Watch: Video Essay Explores How Filmmakers Use Color To Manipulate Our Emotions

“Blue and orange, blue and orange, blue and orange.” It isn’t just Demize’s ode to the Chicago Bears. It’s actually a fundamental and vital color scheme widely used in film, from genres ranging from dramas to biopics to epics.

Why blue and orange? What makes that combination so special? Well, as this new three-and-a-half minute video from The Verge points out, blue and orange are opposite one another on the color wheel. Flesh tones (not everyone’s, of course) tend to fall into the orange range. Blues compliment those tones. So, the “orange toned actor” as Verge humorously phrases it, pops on camera when set against a background hued largely in the blue spectrum. The images this specific color scheme elicits are so vibrant, so aesthetically powerful, that movies of any genre use it to great effect.

READ MORE: Watch: Video Essay Examines Importance Of Settings And Locations In Film 

Of course, as any filmgoer today knows, cinema is dominated by a far wider scope of colors than...