the hands trying to escape speaks volumes about the character.

Another scene Irving likes to show from the film when Harry Lime is revealed for the first time. Harry Lime is revealed through light. He’s hiding in a doorway. An inebriated Joseph Cotten is yelling at this character who he doesn’t know is in the doorway.

His yelling at night causes a woman on the second floor to turn her bedroom light on, which shines light down on Harry Lime. At that moment, Joseph Cotten knows that’s the main character. The use of cinematography and lighting to be able to illuminate character is very exciting for filmmakers to study, so you can apply these lessons that you learn from historical references in film, modern references in film, and what you’re going to do when you become a filmmaker.

Suggested Image (if needed): https://unsplash.com/photos/RM-5zzFsR2I

Thinking of the magic and beauty of early filmmakers, it’s like they were pioneers. They were creating the technology while capturing their stories! And they were fearless because it was an untapped territory.

The limitation of black and white film? Let me tell you: art, creativity, and film are all created within constraints. It’s these bounds that help up create, not hinder us.

In this black and white medium, filmmakers had to think about lighting differently. Their lives were (obviously) in color, but their equipment only shot black and white. Everything is going to appear different.

Let’s say I’m wearing a blue jacket and a yellow shirt. In black and white? All you see is shades of grey, no actual pigmentation.

Now, you can control the lighting and create slits and angles. By controlling light and shadows, you can make an image look more interesting. In some of the earliest films, you can see when filmmakers started understanding this dynamic.

For example, the first iterations of Dracula and Nosferatu were scarier, all thanks to careful lighting. You can see how they can make a room look vast or small by collapsing the space with an entirely black background. You can see how they could paint something on a wall and make it look like it was miles and miles away. Because they were only working in black and white, its limitations were liberating.

Particularly in the silent era, when filmmakers didn’t have to think about sound or color, they got incredibly innovative just focusing on the visual image. There’s a saying that people forgot to be cinematic again as soon as sound came into film. These early black and white filmmakers led the charge for what was possible in cinema.

It wasn’t until I saw a particular film that I had a different respect for black and white. The original Imitation of Life (1934) was a black and white film that was risque, intense, and complicated. It was deep. It was heavy.

Here you have a Black woman and a white woman working together to start a business. There were some complicated tensions, both racially and in the relationship between the characters.

But for what it was — a story about two women, with no men, building a life together — it was magical. Seeing a film like that? It was about the story.

Janet Grillo thinks that the relationship between visual storytelling art and technology is integral. The technology informs the art. The art informs the technology.
“Think for a minute about the evolution of movies,” says Janet. Back in the day, they used very big, clunky, huge cameras. You couldn’t move them very quickly. You couldn’t move them in the space. You had to position them in one spot and construct an environment to capture the imagery and the sound around it, explains Janet.
You would have created a soundstage. The environment, the lighting, and the sound could all be controlled. And you had this monstrous piece of equipment flat in the middle.
Janet says soundstages dictated the way that stories were told. You had very formal settings. You were basically moving from theater into film, so film was highly theatrical. The film tradition came from a spoken, executed tradition of the theater and the theater’s proscenium arch stage, in Janet’s view.
You can see that in the very stylized work of Alfred Hitchcock. He grew up in that system of studio filmmaking where it’s highly formal and very structured, Janet notes. And you can see it in how the actors are moving in and out of the frame and their movements are blocked. It’s almost like a stage play.
This is an excerpt from the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo (1958) which demonstrates Hitchcock’s theatrical style of filmmaking:
GALVIN ELSTER: I asked you to come up here Scottie, knowing that you’d quit detective work. But I wondered whether you would go back on the job as a special favor to me. I want you to follow my wife. No, it’s not that. We’re very happily married.
SCOTTIE FERGUSON: Well, then-
GALVIN ELSTER: I’m afraid some harm may come to her.
SCOTTIE FERGUSON: From whom?
GALVIN ELSTER: Someone dead.
[Please embed: https://unsplash.com/photos/tBlYM_VcIkE]

To understand the process behind creating and filming episodic television, director Harry Winer had to see the “rhythm” behind it.

“What happens is that directors are hired on a week-to-week basis. You come in and direct one episode. You leave. Another director comes in and directs an episode.” Winer says. “For a television series that goes on for years, the actors themselves are the ones that are running the show because they know their characters.”

When Winer came into doing his first TV series, Hart to Hart, he had no idea how television worked, so he treated it as if he was making a movie: “I go in and start setting up these elaborate shots.”

