It seemed to start with CSI: Miami, with the yellow/gold overall cast to the scenes. Barely noticeable, even if David Caruso’s red hair looked a little more orange than it should…
Then came CSI: New York with a cool blue tint, supposed to reflect the “cooler, grittier” character of NYC - this started to get a little silly, but I can put up with it in order to see Gary Sinise on the small screen…
But worst of all is Medical Investigation’s Beer Barf Green tint, which is WAY overdone and adds nothing beyond a feeling of queasiness - which the show doesn’t really need, in view of the subject matter. For Pete’s sake, even Neal McDonough’s hair is green!!
What’s next? “Joan of Arcadia” in armour-coloured silver shades? Reruns of “All in the Family” tinted Redneck Red? “Hannibal the Cannibal” shot in purple because he’s a People Eater?
Come on, show producers! Let’s drop the “distinctive look” tint gimmicks and get back to the real indicators of distinction: good writing, good acting and good casting.
They already do that on JoA - the scenes with her father (the cop) at the police station are tinted blue, just like on CSI: New York. It’s quite annoying. I’m about to quit watching that version of CSI for that very reason. Well, that and the storylines are eye-rollingly bad. Gary Sinese and Hill Harper are the only reasons keeping me tuned in.
Annoying indeed. All except “Medical Investigations” are on CBS – and since “Medical Investigations” is a blatant ripoff of the CSI franchise, I think we can blame that one on the big eyeball as well.
settles tinfoil hat more firmly on head, the better to receive the silver-tinted rays
I think it’s a perfectly acceptable tool which, like all others, can be used inappropriately. As a comics reader, my credo is Embrace your medium. Don’t use gimmicks just to be gimmicky, but don’t avoid them if they help you get under the audience’s skin. When putting together a film or TV show, one of the things you can control is the color, so you shouldn’t shy away from using that to create a mood or present other clues to the viewer. (It works in comics, too, BTW – just take a look at Gotham Central.)
I’m sure it wasn’t the first to do this, but I think the forerunner of the current trend was The Matrix, which used a green tint (along with cool costuming and the emotionlessness of the characters) to immediately signal how life in the matrix was different from life outside it (blue/grey colors, moth-eaten sweaters, and messy humanity). Not only was this a helpful visual cue to the audience, but as it turned out by the end of the trilogy it was a substantive part of the films’ philosophy.
Interestingly, I find that on Joan, it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t get in the way. However, I’m in total agreement about CSI: New York. I remember watching the “pilot” episode on CSI: Miami and thinking it was really cool that they switched to the darker, grittier tinting in New York. But now it’s not only annoying but they’ve made it so damned dark that half the time I can’t even tell what’s going on (and this is on a 46" HiDef TV, and watching the show in true HD). That and the stories are boring, boring, boring… I like Sinese, too, but they gotta fix the show before I’ll go back to watching it.
As if the preponderance of wirework in its wake wasn’t reason enough to hate the movie and its trilogy, you have just given me another very good reason to loathe it.
That’s funny; I find it incredibly annoying on Joan. They’ll be going along with another plotline, at the school, at home, wherever, then they switch to the police station, and BAM! it’s all blue-y. I find it jarring. It does seem like they’re using it less this season, though. Last season it bugged the crap out of me.
Without the heavy philosophical overtones, color-coding scenes goes back to the earliest days of filmmaking. Off the top of my head the earliest example I can think of is Les Vampires from 1915, which used IIRC different tones for indoor scenes and outdoor day and night scenes.
Then there is its cousin, the drunken-cameraman effect. You know, where the camera continually wavers a little back and forth, and a little up and down, during a non-earthquake scene. No, Mr. Cameraman, no matter how much you pretend its a handheld camera, we’re not going to think this is cinema verité. It’s a scripted, acted, and directed scene.
I get motion sickness very easily (I can’t read in a car or play 3D video games) and often this effect makes a movie unwatchable for me. I literally have to close my eyes or turn completely away to keep from hurling, and my stomach stays upset for a good 20 minutes after only a minute or two of that effect.
But the effect was used to good purpose on Homicide: Life on the Street (later, NYPD Blue copied it, but much less effectively, since they overdid it.)
No effect is automatically bad, and it’s a matter of taste. I don’t mind the yellow tinge on CSI: Miami, but don’t like the blue on in CSI: NY (I keep thinking they’re trying to be NYPD Blue – literally).
Colour coding was used very effectively in Steven Soderburgh’s Traffic. It was a movie which jumped locations quite frequently so the different colours helped to place any given scene geographically. If I recall correctly, Washington was blue, LA was yellow and Mexico sepia tones.
Soderbergh didn’t just do that in traffic. He did it in earlier films too. Most of Erin Brockovich had a yellow desert-y tint. Out of Sight had bright colors for Florida, different colors for two different prison settings, and the same cold blue as Washington (in Traffic) for the Detroit scenes.
I think he may have used it in earlier movies too (King of the Hill maybe?) and I know other directors have but Out of Sight was one of the first big examples I saw of it so I always associate the technique with Soderbergh.
And I have no objection to that: it serves a purpose and can actually improve the film. But on TV, when the entire series is (supposedly) shot in New York, for example, there is no conceivable reason - other than the director/producer’s misguided sense of artistry - to give a tint to every damn scene in the show!
I find the effect most loathsome in the “Medical Investigations” bilious green overcast, but I’m afraid that’s one of the shows that isn’t living up to my expectations anyhow.
Fortunately, the effect has been largely discarded by most shows, although it lives on (and is a continuing source of parody) with the music video channels where it is seen as “way kewl” :rolleyes:
As Biffy the Elephant Shrew said, six; but only one of these is an aeronaut.
[QUOTE=SavageNarce]
I find the effect most loathsome in the “Medical Investigations” bilious green overcast, but I’m afraid that’s one of the shows that isn’t living up to my expectations anyhow.
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I agree. I’ve given up watching it, which is a shame, because I like David McWhatsHisName. All the characters seem so one-dimensional.