Use colour wisely

You may have noticed that the Orwellian dystopia being filmed in Minority Report has a cold, blue feel. Gulf War action-satire Three Kings, on the other hand, looks warm and bleached out. What's going on?

On both films, the directors have made choices about how the colour of their film will influence the atmosphere. They've chosen different film stock and different developing methods to give the footage different characters. But how can you achieve the same effect when you're working in video?

You need to consider colour before you shoot any video at all. Professional filmmakers have their set designers work with the cinematographer to choose a colour palette for the film. In some cases, this palette determines everything from the colour of the wallpaper in a room to the colour of an actor's tie. Working within a specific colour palette, you can give your film a more coherent look.

Once you've shot your footage, you can affect the atmosphere of the film by choosing how colours will appear in the finished product. Using the colour filters available in editing software such as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier, you can subtly alter the hue of your film and emulate certain processing techniques, such as the bleach bypass effect used in Three Kings.