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QuackingTroll
Valinor
Oct 23 2014, 1:55am
Post #1 of 29
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The Colours of the EEs/Soundtracks (Me being a boring nerd)
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AUJ - Orange
DoS - Spring-Green
BFA - Violet
If you're like me you'll be wondering where the heck these colours came from! Well I can tell you, I've been thinking about the colours since... to be honest, since the release of The Two Towers Extended Edition - When I was hoping The Return of the King would be Blue!
You see, The Lord of the Rings makes up the primary colours of the light spectrum: Green, Red and Blue. In theory, with different combinations of these three colours one can produce any colour perceivable by the human eye. If you're unfamiliar with this concept, here's a basic colour wheel to get started:
In 2011 many of us were suggesting colours for AUJ (most preferring Grey and Brown) when I remembered this concept and expected The Hobbit to follow the secondary colours shown by the wheel above: Yellow, Cyan and Magenta. But was thrown a bit of a curve-ball when AUJ came out orange!
Since then I've been pondering this decision and examining the colour wheel trying to predict where they'd go next but I couldn't figure their system out, until I saw the soundtrack today! The marketing team have skipped the secondary colours and moved to tertiary. (While red can be mixed with green to produce yellow, red can also be mixed with yellow to produce orange and yellow can be mixed with green to produce chartreuse etc.)
Here's a colour wheel that I made showing the six tertiary colours and where each soundtrack colour lies on the wheel. http://38.media.tumblr.com/...5H1qeueh2o1_1280.png
As you see, each Hobbit soundtrack lies clockwise to a LotR soundtrack. AUJ next to FotR, DoS next to TTT and BFA next to RotK. The interesting thing is it also leaves six colours available for a possible two more trilogies. So if future films happen, we know what colours we can expect 
Sorry if this is really uninteresting and boring to everyone but me, but I'm really interested in marketing and this particular subject has baffled and fascinated me for years. I know it's kind of dull, but I personally think it's cool that so much thought goes into these colours, and that they're not just picked at random 
Now to work on the issue of why the soundtracks are different colours to the EEs. Any ideas? I know that for LotR they accidentally got the first film wrong and decided to intentionally mess up the rest to keep it consistent 
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FoundEntwife
Rivendell
Oct 23 2014, 3:47am
Post #2 of 29
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The colors for the soundtracks and the EE's have always fascinated me too. So, was FOTR EE supposed to not be green? What was the color supposed to be?
What interests me is that for the EE of the Hobbit films they chose not to come out with a design in keeping or similar to the EE's of the previous films. The first three EE's are book-like and I wished they kept with this theme.
However, as for the color wheel and your keen observations, I love it!
This tale grew in the telling. . .
http://pencilword.blogspot.com
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adt100
Rohan
Oct 23 2014, 6:48am
Post #3 of 29
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AUJ soundtrack is the same brown/orange of the EE. I wonder why they went back to the 'mixed up' colours between EE and soundtrack for DOS. Maybe somebody in WB marketing forgot about the LOTR trend or just thought it wa not logical to keep AUJ colours the same... then changed their mind come DOS. Well at least we know the BOFA EE will be purple :)
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TheHutt
Gondor
Oct 23 2014, 7:45am
Post #4 of 29
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...a discussian with Doug Adams about this topic. The reason for the FOTR mixup was that there were basically different companies responsible for the films and for the soundtrack. So when the limited FOTR soundtrack was released (red), no color-coding for the films was in existence yet (it was introduced with the theatrical DVDs). Then, the soundtrack producers just decided to use the same color coding as the films' one, but rotated.
As for the Hobbit - I don't suppose they actually have a clue. :)
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Booklet - Custom Booklet Project
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dormouse
Half-elven
Oct 23 2014, 7:57am
Post #5 of 29
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Surely the primary colours are red, blue and yellow - the definition of a primary colour being the fact that you can't produce it by combining other colours. If you have no yellow in your paintbox you'll have no yellow in your painting - you can't make it. Red and green combine to make brown - and green, being a combination of blue and yellow, is not and cannot be a primary colour.
