54 shades of red for a HERO - a photo on Flickriver

            a tribute to Emi Wada

HERO is the most expensive Chinese movie to date. Zhang Yimou has created a stunning epic. 
The huge scale, use of color, and beautiful cinematography make this as much a piece of visual art as of storytelling. The martial arts scenes, reminiscent of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, are awe-inspiring. 
The story engages mind and emotion and draws us into the mystery of where the truth lies. 
Hero is one of those near perfect blends of visual and story that film makes possible.

The exacting standards that were set for the story and the action sequences are no less stringent when it comes to the look of HERO. Three versions of the story, told from different perspectives each has its own color scheme – red, white and blue. 
“The aesthetics of this film are inextricably bound up with the plot”, says director Zhang Yimou “The idea of using colors to tell the story came about quite early in the process of conceptualizing the film. 
The look of the set, the costumes and so on was developed in concert with the script itself. I had an image in my head for a long time and then worked through the details of how to realize it through talking with the other people working on the film”.
Such obsessiveness is matched by Academy Award-winning costume designer, Emi Wada who cites director Zhang Yimou as one of her heroes. 
For the costumes in HERO, Wada tried no less than thirty colors, hand dying each individual sample. However, after her colors were approved, Wada ran into an unforeseen problem. She elaborates: “We couldn’t make some colors with the dye and water in Beijing,” she sighed “Therefore we brought the dye from England and Japan and used mineral water to dye some of the fabric…we ended up with some thousand meters of cloth.” 
So meticulous was Wada’s control of the design that the red costumes were created using fifty-four shades of color. Using different textures to characterize the individuals in the story. 
Wada sought inspiration from ancient costumes in China, Korea and Japan. The silhouette of the costume is an ancient style. “But as this is an action movie, Wada explains “It also has to be as light as ballet costumes.”                    
   

Taken on: June 19, 2010

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Sets appears in: • Best of hooks & needles / director´s cut • 54 shades of red for a HERO & a tribute to Emi Wada

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Camera: NIKON E3200, f/3.0, 1/25 sec, 6mm, ISO 50 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	NIKON E3200
Aperture:	f/3.0
Exposure Time:	0.04 sec (1/25)
Focal Length:	6mm
ISO:	50
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Light Source:	Unknown (Unknown)
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	GIMP 2.8.14
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