#color in film | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

absolutebl · 2 years

Note

hi! i graduated from film school this year & i've been reading thru ur blog for weeks now. u've talked abt cinematography before & it's a subject i'd love to hear more of ur thoughts abt. which shows do u believe use cinematic storytelling (framing, staging, symbolic parallels, lighting, color coding) to their advantage the most? shows which benefit from a rewatch/slower watch in order to notice visual details & which can be analyzed in terms of visual language. which would be ur top picks? ty!!

OOO, what a good question.

10 Best Uses of Cinematic Storytelling in BL

Okay, I should say up front that this is not BL's strength.

Second, I work tangential to ET but my degrees are not in film studies. So, much of what I know has been gleaned from coworkers and just floating constantly in and out of the industry, I may not always use the right terms.

The post where I get the most weedy about filming technique is actually the one where I talk about different directors in BL (their styles, camera preferences and camera angle choices, that kind of thing).

BL Directors - Overview

Finally, for each pick, I’m going to talk first about what I liked about the story, and then how the filming technique is used to serve that.

1. Restart After Come Back Home AKA Risutato wa tadaima no ato de

Atmospheric study in rural Japan meets complex family dynamics built on a romance framework of city boy meets country boy. It’s beautiful and icy sweet. Slow moving in places but ultimately worth your patience. Full review here.

This was the first BL that came to mind when asked this question. This movie highlights Japan’s sweeping atmospheric style (learned at the feet of Kurosawa) applied to a very simple little BL story about coming home. Like with HIs the move, the Japanese countryside itself is a major player and character, but unlike His this movie really makes use of its beauty as a metaphor for possibilities and acceptance. Some of the establishing shots are truly breathtaking. The use of color and shadow is also tailored without being brazen. The film uses it to contrast the the two leads, one of whom is closed off from his family and his home and, to a certain extent, life but open to love, and the other who is open to all sensation and the outside world, but closed off to love. How these two men are filmed, framed, and lit is interwoven with these traits - dependent on their internal emotional states and whether they are together or alone. Cold lighting, sometimes too direct, when they are feeling exposed or challenged, darker cool hues when they are internally reflective, warmer even angry reds and golds when they are coping with emotions around connection and intimacy with each other. And finally the closing shot of bright full day, revolving sparkles and lens flairs that’s implying a forthright acceptance and unity, not just of each other, but of themselves.

It is, simply put, a really beautiful movie to just watch as a visual piece of art, we are so lucky it also happens to be BL.

2. I Want to See Only You AKA Kimi no Koto Dake Mite Itai

This is a beautiful piece of cinema well acted, about two boys who are opposite personalities and grew up together. It is very pretty and this is the kind of atmospheric elegantly performed BL that only really comes from Japan (complete with dead fish kisses - what you thought Korea invented them? oh no). I felt like I was “supposed to like it” more than I did. Ultimately I was left feeling as if I had seen it all before. So for me this was lovely but slightly unmemorable.

Another show that is VERY similar is His the series (I Didn't Think I Would Fall In Love AKA His - Koisuru Tsumori Nante Nakatta). Only it has a beach setting.

I mention these two in this post and at this juncture, because they are very stylistically Japanese but lack intentionality to their filming. So they feel workmanlike in a way that I often accuse Thai BL of.. It’s almost as if in coming from Japan they can’t NOT be pretty about it. Like good filming technique is so expected, it’s part of the DNA. In actually, both these stories might have been served better if the filming were more gritty and raw, sticky, like BLs from Taiwan or the Philippines, but Japan (like Korea) doesn’t do that.

3. Seven Days

Never doubt my ability to recommend this show. One of the best live action yaois ever made, with perfectly structured angst, fantastic characters and acting, and no problematic tropes (rare in Japanese BL). The leads have excellent chemistry although it’s low heat there’s still some cute mutual kisses.

