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Comment by boredguy8 | Hacker News Reader

I find just seeing the color palette says a lot about a movie. And of course "Hero"/"Ying Xiong" is amongst the compressed movies: http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3515529474/hero-ying-xio...

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This is very cool and pretty insightful. The Matrix represents itself perfectly, looking very similar to the code itself. Pan's Labyrinth was also close, and Bambi for that matter. Its interesting to see how closely we associate a movie with the colours in it, even if we dont recognize that association.

Yes, loved the Matrix representation myself too. But then again, look at the Kill Bill one. It's not as "yellow" as I associate with the movie (I think the packaging gives me that "yellow feeling"). But then, there is this one lonesome yellow stripe in the moviebarcode for Kill Bill! I thought that captured the movie well on a higher plane (e.g. main character being quite a lone, too).

http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3509777216/kill-bill-vol...

I like how you can see artifacts from the bold yellow letters that show up often in the film.

I was just thinking the same thing; see "Traffic": http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3432016573/traffic-2000

That was definitely the one that stood out the most to me. It's always one of the first movies that comes to mind when I'm thinking about color in film.

Agreed, though at times "Hero" is borderline heavy-handed with color. However it manages to remain beautiful. One thing I've learned, though, from a set-designer friend, is that nearly every movie is highly attuned to color and lighting.

If you're looking for other films that use color in interesting ways, check out the "Three Colors Trilogy" by Kieslowski.

Did you perchance see Star Trek: Nemesis? That was the most heavy-handed use of color in film I've ever seen.

If ST:N was the most heavy-handed you've seen, then I guess you haven't seen Transformers. Or any blockbuster action movie made in the last 5 years.

http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-ho...

Edit: I'm slow, this was linked in the comments below.

We're talking about color as a storytelling element, not as a mechanism to get a visual pop.

Same here, I remember loving the vivid imagery of that movie.

I watched "The Fall" recently and this is the first one that came to mind. Highly recommended: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/

Probably my favorite movie in east Asian cinema.

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