Color Enhances Storytelling
in Live-Action Mulan

The makers of Disney’s live-action Mulan devoted an enormous amount of time and creativity to planning and executing the way color would be used to enhance the storytelling and evoke each scene’s emotional content. The feast of color that audiences experienced watching Mulan was the result of preparation from director Niki Caro, cinematographer Mandy Walker (ASC, ACS), production designer Grant Major and colorist Natasha Leonnet of post house Company 3.

“The film was a colorist’s dream,” says Leonnet, who worked on Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve 16 in her grading theater in Hollywood. She collaborated remotely with Caro and Walker, neither of whom were able to be physically present. "They were always after something that was beautiful, but not over the top," she notes. "There is a very strong color ‘arc,’ which helped make it a particularly inspiring film for me to work on.”

Planning for Mulan‘s look commenced in 2017, when New Zealand-based Caro began prepping the film, which stars Yifei Liu, Jet Li and Jason Scott Lee. “We went through the script and talked about the emotional journey of the character,” she recalls. “That’s where I always take my cues. Then when we start talking about each scene, we discuss giving it a sense of place.”

Caro spent a great deal of time researching the use of color in Chinese art and movies as conceptualizations about locations, production design, costume design and lighting started taking shape. “It was so clear that red was Mulan’s color,” she says. “In any culture, red suggests passion, love and strength. Even while some of the epic battle sequences are monochromatic, we knew it was important for the defiant Mulan to stand out in the scene in her red costume.”

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