In order to describe the various hues of the colour orange used in visual storytelling (to set the tone and mood of a film even before any dialogues are said), there are several vocabularies that may come in handy when taking a dive into translating colours into human words. Still frames or film scenes where orange enhances the underlying message of a given shot or a sequence can appear in a large variety of colours, including orange hues, which are often complemented by blue hues (opposite the colour palette, making both orange and blue colours pop, or more like POP!).
Orange hues can range from milder shades, like bleached almond or even antique white through the yellowish shades like golden, amber, saffron or the more autumnal darker shades taking orange closer to brown, like marigold, gamboge, bronze and ochre to less vibrant shades moving orange towards greyish or greenish hues on the colour wheel like sandy taupe, dark beige, dark champagne. The list of Pantone orange hues in this collection is an overall positive sight, neatly arranged colour shades. However, as with all objects bearing colours to the human eye, the texture and context can largely modulate the emotions raised by the specific occurrence of a given orange in a film shot.
Pantone Scale – Hues and Shades of Orange
Pantone aims to provide a universal language of colour. Developed for brands and manufacturers, some of the orange Pantone scale names offer a way to make film orange hues more approachable via words. The Pantone scale includes bright light orange offering pleasant and fun vibes like Apricot, dynamic orange hues like Candlelight, Amber or nature inspired oranges like Tangerine, Pumpkin, Carrot or Ginger. Some of the shades are less literary like Macaroni and Cheese or Orangutan, while others may be very specific and less used, like Sherbert (named after a Barney’s Farm product, Orange Sherbert as a cross of Orange Cream, Purple Urkle, and Cherry Pie) or too generic like Soap Orange.
VectorStock Scale
Another scale describing orange hues with words is that of VectorStock, a specialised stock agency for on screen vector graphics. Their language includes lighter orange like Orange Peach or Wheat, bright oranges like Papaya, Red Fox, Halloween, Mango or more gentle versions like Coral, Red Sand. Rust or Ochre are orange shades that are used by many other scales, but less frequently applied terms like Basketball are also on their list.
Colour Meanings Orange List
Another list by Colour Meanings offers verbal descriptions, especially useful to translate various orange hues into descriptive texts. In addition to the above, there are darker orange shades included in the orange colour palette, like those leaning towards brown: clay along with rust, or yam and marmalade resembling squash.
Although there are established terms for orange hues in frequent use, colour shades are textually mouldable and always open to additional descriptive compounds or similes. High vis jacket orange, prison orange, ground amber, dirty carrot, lego orange etc. could also function to describe shades of orange in a visual storytelling, especially if their connotations offer a stylistically better match to the context of the given film.
Cinema Palettes (aka Colorpalette.cinema) is a project by Gaby Smith, a UK-based designer picking out the decisive colour shades from central shots in a range of hand picked films. The technique used in this specially themed film colour project makes the nuances of applied colour hues even more accessible for description and analysis, or for practical purposes, designing the colour palette of a film setting or making your room resemble a film setting, whether it’s Life of a Pi (Ang Lee), Mad Max or Romeo+Juliet.