I'm very familiar with this concept - I learnt it as a child crayoning rainbows, and years of working with paint tell me it's true. So your diagram and your whole argument leave me wondering if I'm still on the same planet....
It is fascinating but I don't have any theories about why they've made the choices they have. Except for the EE of Desolation of Smaug. The original soundtrack recording was purple wasn't it, following the brown of AUJ? I reckon they changed to green - I'd call it emerald green, personally, spring green to me has much more yellow in it - anyway, to whatever green when they decided to use the Arkenstone symbol on the packaging. The most suitable colour background for that was the green of Erebor, which they used.
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adt100
Rohan
Oct 23 2014, 8:13am
Post #6 of 29
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The original poster is referring to the light spectrum, not the ink/paint spectrum.
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The two are quite different. When all the colours of light combine they produce white light (as shown in the centre of the colour wheel above).
Technically AUJ should be yellow, though of course that might not look so great and you could consider the orange/brown as just a very dark yellow. ;)
(This post was edited by adt100 on Oct 23 2014, 8:23am)
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adt100
Rohan
Oct 23 2014, 8:24am
Post #7 of 29
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Interesting... but didn't the LOTR soundtrack EE's come out about 10 months later, unlike The Hobbit soundtracks?
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dormouse
Half-elven
Oct 23 2014, 8:27am
Post #8 of 29
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Then the original poster should have made that clear....
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..because any painter reading 'red and green make yellow' would have thought. 'what????', as I did!
So would anyone who's ever looked at a rainbow.....
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QuackingTroll
Valinor
Oct 23 2014, 9:59am
Post #9 of 29
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I was expecting it to be yellow...
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Because yellow is a secondary colour. But they've apparently gone for the tertiary colours, so AUJ is orange, Does is spring-green and BFA is violet.
If they were to make another film it will likely be yellow next.
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QuackingTroll
Valinor
Oct 23 2014, 10:07am
Post #10 of 29
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I thought I was being clear, but yes, light has a different colour wheel to paint. Lights primary colours are red, green and blue and they mix as shown above.
I don't think yellow would make a very attractive case.
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QuackingTroll
Valinor
Oct 23 2014, 10:20am
Post #11 of 29
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I think FotR was supposed to be green...
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But they made the soundtrack red through some mistake. So when TTT came out red they intentionally made the soundtrack blue so that none of the colours were right instead of just one being wrong.
Interestingly (and kind of annoyingly) they haven't done that with The Hobbit soundtracks. But I think my colour wheel shows some justification for that, because it's resulted in each film being next to their LotR counterpart - AUJ next to FotR, DoS next to TTT...
(This post was edited by QuackingTroll on Oct 23 2014, 10:21am)
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TheHutt
Gondor
Oct 23 2014, 10:23am
Post #12 of 29
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The Complete Recordings came much later...
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...but the Limited Edition soundtracks were there prior to the films' theatrical release:
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Booklet - Custom Booklet Project
(This post was edited by TheHutt on Oct 23 2014, 10:23am)
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adt100
Rohan
Oct 23 2014, 10:27am
Post #13 of 29
(372 views)
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No you were correct in your first post :)
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They've gone for primary and secondary colours. As I say, I wouldn't really call AUJ yellow or orange, but more brown, (which could be translated as a very dark orange/yellow I guess, as yellow is the one colour that wouldn't really work).
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adt100
Rohan
Oct 23 2014, 10:32am
Post #14 of 29
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Is that in the USA or UK? I'm in the UK and all I (vaguely) remember is that the standard theatrical sound track with the similar 'poster' artwork came out around the time of the movie release in cinemas. The EE/Complete recordings then came out the following year around the time of the EE DVD's didn't they?
That particular pic of the FOTR case isn't familiar to me.
My point being that with The Hobbit, both the 'standard' and 'extended' soundtracks seem to be released at the same time do they not, as I have the orange/brown auj CD and the purple dos CD.