Seven Days pretty much used the original manga as a storyboard with just a few exceptions. And yet because it takes itself and it’s characters seriously (this in not a slapstick JBL) it’s softer and less cartoony than most Japanese live action yaoi. The color pallet is muted, and staging and farming is almsot too simplistic but somehow smooth and organic, rather than choppy or stilted. It looks genuine, not fantastical (see Korea coming up). The cuts are gentle with us, it never feels hurried or rushed, even though this is not a very long piece. It’s classy without being in your face about it.

This is spot on cinematography entirely subsumed by a story. It’s point (if ti can be said to have one) is that it doesn’t have a point of view, and therefore the story just shines. Never once will you feel thrown out by a perfect shot, and yet, every shot is perfect. This is cinema FOR story. This director trusted the script and the actors implicitly and did not feel the need to do anything fancy, which is, in and of itself, remarkable. This is like a perfectly executed piece of sushi. It doesn’t need anything, no sauce, no seasoning. The filming itself relishes its own simplistically.

I actually picked these first 3 BLs intentionally, and all from Japan. Because I feel like they kind of show the range of Japanese cinema has when it is being subtle. By which I mean less derivative of manga and owing much less slapstick. (See something like My Love Mix Up.)

So now let’s move into the relm of manga filming styles.

4. Minato’s Laundromat AKA Minato Shouji Koin Randorii

As of writing this post this show hasn’t ended yet, so not review, you can read my watch along here. But I am still picking it on the basis of the way they use doorways and transitional spaces to represent where the characters are in their different life stages and emotional development (and how they flipped that at the end).

Also this BL is cribbed directly from the manga, shot for shot in places.

This show is an exploration of how maturity is defined under the contest of an age gap romance, roles in society, and liminality - crossing the threshold form child to adult, from fear of love to acceptance, from immaturity to maturity. The series uses characters in doorway, reaching through them, crossing them, and notions of inside spaces versus outside spaces to represent this. I talk about it a lot in my watch along so I won’t rehash here but it is actually BRILLIANT.

5. Old Fashion Cupcake

This show had me from the moment they broke the egg yolk with the chopsticks in the opening credits. It’s about a younger man with a long cherished crush on his boss (who is ten years older and going through a midlife crisis) who decides to save and seduce said boss with pancakes. It’s wholesome, comforting, sexy, and a very necessary narrative about still having hope, interests, and openness to affection at any age. It’s coming of age/queerness packaged in a subtle critique of expectations around masculinity and love and loneliness... and it’s beautiful. Full review here.

The filming style is very much Japan’s close camera work, super tunneled into spaces, confined and almost, but not quite, claustrophobic. It’s using that to highlight how trapped by inertia Nozue feels, and how trapped by his feelings Togawa feels. Nozue in particular is filmed at home hidden, hiding, in the dark, shadowed, and withdrawn - as tidy as his place is, it (and how he occupies it) is an extension of his loneliness and self isolation.

The cinematographer is using that in contrast to the moments of pull back and central framing when the couple is shown sitting and eating together, usually brightly lit, showing them both opening up to each other and, in Nozue’s case, to sensation.

The very final shot of the series, with the big cheerful window, and Togawa feeding Nozue across the table is a representation of how freed they both are by their acceptance of each other.

Not to mention the way the food is shot in this show, and how food and openness to new sensation are used (and filmed) as an allegory for sexual awakening (lust in terms of indulgence - I will never get over those hamster cheeks) and consequently (ultimately) fulfillment.

More on Japan’s cinematic style here.

6. Cherry Blossoms After Winter

Korea took on early Japanese sweet yaoi but gave it their signature softness and precise production style with a STUNNING color palette (beautiful pastels and sun-saturated over-exposure), manga framing style, some traditional BL character archetypes, that tiny edge of bullying roughness and out-of-control seme, plus FINALLY a palatable take on the stepbrothers trope and it was, in a word, classic. Sophisticated and understated CBAW is not slow, it’s just subtle.

