Realism Vs Expressionism

 For centuries artists have struggled with how to visually depict feelings that don’t exist physically. One approach to show emotions that can’t be seen is to depict events literally, truthfully, purely in a style known as realism.

This painting by Juan Manuel Blanes shows a woman surrounded by the horrors of war. The artist took a realistic approach by using a realistic color palette along with naturalist lightning and lifelike women.

Some artists became tired of realism as a medium of depicting feelings. They felt that human feelings could be better expressed through an emotional distortion of imagery and so expressionism was born. The imagery was distorted, figures mangled and colors exaggerated to express the deep emotions. 

Expressionist Colour Palette                                                                                                  

Edvard Munch's painting called ‘The Scream’, a fine example of expressionism using distorted, unreal figure which is not human-like. Use of a bright mixture of colors to connote the emotions in an unnatural way.

For our music video, we took an expressionist approach by using colors that visually matched the emotional experiences of the characters on screen. 

We used the red light to connote the anger between the two and how they are on the verge of falling apart due to the rift between them created by his drug addiction. Red light also connotes love and although their relationship deteriorated, they still loved each other.

                    

 We used the blue light to connote sadness and anxiety felt by the character. The feeling of helplessness and loneliness is represented through the low-key lightning and the darkness on the corners of the screen while the blue light is focused mainly on the character’s face.

We used green light to connote that the character has a mundane and dull life without her partner around. Greenlight also represents hope and while it looks like the character is depressed, we still tried to show that she still believed that there’s hope for her relationship with the other character.

In this shot, we took a realist approach since these were the memories of our character of the times she and her partner were happy together. Since we wanted to show real events that actually happened, we used natural lightning, no artificial emphasized lights, and kept the ambiance natural too.