Week Five - Hidden in Red

Sorry, this is another post about color theory.

So today I went to the Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA, and in one particular room there was a showcase of his most recent works (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Stain Boy and Frankenweenie). Along one wall, there was a house set up so that you could look into the window and see a Christmas scene. I passed it once without too much attention and later returned to look into the little window. Inside, there was a Christmas tree, a color wheel/rotationary light (like in the above picture; I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside), the character Stain Boy, and the legs of a man extending from another room. As the color wheel rotated, the lights inside the house would change to match that color. As I approached for the first time, the wheel and lights were red, casting the entire scene into a red hue. This appeared normal to me, I assumed that since everything appeared red, most of the scenery was white. Then, the color shifted to yellow.

As the fade-in/fade-out started, bright patches of red suddenly stood out to me that I hadn't seen before. It was revealed that Stain Boy's entire left side was covered in blood, and that there was also a puddle surrounding the man's legs. This only suprised me because it had been invisible before: the blood was completely hidden by the red light. When the red and blue lights came on, the stains were still visible, but only because they were off-colored from the rest of the scene, like they were black or dark brown. But the red, because it was reflected by the stains themselves and the red within the white, was hidden. This gives me ideas about ways to suprise audiences with revealing costumes or sceneries. :)