“So I get called into Leonard Goldberg’s office [at 20th Century Fox], and I’m sort of intimidated,” Winer recalls. “And he says to me, thank you. You directed a beautiful movie, and maybe one day we’ll get a chance to actually make a movie together. But right now I’d like you to direct Hart to Hart.”

That was one of Winer’s biggest moments of education. “I had no idea what he was talking about,” Winer says, “but subsequently came to learn that in that era, episodic television was a product.”

There is a standardization of the product — of television — and there are certain rhythms and ways in which a series is filmed that is the emblematic style of that particular episode. And subsequently when I recognized that, I started playing ball and would make several more Hart to Harts.

After directing his seventh episode of Hart to Hart, Winer realized that it was indistinguishable from every other episode of Hart to Hart. “That was the goal that they had set for me to achieve.”

That led him to discover an important lesson in the TV industry. “I realized that in serious television, there was a choice of being a really good series television director and implementing the style that others had created versus sharpening my skills of original creativity that originating a television series would allow.”

[Please embed: https://pixabay.com/photos/lens-equipment-movie-digital-camera-3143893/]

The lexicon of filmmaking started with editing, according to Alrick Brown. “In the early 1900s, this film thing became real,” Alrick says. “And after people started telling some amazing stories, the next big innovation was editing.”

Over time, editing evolved and became more complex. The camera did more than just capture a movement. “So now we’re like ‘What if you did this? What happens if the camera starts to move?’” explains Alrick.

From the first filmmakers to DW Griffith, cameras did what Alrick calls “magical things.” Audiences experienced film in ways they had never experienced it before.

These early editing techniques began building off of each other, and the techniques came from all over the world. “My film education was focused on what was going on in America,” explains Alrick, “but film really was going on around the world.”

Filmmakers borrowed from each other. DW Griffith, for example, watched films from Germany. Einstein’s early audiences used some of his editing techniques.

“There was this communication across cultures from Latin America to Europe, where people were telling their stories. These things evolved into the techniques you would later see in the earliest Hollywood films,” says Alrick.

DW Griffith built his techniques from things he had learned from around the world. “It’s the same way a student would make a film today,” Alrick points out. “A lot of their approaches will come from things they’ve already watched and experienced.”

Film students aren’t the only ones who use this approach. Directors like Tarantino and Scorsese have spent their careers studying other filmmakers.

“We call them geniuses,” says Alrick. “And some of them deserve that title, but it’s because they’ve spent so much time looking at the history of film. They understand what techniques to keep and what techniques to throw away.”

Compared to other art forms, film is a new medium. “Filmmakers had to lean on other art forms for inspiration,” says Alrick. “So they looked at other forms of communication to build this lexicon that would become filmmaking.”

