Have always felt Pixar has a unique style to their films, most recently watching their clever animated shorts (see: Disney+ New Pixar Popcorn Shorts Are What Quibi Should Have Done). After reading the following article, I nodded and had one of those “aha!” moments.
In a way, every filmmaker is really just playing with moving light and color on surfaces. That’s the whole ball game, a filmic given. But Pixar takes it further, or perhaps just does it more self-consciously and systematically. Its emotionally weighty, computer-generated animated films deploy precisely calibrated color and light to convey narrative and emotion—from the near-total absence of green in WALL-E (until postapocalyptic robots find the last plant on Earth) to the luminous orange marigolds that symbolize Miguel’s trip to the magical Land of the Dead in Coco through the contrast between the cool blue luminosity of the afterlife with the warm, snuggly sepia of New York City in last year’s Soul.
How Pixar Uses Hyper-Colors to Hack Your Brain
While the term “hack your brain” seems mildly offensive, I get it. Pixar is almost Steve Jobs-like obsesses with quality and style and it shows. You just know what to expect from seeing one of their films and it frequently is entertaining at least.
The recent Oscars paid Soul some love. Well deserved.
Movies, Movies, Movies 