Orange and Teal

The Orange and Teal Thing

You may have heard people commenting on the fact that many movies - especially big features - seem to be always color graded blue and orange. You may even think this is a new phenomenon. You would be mistaken.

The fact is that orange and teal is not ‘new’. It’s not even ‘recent’. In fact, picture makers have been going to this solution for complex images (moving images are inherently complex) for … hundreds and hundreds of years.

Doubt me? I’ll give you some examples. Let’s take Gericault’s masterpiece, The Raft Of The Medusa, 1819.

Now let’s take away the red, to clarify.

What’s left? Orange and teal. The red serves as a jolt of strong, saturated color that spices up the image and gives the impression of a full spectrum. Without it, though, we clearly see how limited the palette actually is.

Let’s try a Rubens. Allegory on the Blessings of Peace, 1630

And without the red…

Procession to Calvary, Pieter Breugel the Elder, 1563

I’ll let you do this one yourself.

And you might know this one, from 1506. Leonardo didn’t even bother with the red.

For a more contemporary example - no one does the red thing better than Marvel.

Do all paintings, or even old master paintings use this strategy? No, but an astonishing number of them do (just look for it) and here’s why. Orange/gold is very flattering in representing people. It’s a logical place to start. Orange and teal are opposites on the hue wheel. That contrast implies a full spectrum, especially when red is added. It looks like a richer palette than it really is but it’s much easier to control.

Nearly all visual art (including film) uses some strategy of palette narrowing or limitation, however, and you’ll find more about that here.

Happy Grading!