Digital Colour Grading: Amelie

In this film education series, cinematographer, film colourist and educator Devan Scott illuminates the ways 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 followed by a complementary screening, today: Amelie.

Digital color grading tools have vastly expanded the possibilities in how directors and cinematographers manipulate color palettes, and over the past quarter century the look of films and video have changed rapidly as a result. In the concluding part of our Film Studies series, we’ll look at the early days of this technology with Amelie, in which Bruno Delbonnel and Jean-Pierre Jeunet pushed the possibilities of motion picture palettes to previously impossible extremes in their realization of a romanticized Paris.

About the film: One of the most popular French films of the past 25 years, Amelie is a delightfully whimsical confection from the ever-inventive Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Jeunet began his career in animation and his live action films (which include Delicatessen and A Very Long Engagement) have a similar degree of freedom of movement and surrealistic caprice. Audrey Tautou stars in the title role, as a young Parisienne who resolves to make the world (or at least, her corner of it) a happier place…

Talk: 1:00 pm
Amelie: 1:40 pm

This film will also play as part of the Total Cinema series.