Top Five Examples of the Insidious Creep of Blue/orange Art into Our Lives

by Ernie on 05/08/10 at 9:29 am

Wait, what are we talking about? OK, in sum: For various reasons, Hollywood has been increasingly using the blue/orange pallet in films. This kind of adjustment is easy now that everything is digital. It’s particularly pronounced in advertisements and movie trailers. You may not have noticed this yet, but once it’s been pointed out to you, you see it everywhere. Long story short: blue and orange are opposites on the color wheel, so they really “pop” when contrasted. Red/green are opposites too, but those are reserved for Christmas. Yellow/purple are also opposites, but purple is a more unusual color than orange and blue are so it’s hard to work into things. The trend started with O Brother, Where Art Thou? and then just became more and more pervasive till it was everywhere, not just in movies but also on book covers (we didn’t dig to find those examples; they were just right there in our Amazon recommendations). Magazines and bloggers have been increasingly noticing this and writing about it which likely means the trend is on its way out. Avatar was probably the trend’s apotheosis, or perhaps shark-jumping moment. We’ll see . . .

Here’s the definitive discussion of blue/orange supremacy, with great examples and explanation.

5. Books

The Passage by Justin Cronin

Firefly by Joss Whedon