This show is dream-like, as if the whole thing took place under cold water on a warm spring day, dappled sunlight slanting through trees above. Is there plot or peril? Not really. Do we care? Also, not really. Look, I can’t help it, I’m old school and so is this show. I grew up reading sweet yaoi, and this was THAT YAOI just on my screen. There’s no objectivity with me and CBAW. It’s a beautiful pastiche and I loved it for how it made me feel and what it reminded me of. It’s not flawless, but it is a wonderful experience. It’s like a Maxfield Parrish BL. Is the filming style serving story, I’m not sure, but it is serving nostalgia.

7. Color Rush

A unique paranormal twist elevates this classic high school drama into a pitch-perfect allegory for the queer coming out experience and one of the best BLs of all time (I will fight you on this).

It’s no accident that I chose so much Color Rush for my screen caps in the post on yaoi framing styles. It is SUCH a manga (yes I know, it’s Korean). The cuts from one shot to the next could actually just have stepped off the page. If Wes Anderson did BL it’s be something like this.

Of course the use of color is just phenomenal - the range of hoodies, and the different backgrounds. The marriage of simplistic wardrobe with simplistic setting is about precision not the mundane. How Yoo Han is using color to seduce AT ALL TIMES is intentional brutal as we are never to forget the threat this entails (our POV and this movie’s is entirely Yeon Woo). Color is the vehicle and the predator, the danger and the light, it is sexual awakening, it is being gay, it is embracing the monster within - right up to and including the color rush itself as something essentially orgasmic. I can tell you, purely on the basis of the fact that the manwha was in black and white, that this BL must be better that its source because it had color to use in its storytelling. Because it had color to play with. If that’s not the visual voice of cinematography telling me a tall tale, I don’t know what is.

I will never get over this show.

8. Semantic Error

Korea hit it entirely out of the Parks with Semantic Error by doing a university set BL featuring everything we expect from BL just done exactly right. It has Korea's signature quality executed perfectly, and added bonus good story, great pacing, stunning visuals, and fantastic chemistry. You cannot ask for more from a BL, let alone a KBL. And the film team was part of this.

Frankly I would have used screen caps from Semantic Error as much as Color Rush in that post on yaoi framing techniques, but I wrote that post too long ago. This BL owes more to its Japanese roots than any other Korean BL I’ve seen: story, characters, and filming style. That image above with the backlit windows and the empty classroom? Could have popped out of Takumi or Boys Love (would have been more blue toned though), not just classic BL but the beginning of BL.

This is another KBL one where the use of color, particularly contrast, is incredibly strong. In this one cool vs warm tones are tools for characterization. (Usually they are used for mood, but not really in this show.) JaeYoung is usually wearing warm tones or shot in warm lighting and with warm backgrounds (reds, oranges, yellows), except when he enters SangWoo’s space. SangWoo is the opposite, almost always in cool tones and lighting (greens, blues, purples). So we get this fire and ice contrast between the two of them, with the lighting playing up who is “winning” the argument or the intimacy levels by being either warm or cool (or transitioning between them in the course of the shot). When JaeYoung manages to crumble SangWoo’s defensives, it gets warmer, when SangWoo is in charge of the narrative drive, it gets cooler. It’s very clever.

I think Korea is particularly good that this tonal character association and mood enhancement because they use it in high concept Kpop MVs all the time.

9. Cutie Pie

Very high production and a lot of visual references to yaoi gave this show a whiff of Japan but ultimately it stayed firmly in Thailand’s BL camp veering from absurd to appealing to annoying and then back to absurd again. If you can roll with the arranged marriage conceit and very lifestyle D/s relationships, the chemistry is spot on even if the plot is naff and sappy and driven by miscommunication. Watch this one for the pretty, give it a pass on depth.

But if it has so little story for the cinematography to support, why did I pick it?

