Choosing the Right Color Palette for Your Videos
- The importance of the color palette in video and the main categories of colors
- Color symbolism and uniqueness
- How to use colors in videos to set the mood
- Horror
- Comedies and romantic genre
- Epic scenes
- Conclusion
The importance of the color palette in video and the main categories of colors
Video is a dynamic presentation of the story you want to convey to your viewership. And to highlight it in a certain spectrum such term as color grading exists. Different color palettes can set different atmospheres in your video, and it is essential to know how these colors are going to be perceived by viewers.
From the designer’s standpoint, each color has its meaning, especially if you create a brand logo or a website. They usually divide colors into three categories:
- Brand or main color that will be dominant to represent your brand
- A complementary color that matches your main color and serves as a filler
- Accent color that you use to highlight things
Color symbolism and uniqueness
However, this concept is hardly applied in coloring videos as they go in dynamics, and are designed more for static or still images, logos, brands, websites, and so on. On the other hand, each color has meaning or symbolism, which you can also implement in video footage that is more static than dynamic.
Let us go through the most common colors.
- Red is a color of passion and energy that draws attention like no other color. Radiating a strong and powerful energy it motivates to take action.
- Green is a color of harmony and health that relaxes and revitalizes our mind. It is associated with growth, hope, and prosperity. A color of nature in a nutshell and we all love nature.
- Blue is a color of trust and loyalty. It is associated with confidence, security, reliability and makes us feel supported. And it is worth mentioning here that the “Out of the blue” saying means to appear unexpected.
- Black is the color of power and sophistication associated with strength and authority. It is often seen as a formal and prestige color used for official events. However, it can also work in a seductive manner arousing senses of elegance and sexiness. Mixing Black and Red colors is a perfect example of where they pop.
- Gray is a neutral color that emphasizes compromise and control. It is conservative and unemotional. It is solid as a rock, making it stable reliable and calming.
- White is a color of purity and innocence. Being a true balance of all colors it is associated with simplicity and perfection.
Having these tips in mind you can develop cool coluor schemes for still and even dynamic scenes to emphasize or distract viewers' attention and generally manipulate it.
How to use colors in videos to set the mood
For videos, we recommend using color grading represented by a video color palette in gradients where they complementary transition into each other setting a certain mood.
Horror
For instance, if you watch horror movies you may notice how dark blueish and gray tints raise the suspense in scenes. You can apply the same technique for dark and moody scenes by using cold colors.
Comedies and romantic genre
On the other hand, using vibrant color palettes could convey other types of stories, something not serious or moments of joy. As such, you can use orange-yellow palettes or basically warm colors.
Epic scenes
To create a light and airy style with epic video colours we use a combination of white with high contrasts to complementary colors. Having high contrasts will help to cut off unnecessary from the frame and highlight the overall mood of the scene shown in the main character’s expressions or highlight subjects distracting them from the environment.
Conclusion
Using just visual effects and seamless transitions is not enough to get your video into trends. On the other hand, having perfect color grading in dynamic may take it to the top of the charts by itself. You need to find a starting point at first to define your main color, which suppose to convey your general video story be it coloring videos on YouTube or action movies. To highlight moments where different mood appears you can use accent colors to emphasize that.
Author
IT entrepreneur and co-founder of VJump. His passion is travel photography, within which, he has already visited 75 countries. Photos taken during his travels are actively posted on his social networks. For example, his Instagram account has more than 1 million followers.
In addition, his documentary short film Terra del Fuego was awarded more than 30 international awards and certificates at film festivals worldwide.
