Project

Color in Cinema: Language, Memory, Commerce

Program

ACLS Fellowship Program

Department

Film and Media Studies

Abstract

This project is the first book-length treatment in the field of media studies to examine the interaction of color with a perceiver. It involves an intricate weaving of many types of discourse—i.e., the numerous ways we have of talking about our interests, desires, projects, values, and emplacements in daily life. Examining how color is made and consumed in an industrial and cultural climate involves consideration of physics, psychology, aesthetics, anthropology, history, and the new sciences of the mind. A variety of methods are explored for analyzing color in moving imagery. Color is not just “out there,” but also a medium of exchange at the box office as well as between a person’s imagination and expectation.