History Main / UnnaturallyBlueLighting

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[Music/Eiffel65 Yo, listen up. Here's the story about a little guy who lives in a blue world.]]'']]

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* During the 2022 World Cup, [[https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/z1nk0v/poland_vs_mexico/ a meme about the Poland vs. Mexico game]] parodied the bluish filter used in media set in Eastern Europe, and the WarmPlaceWarmLighting filter used in media set in Mexico, with each team's half of the field having different palettes.

[[blue:Blue]] is the most common favorite color in the world. As a result of being the natural color of the sky, it's universally known to calm and ease. But like any color, if it overwhelms a scene, it can instill negative feelings, in this case a cold and harsh mood. A subtrope of MoodLighting and ColorWash, common in ScienceFiction and [[PoliceProcedural Forensics]] shows, shots are suffused with vaguely blue lighting. This is usually complemented by stark, overly bright desk lamps. Occasionally this infects outdoor scenes, making sunny days look more overcast; this should not be confused with the dark blue camera filter used in shooting "[[HollywoodNight day for night]]".

!!Examples

* For whatever reason, it's being used in recent Viagra commercials like [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIbzSlBjmGs this one]] (maybe because the pill itself is blue?). The effect is weird because that particular commercial takes place ''in the desert.''
** Amusingly enough, one of the side effects of Viagra is cyanopsia, where you see everything in a more blue tint.

* ''{{Film/Flatliners}}'' - Scenery throughout the film is this way to an unnerving effect.

* ''Murphy's Law'': Murphy has to infiltrate various criminal organizations, often ending up in harsh situations -- emotionally and physically. These get the blue filter treatment. In "Go Ask Alice" the lighting visibly changes: from normal to starker and starker blue as Murphy discovers a whole family has been shot. There is a quick slide back into warm tones as he drives away for the next scene -- which is a quiet, rural, conversational scene. The color isn't always explicable in-scene, but has assumed a life of its own, like visible background music.

* Unnaturally bluish-purple colors were an all but EnforcedTrope for UsefulNotes/IBMPersonalComputer games with CGA graphics, since the commonly-used Palette 1's only colors besides white and black were cyan and magenta. (Palette 0 was less commonly used since its four colors did not include white. CGA could be made to display 16 simultaneous colors by adapting one of its graphics modes for composite video output, which some monitors didn't support, or by hacking a semi-graphic character-based mode to increase the number of character rows, but relatively few games did either.)

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': The front gate of Lestat's townhouse is pastel green, but in the [[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8o9dab?playlist=/x7zezf "Louis at the Front Gate"]] and [[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8o4f7r?playlist=/x7zezf "Season 1 Character Quotes"]] promos, the blue lighting makes the gate appear blue.

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': The front gate of Lestat's townhouse is pastel green, but in the [[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8o9dab "Louis at the Front Gate"]] and [[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8o4f7r "Season 1 Character Quotes"]] promos, the blue lighting makes the gate appear blue.

** For a more technical explanation, the blue tint of "white" [=LEDs=] is due to the fact that the actual semiconductor material which produces the light emits a fairly narrow band of blue light. The rest of the spectrum is filled out by a yellow phosphor, which absorbs some of the blue light and radiates in other parts of the visible spectrum, but enough of the strong blue peak remains, biasing the color of the resulting light towards blue.
** This is largely addressed by manufacturers paying attention to the Color Rendering Index, or CRI, which, in simplest terms, is a rating from 1 to 100 describing how natural colors appear under a light source. A standard incandescent lightbulb, for example, has a CRI rating of 100, while a typical "white" LED is usually in the 70 range. However, there are high CRI [=LEDs=] which have a CRI of 90+ and appear very pleasing to the human eye, but given that they are more difficult, and therefore more costly, to manufacturer tend to be regarded as something of a specialty product.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation Cherenkov Radiation]] is a bright blue.

* ''Film/Flatliners'' - Scenery throughout the film is this way to an unnerving effect.

* ''Film/InTheMouthOfMadness'': In one dream sequence, Cane tells the hero his favorite color is blue. Much to his horror, he awakes to a DreamWithInADream where all light has a very heavy blue tint.

* Parodied in ''Film/{{Thirty Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo}}'' when the daughter (based on [[Literature/MillenniumSeries Lisbeth Salander]]) brings home a date based on Selene, which prompts the film to suddenly become very blue.

* Parodied in ''Film/{{30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo}}'' when the daughter (based on [[Literature/MillenniumSeries Lisbeth Salander]]) brings home a date based on Selene, which prompts the film to suddenly become very blue.

* Parodied in ''30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'' when the daughter (based on [[Literature/MillenniumSeries Lisbeth Salander]]) brings home a date based on Selene, which prompts the film to suddenly become very blue.

* The first ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' had this, possibly to emphasize the characters' pale skin or the cloudiness of Forks. The sequels had more of a golden, warm tone to them.