DV Filmmaking

Audiences’ Subconscious Response to Color, and How You Can Make Use of It

Humans have a complex and visceral understanding of color, and it impacts the way we respond to just about everything in the world. Color shapes and informs not only our aesthetic sensibilities about visual objects but also helps determine our enjoyment of important everyday activities such as eating—can you imagine sitting down to a pleasurable meal of gray food?

Using Color to Create a Positive Emotional State

In Emotional Design, Donald A. Norman, a professor of computer science and psychology at Northwestern University, writes that “bright, saturated hues” and “comfortably lit places” put people in a positive emotional state in which they’re more receptive to having a positive emotional experience. According to Norman’s book, color and lighting function on a subconscious level, shaping people’s opinions before they’ve had a chance to make a conscious evaluation.

Norman also lists conditions that produce “automatic” negative states, such as “darkness” or “extremely bright lights or loud sounds.” Depending on the emotions you’d like to spark in your viewer, you can color correct your footage accordingly, so that viewers are predisposed to react in a particular way.

Norman writes that humans are “automatically programmed” to respond well to certain environmental factors and to react negatively to others. Keeping an audience’s subconscious responses to color in mind as you color correct your film can help you ...