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Movie colour palettes

Citizen Kane poster

Citizen Kane (1941) colour palette

Directed by Orson Welles · Shot by Gregg Toland

Citizen Kane (1941), shot by Gregg Toland, is monochrome: across 65 sampled frames the palette carries effectively no colour, so its look is built from mid-key tonal range rather than hue. The single most common colour is near black (#030303), covering 19.7% of sampled colour. Overall the image sits mid-key.

Colour

Monochrome

below 0.05 mean saturation

Saturation

monochrome

0.001 — more saturated than 3% of ranked films

Luminance

mid-key

0.422 — brighter than 56% of ranked films

Measured across 65 frames. See the frames on the Citizen Kane page →

Films that grade like this

Nearest by warmth, saturation and luminance across 1,568 ranked films — measured, not matched on genre.

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These measurements are published under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to FrameThrower. That covers the measurements only — the frames they were derived from are not ours to license, and rights remain with their owners.