I like the setting chosen (it’s no accent this is top of my list of best Architecture in BL) but I also love the clean filming style, it’s very very manga for Thailand. Cheewin does this well sometimes (see alos SCOY). Not really the best BL by any stretch of the imagination, but there is something candy bright about this one that really harkens to reading yaoi, and Thailand just doesn't do that very often. This is why I chose it.

Wardrobe, setting, and color choices are all used to really highlight the differences between the characters in terms of age and life stage. Also Zee has really learned how to push his physicality since Why Ru U? so that his body positioning in particular just looks EXACTLY like the seme of some 2000s yaoi.

10. Until We Meet Again

UWMA is a work of narrative genius, and all the actors all turn in stellar performances, it is the best Thai BL from a storytelling perspective. It’s two interwoven narratives, present and past, of lovers who have been reincarnated in order to find each other again and forgive each other (and their families) for that past.

But this is a strange one to chose for this list, since the cinematography is workmanlike at best. There’s repeat cuts and other annoying tics, and general hallmarks of New’s style as a director (which is, quite frankly not particularly stylish). BUT, one of the fun things to watch for in this BL is how New contrasts central framing with peekaboo (AKA dirty) framing with regards to the two lead couples.

Korn & In, the past selves, are secretive, scared, and hiding everything. They are usually filmed with things dirtying the screen: walls, and other objects, so we get this voyeuristic feeling of always peeking around a corner at them, and seeing something we shouldn’t. The few times we see their intimacy fully framed it’s at night, staggered, and/or off center. This illustrates not just the secrecy but the instability of the relationship.

Dean & Pharm, the present selves, the camera treats as a representation, in part, of Dean having learned from his past not to hide who he loves. They are often filmed full figure, and centrally framed, full lighting, bold and direct, standing upright, holding hands, or kissing.

In other words, New is using framing techniques to highlight in a way the couples “outness,” the state of their relationship, is related to the outside world and also how they feel about it and themselves.

And there they are, my 10 picks.

Honorable Mention: Light on Me

The filming in this show was precision engineered. The frame was kept uncluttered, characters appeared exactly in the center, there was little visual noise, and the lighting was full on, even in night shots. To me this reflected the character of TaeKyung - honest and almost stilted in his mannerisms. I feel like the director filmed this series as if the show itself were TaeKyung: careful and clear and specific.

This may come off as one-note or simplistic to a casual viewer but it’s actually quite difficult to film something so precisely and still make it interesting to watch. It forced the viewer to focus almost entirely on the actor’s faces, their nuanced emotion, and their interpersonal relationships to the exclusion of all else. Lucky for us those actors served the lens beautifully.

There is literally NOTHING distracting about this directing style. It’s like the camera was a neutral white room, a well-lit gallery in which the narrative hung suspended for us all to stand and stare at in hushed silence.

I mention not so much because it serves up story, because it doesn’t, but because it is the opposite, it allows the story to serve itself.

All my stuff on the BL filming side of things:

Yaoi filming, staging & framing techniques

Favorite Uses of Metonymy In BL

BL Directors - Overview

Lighting

Diffuse point lighting

Backlighting & Silhouettes

Unidirectional focused lighting

Spotlight on romantic couple moments

That lens flare moment

Framing

Staggered couple framing

Linear cinematography + near perfect framing, in distance shots

Central Aperture Framing

Peekaboo Framing

Acting

Favorite Subtle Character Attributes

Ohm’s Acting

Gun's Acting

We Best Love: Seme/Uke & Sam Lin’s Acting Screen Presence (Charisma + Experience)

Saint’s Physicality

OffGun & The Evolution of Chemistry for a BL Pair

Why Nanon Korapat's Acting is FANTASTIC

Meta Post - All My Stuff on the BL Industry - Master Post talking about financing & production: This is a complication by request of all the posts and discussions this blog has hand on the BL industry as an industry, includes studios, production, country analysis, actor and fan behavior

(source)

316 notes · View notes