color-design · diff
git:20260925.789ed88 to git:20261016.dc9bf13
21 added, 0 removed. Audit A to A.
---
name: color-design
description: Design the film’s narrative color development before final grading. Use for Color Script authoring and review; no media generation.
---
# Color Design
## Role and authority
Design the film’s narrative color development before final grading.
Own: Sequence/scene palettes, character/environment color relations and emotional progression.
Read [professional department architecture](../../docs/professional-departments.md) for the registry, Bible envelope, source/approval rules and Host handoff. Author only this department’s records; references never transfer ownership. Mark each record MIGRATED_FROM_R1 or NEW_PROFESSIONAL_ELABORATION when migrating a locked baseline.
## Inputs and dependencies
Director Vision; Character/Environment Art; Costume; Lighting.
## Professional decisions
Track hue, value, saturation and warm/cool relationships over dramatic phases. Explain why a palette changes with audience experience, not merely with a location name. Preserve character separation and material identity under scene lighting. Declare constraints and permitted local changes, including when restraint and no palette shift are the right decision.
+ Begin with the work's central contradiction and the audience's changing relation
+ to its people. Form a film-wide color proposition, then test it against concrete
+ scenes and a counterexample. A cold dominant world may contain ordinary warmth;
+ grief need not make daylight dark, and dawn need not signify forgiveness. Follow
+ the particular work rather than prescribing a genre palette or moral color code.
+
+ Develop the arc through motivated warm/cool relations, saturation, tonal
+ separation and the visible reach of light. Distinguish a material's stable color
+ from how it appears under changing light. A transition can let a previously
+ closed space become perceptible without turning it golden or repainting faces.
+ Retain local contradictions when they carry dramatic meaning.
+
+ Consider time of day as an expressive choice with Lighting and Director. Read
+ the scene's actual chronology, work, travel, public activity and spoken cues
+ before proposing dusk, night or dawn. Color cannot silently turn approved day
+ into night. Put any necessary time revision through the existing Scene owner;
+ carry its consequences into World, Lighting, Sound and adjacent scenes. Keep
+ source-compatible palette decisions distinct from proposed time changes. Store
+ the film's choices in its Color Script and current professional originals, not
+ in this Skill or an appended generation prompt.
+
## Outputs
Produce a versioned `Color Script` with current source pins, department dependencies, scope, ownership, status and continuity references. Keep known decisions separate from unresolved requirements.
## Forbidden authority
Do not change upstream historical evidence, approved story/relationships/dialogue or another department’s records. Do not encode provider/model/workflow controls in creative content, manufacture user approval, or call media generation.
## Quality gates
The arc is perceptible without an arbitrary filter per scene; color serves hierarchy; no unexplained costume or environment recoloring.
## Failure and escalation
Request source palette revisions from the relevant art owner; technical final-image balancing belongs to color-grading. Do not author a LUT or provider-specific rendering recipe.
## Source reads
Use supplied current originals first. For missing scoped context, read `work.get_work`, `scene.get_scene`, `script.get_script`, `episode.get_episode`, `shot.get_shot`, `asset.get_asset`, `context.build_context`. These reads do not authorize source writes or production.
## Still live-action professional knowledge
For STILL/LIVE_ACTION, author source-bound scene/sequence palette and character/environment relations under the existing keys. Separate actual hue/value/saturation obligations from mood labels. Required targets map to critical preservation; only explicitly optional decoration may be secondary. Preserve approved complexion and costume/material identity under light. Story era never determines capture era. No preset filter, provider parameters or unapproved whitening.
Read [mapping and evidence profile](../../docs/still-professional-mapping.md) when preparing these still records. Knowledge remains LOCAL_EXPERIMENTAL until scoped A5 media evidence.