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TheHutt
Gondor
Oct 23 2014, 11:15am
Post #15 of 29
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...the Limited Edition of the Soundtrack. The Limited Editions were released simultaneously with the regular ones. Plus, on TTT and ROTK there were special "Internet Limited Editions" which were colored differently.
They mostly did not have extra content compared to the regular editions; except for The Two Towers LE (which had 1 extra track; however, 2 of other tracks were abridged compared to regular edition); Return of the King LE had a bonus DVD with some goodies.
Here are the pictures of them:
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
Return of the King
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Booklet - Custom Booklet Project
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Earl
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Oct 23 2014, 11:59am
Post #16 of 29
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You could be my new best friend :D
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This is amazing. I need to re-read all this so my geek meter can spike again. Plus, I will find some old notes on the colours chosen for the LOTR soundtracks and post them here.
The Hobbit Soundtracks - Being an online archive of information concerning Howard Shore's score for The Hobbit films.
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werewormses
The Shire
Oct 23 2014, 12:26pm
Post #17 of 29
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Where can I buy these?
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Eleniel
Tol Eressea
Oct 23 2014, 1:01pm
Post #18 of 29
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and I managed to buy theses LEs at the time quite easily through Amazon...just like the Hobbit ones currently.
"Choosing Trust over Doubt gets me burned once in a while, but I'd rather be singed than hardened."
¯ Victoria Monfort
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TheHutt
Gondor
Oct 23 2014, 1:05pm
Post #19 of 29
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Ebay, or Amazon Marketplace.
As far as I see it, getting TTT or ROTK LE is not that much a problem. FOTR LE looks a bit harder to come by.
Edit: as I just found, there are some Marketplace offers at German Amazon. The product image is misleading, as the customer images signify the right packaging.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Booklet - Custom Booklet Project
(This post was edited by TheHutt on Oct 23 2014, 1:09pm)
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TheHutt
Gondor
Oct 23 2014, 2:02pm
Post #22 of 29
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"The Hobbit" US DVD seems to fit in with the Limited Edition DVDs of LOTR.
"The Hobbit" UK DVD seems rather to fit in with the US LOTR SEE editions of LOTR.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Booklet - Custom Booklet Project
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TheHutt
Gondor
Oct 23 2014, 2:13pm
Post #23 of 29
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However, I miss the info that both the TTT LE soundtracks in fact had two tracks which were shortened compared to the Standard edition (probably to make room for the bonus track), these being:
05. The Uruk-Hai - cut from 0:17 to 0:27
07. The Black Gate Is Closed - cut from 1:50 to 2:06
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Booklet - Custom Booklet Project
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micha84
Rivendell
Oct 23 2014, 2:36pm
Post #24 of 29
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Let me nitpick a bit... ;) Am I wrong or does magenta not even exist in the natural spectrum? It goes from red to violet, beyond are infrared and ultraviolet.
So the way I see it, your colour wheel mixes light and paint. violet and red mixed in paint create magenta, but magenta is not part of the natural spectrum of light.
So I think you can only base a color wheel on paint colors (which actually create a circle), because natural light is a continuum that only gets joined to a circle if you "cheat". ;)
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QuackingTroll
Valinor
Oct 23 2014, 3:06pm
Post #25 of 29
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Technically it is not a naturally occurring colour, you're right...
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But then how is your monitor producing the magenta light for the diagram?
I'm trying to keep the theory as simple as possible but if you "mix" a blue light and a red light then the result is perceived as magenta. I know it's odd, considering it's not part of the natural spectrum, but it's nothing to do with paint, that's just how our brains work.
I say "mix" in quotation marks because you can't mix photons, so light doesn't technically mix. But if you shine a blue light onto a red light then the photons jumble and our brains see it as magenta. Shine a blue light onto "magenta" and you get violet. It's not cheating.
What your monitor is doing is simply lighting Red and Blue pixels evenly with no green so that they mix and you see the colour - But yes, it's an illusion.
(This post was edited by QuackingTroll on Oct 23 2014, 3:10pm)
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