My research topic for this assignment is Color Fundamentals, which I have personally been researching over the past few weeks and not only learning about it but figuring out how this study can apply to my film and influence the final product. Color is a big thing in terms of your presentation and how the audience engages with what they are seeing, in other words its important to be photogenic. So what are color fundamentals? This talks about color theory, the entire science and art that goes behind using colors and how they flow and mix together. The question of what colors go well together comes up all the time, and there is an answer to this, by using the color wheel you can determine what colors have the best contrast from one another.

Colors are organized into three groups, you have your primary colors, secondary colors and tertiary colors. The easiest way to remember this is thinking of the three stages of school. Primary colors focus on the basic, original colors that are then mixed together to form the other colors. These colors cannot be made from mixing anything else, they are at the bottom of the pyramid. Red, Blue and Yellow are the three most natural and important colors.

The secondary colors involve those that were made up from mixing the primary colors, usually from no more then two at a time. Orange, Violet and Green. Lastly, you have your tertiary colors, which are formed by mixing a primary, and a secondary together. In hindsight the whole way colors are formed somewhat represent a flowing circle.

The color wheel is the visual representation of the color theory, putting any two colors that combine harmoniously opposite each other, which is the easiest way to determine best contrast. It demonstrates how colors communicate with each other and is why every time I opened a box of crayons I would say “wooooow!”, because their all laid out in a specific order to ensure it looks good and properly shows off each color, thats why a rainbow is so beautiful. If you draw a line through the center of the wheel, it separates the warm colors from the cool colors. This makes it much easier to establish the already obvious two categories of colors.

Going into a little bit of history, the color wheel was designed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666, and is still absolutely used today by artists and designers, being a key tool in designing any aspect involving color. Using the color wheel when designing something that involves a mix of colors is imperative, giving you an automatic result in determining which colors flow together and which ones don’t.