Art Direction

This project consisted on finding a picture or a series of pictures from film,game, painting or photograph and analyse it.

 I decided to do my presentation on the film ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ by Rob Marshall

You may like or not like the film but when I was trying to look for something that inspired me I realised the amount of times I watched this movie. The plot is not that great, so why do I find it so exciting?

To me it is the beauty in the film that makes it great. In fact this film won the Best Cinematography Academy Award which is saying something.

The film starts very dark and with horrible weather as the protagonist is taken to a geisha house. The colour palette used throughout the first twenty minutes of the film is mainly composed of grays and cold colours. It is curious that in a movie based on geishas which wore fancy bright dresses, always surrounded by beauty and art, the movie starts very grey. Because of that the viewer can rapidly guess that she is not happy. And that she lives in some sort of a prison. But then there's a certain scene in the movie that adds a little bit of colour to the movie.

Here she meets with someone who is gentle and nice to her for the first time. Everywhere he goes is covered in colour and I think this moment is quite symbolic. The viewer can observe that the protagonist sees a light in him, her exit from the grey world she lives in.

She’s the main character. One can tell by the way she dresses she is a sweet innocent girl. Good mannered and polite. She is cheerful and full of light.

On the other hand, the antagonist, she always wears dark and vibrant colours. Just by looking at her it is easy to picture the kind of person she is. Arrogant, vain and jealous.

I quite like the contrast between the two of them. Every character has a certain colours palette regarding their clothing which helps us understand their personality in a visual way.

Again one can see the fiery personality of the antagonist which becomes real flames in the movie.

I like the scene when the antagonist is vanished from the geisha house for starting a fire. It tells me she is going to disappear into the mist and most likely, never come back. Like the smoke of the flames, after it consumes verything there's nothing left, just grey ashes. She’s just a shadow now, no light remains on her.

Something similar happens here as well. She’s not wearing fancy colourful clothing which tells a void in her existence. She has no happiness; she’s just a tone of grey.

To summerise, I like how they played with the colours to tell the mood and the personality of the characters. As I game artist I think it is important to use these techniques in all of my work as it can tell so much information and convey emotion into a scene.

References from google images.