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Film Studies: Creating Colour

Across five Monday afternoons, cinematographer, film colourist and educator Devan Scott will illuminate the distinctive ways in which filmmakers have created mood and meaning through the manipulation of colour. Each 40-minute talk will examine a different colour process – including lighting, tinting, production design – within its historical context, and exploring its aesthetic, artistic and storytelling attributes.

Each talk will be paired with a corresponding film screening that highlights that day’s colour process.

Tickets: $22

Series Pass $99

Senior/Student Pass $85

VIFF+ Pass $75*

*VIFF+ Members must log in first

Devan Scott is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s film program and has worked as a cinematographer, colourist, and director for ten years. As a cinematographer, his work has screened around the world at the Toronto International Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Clermont Short Film Festival, and Busan International Film Festival among many others. As a colourist, his clients have included Google, Film Boldly, the Vancouver Canucks, the NFB, Wondershare, and Global Media. Devan is also an experienced educator, at UBC and other institutions, and has lectured regularly at the VIFF Centre. His podcast, How Would Lubitsch Do It? has found international acclaim.

Photochemical Tinting and Toning, from Méliès to Brakhage

Dir. Various. Presented by Devan Scott
100 min

Devan Scott begins a five part series exploring how filmmakers have created mood and meaning through the manipulation of colour with a look at the tinting techniques developed in the silent era before there was colour film stock. + films by Melies et al.

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Lighting: Black Narcissus

Dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. Presented by Devan Scott
140 min

The manipulation of light is the essence of cinematography. Here Devan Scott unpeels the artifice in "one of the most ravishing films ever made", Jack Cardiff's use of Technicolor in Powell & Pressburger's masterpiece Black Narcissus.

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Production Design: Young Girls of Rochefort

Dir. Jacques Demy. Presented by Devan Scott
165 min

Devan Scott looks at how production design and art direction can instill the look of a film such as in Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort. Demy repainted large sections of the French city to create one of the most magical of all movie musicals.

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Filtration: Three Colours: Blue

Dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski. Presented by Devan Scott
140 min

Directly filtering the image that comes into a lens allows cinematographers to vastly alter how a scene looks and feels. We'll analyze the radical ways Kieslowski's closet collaborator, Slawomir Idziak, editorializes in such films as Three Colours: Blue.

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Digital Colour Grading: Amelie

Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Presented by Devan Scott
163 min

Digital color grading tools have vastly expanded the possibilities in how filmmakers manipulate color palettes, and the look of films and video have changed rapidly as a result. We'll look at the early days of this technology with Amelie.

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Filtration: The Double Life of Veronique

Dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski. Presented by Devan Scott
140 min

Directly filtering the image that comes into a lens allows cinematographers to vastly alter how a scene looks and feels. We'll analyze the radical ways Kieslowski's closet collaborator, Slawomir Idziak, editorializes in The Double Life of Veronique.

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