“Filmmakers can benefit from the experience of submitting a film to a festival, even if they don’t make the cut. I’m talking specifically now about the New York Film Festival. There’s only so many slots. Only 25 to 30 films are chosen for the main section of NYFF,” explains Eugene Hernandez.
“Imagine watching hundreds of films and having to choose only 25 or 30. Well, I can guarantee you, as someone who watches a lot of movies, there’s another 10, 20, 30 films that you really like, but there just isn’t room for them in that festival that year.”
So, you may get a note from a film fest programmer saying, ‘We liked your movie a lot. Unfortunately, there isn’t room for it in our limited program this year. We really hope you’ll stay in touch with us. Maybe there’s room for it in another festival we organize or another way we can show it.’
Feel free to stay in touch with these people, these fests.
Festival programmers and organizers talk to each other, share information. Maybe someone will have three or four film entries, all on the same subject matter. They’ll say, ‘It’s a documentary about a topic we have another film on already, but I’m going to recommend it to my friend at a different festival. I think they might like it.’
Film fest organizers are people, too
People are busy.
A curator won’t give extensive notes to every single filmmaker -for every film they view. But if they care deeply about a film, if they feel a connection to a specific film or subject, they might. It doesn’t hurt to ask, to say, ‘Hey, can you share with me any feedback? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Your notes would be really important to me to help me understand how people are responding to my film.’
“Then as an artist, as a filmmaker, be open to what they have to say. Be open to the fact that just as we individually have our own tastes, what we like, what we don’t like, the programmer you’re sending it to may also.”
“It’s not personal if they don’t like your movie, but their response can be informative. It can help you think about how you can adjust a film or just how you talk about it. Maybe your film is being read differently by audiences than how you intended. You can go back and kind of tweak some of your messaging to account for that response,” ends Hernandez.
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Telling stories of identity with film
“Representation is huge for Outshine, as an LGBTQ festival,” remarks Ebony Rhodes. There is this other element in the festival world, beyond cinema as entertainment.
Our mission is film as education, inspiration, and entertainment.
“We’re talking about communities, especially communities where representation is so key to our identity,” Rhodes explains. “I mean that’s why I’m a part of the festival. I believe in supporting film-because of the power of it, and what I’ve seen and value in being able to see yourself represented on screen.”
Seeing your unique story, told in a way that resonates with you as an audience, is powerful. It’s necessary that filmmakers speak with narrative authenticity to tell their story, to tell stories that need to be seen.
“There’s documentary, narrative film—so many ways to approach it. It’s important to the identity of a community,” Rhodes continues.
Building a film festival that resonates with a community
There’s a lot of elements when you’re talking about putting together a film festival, that’s our strength. It includes our local community support, with partnering with social justice organizations.
We also partner with other nonprofits that have a mission they’re trying to articulate, groups where the film industry is essential to spreading their own message.
Film education leads to hearing more authentic voices
An example of an issue we may partner with another group on would be a film about the bullying of LGBTQ youth in schools.
To have a great film that tells a story using personal perspective and really gets to the heart of the humanity and identity of LGBTQ students can speak volumes to a huge audience in a way that a nonprofit doing this work couldn’t do.”
“That’s where you have your audience, where you have your buy-in, your support,” says Rhodes. “Pairing those missions together and finding a way to build that sense of meaning is really the heart of the festival world, versus other theater experiences,” Rhodes finishes.
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The world of independent filmmaking primarily has to do with figuring out how to raise money to make your films.

“That’s certainly something I spend a lot of my time doing,” says Ekwa Msangi. “You know, after the housing crash, we started in earnest the introduction of crowdfunding. Which used to happen in a less official way before, in terms of aunties, uncles, friends, you know?”

Ekwa goes on to say: “It’s actually important to be able to pay something to people.”

At the very least, you need to pay for equipment and some insurance. Actually, it’s quite important to have insurance. You don’t want anything happening to people who are working for you and giving you their time. You also need to feed people and give them a copy of your project.

That is the bare minimum of what you have to give people if they are helping you on your project.

Crowdfunding is not only about raising cash money that you need to rent your van and the like, but it’s also about raising friends, like supporters, audience, people who are invested in your work.

People who are then going to be looking to watch your film when you’re done. “What you’re trying to relay is the excitement, is the reason why it’s good for them to invest in you and in your work and in this story and having people rally around,” says Ekwa.

When making a film, you are creating something out of nothing. You were sitting around in the shower and you came up with this idea for creating a world that did not exist. Creating a character, a person, or whatever out of nowhere.

You are literally talking about making magic! Who gets to do that? Most people in their day-to-day job don’t get to create magic.

Filmmakers do.

Artists do.

That is valuable.

Ekwa goes on to explain: “And if it’s not that, it’s, what are you going to talk about this summer at your next barbecue? You’re just going to talk about all the stocks and shares that you sold? Or are you going to talk about, like, I made a movie.”

“How many people get to say that? So I’m offering you, crowdfunding person, person who I’m inviting: I’m inviting you to come on this journey, to come on this adventure with me of creating this world and building this opportunity that we’re able to say these things that you care about.”

Ekwa acknowledges that it’s hard to raise money. If it’s your first time, “I wouldn’t start by raising $30,000. That is a lot!”

Unless you’re a professional, that’s a lot of work. If it’s your first time and this is your first film, do something small. Do something small and figure out where it is that you can cut corners.

Or if you know there’s an apartment or a house that you can use to shoot your thing, then you need to write a script for that.

There’s a lot of actors in New York and probably in LA as well who want to act and who would love to come on as an actor-producer or a DP-producer or whatever to help you get this film done.

Finally, Ekwa affirms that crowdfunding is not just about the money. It’s also about the people who are involved in helping you do this.

The friend who’s going to make a whole bunch of peanut butter sandwiches or the pot of pasta to give to your crew for lunch breaks and things like that.

All of that is really important stuff and is part of the crowdfunding process of getting your work done.

“And maybe you start with a small film and that’s the first stepping stone to the bigger project that you want to make.”