Tarantino's Color: Kill Bill, the Yellow Suit and the Black-and-White Fight

The suit is yellow. The blood goes gray.

Kill Bill's yellow suit quotes 1972 and its gray fight was a ratings call. How Tarantino and Robert Richardson use color.

By The XPRMTS Journal October 29, 2026

A woman in a yellow tracksuit with black stripes walks into a Tokyo nightclub of silkscreen walls, ramps and a bandstand, and before the fight inside is over the color drains out of the picture, comes back as a field of blue with black figures cut against it, and finishes outdoors on snow.

The House of Blue Leaves, the long showdown at the center of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), is the place to start with Tarantino's color. His palettes are quotations, lifted from films he loves, and the switches between them work like punctuation, so a cut to black and white lands right where a full stop would. The yellow suit is Bruce Lee's, the gray was the price of an R rating, and the blue is light on a stage.

Where Tarantino's color starts: "really, really red"

Tarantino's color goes back to a sentence about red. In 1992 American Cinematographer asked how Reservoir Dogs got its look, and he told them how Andrzej Sekula won the job, by proposing to shoot the whole film on Kodak's 50 ASA 5245, a slow stock usually kept for daylight exteriors, on a production that, in Tarantino's words, "doesn't have much money." When the two of them talked about the look, Tarantino said, "I always talked in terms of colors: 'I want the reds to be really, really red' and 'I want the blacks to be black as hell.'"

Slow film needs a lot of light, so picking it is a real commitment. Sekula called it "a hard-light show," directional the whole way through, and the way he put it was, "We built up from the black."

Pulp Fiction (1994) kept Sekula and kept the slow stock. Walking Manohla Dargis of Sight and Sound through the film's images in November 1994, Tarantino called 50 ASA "the slowest stock they make" and said it "creates an almost no-grain image, it's lustrous. It's the closest thing we have to 50s Technicolor."

Jackie Brown (1997) turned the dial down on purpose. Guillermo Navarro shot it, and Tarantino told AC he wanted "richness and depth, but I wanted it to look more 'real.'" Even so, there's one booth in it that's pure color. For a conversation in the Cockatoo Inn, Navarro had some of the room's fixtures wrapped in Lee 106 Primary Red, with a little cyan laid over it when the red got too oppressive on Pam Grier's face. Navarro said the red went so deep that "the frontier of black skin and white skin [between the respective actors] is completely abolished."

The Cockatoo Inn booth: Lee 106 Primary Red on the fixtures, Rosco Cal Color cyan stacked on top "as needed." Gaffer David Lee to American Cinematographer (Jan. 1998): the cyan let them control "the redness of the gel in known amounts."

The Kill Bill color palette is a bibliography

Kill Bill starts quoting before the first scene even begins, with the Shaw Brothers' Shawscope logo. In a 2009 essay on the Hong Kong studio, the film historian David Bordwell describes what Shaw's martial-arts films did with color, how they "put the colors into motion, flashing costumes past us in bold patterns," and how the blood "can fill the Shawscope screen."

Then there's the suit. American Cinematographer called the Bride's yellow tracksuit "a clever nod" to the one Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death. Lee shot that footage in 1972 and died before the film was finished; it was completed with doubles and released in 1978. Both suits are yellow with black stripes, and up against the black suits of the Crazy 88 she reads from across the room.

The rest of the palette is borrowed too. The blood is what AC called "raspberry-red," and the crew made it practically, the way 1970s Hong Kong productions did, without computer effects. O-Ren Ishii's childhood is told as anime by Production I.G, the studio behind Ghost in the Shell. In The Guardian in 2004, Steve Rose called Lady Snowblood (1973) "practically a template for the whole of Kill Bill Vol 1," and pointed out that it used stills and illustration for scenes too expensive to film, the same way Kill Bill uses animation. Its heroine is named for the snow that was falling when she was born, and Kill Bill's last duel is fought in a garden of snow.

Tarantino even quoted the damage. For the training scenes with the monk Pai Mei in Vol. 2, the cinematographer Robert Richardson said "Quentin wanted to replicate the visual generation loss in these old kung-fu films," meaning "the scratches, the higher-than-normal contrast." He shot contrasty Kodachrome reversal, struck an internegative from it, then an interpositive, and just kept going: "We just kept making dupes and prints back and forth until Quentin was happy with the look."

Where the Kill Bill palette comes from: the tracksuit (AC, 2003), the Shawscope logo and Shaw color (David Bordwell, 2009), Lady Snowblood (Steve Rose, The Guardian, 2004), the gray (The New York Times, 2003), the anime (Production I.G), and the duped Kodachrome look (AC, 2003).

The Kill Bill black and white scene: why the House of Blue Leaves goes gray

Richardson described the lighting of the sequence as an arc. "The lighting starts soft and moves progressively toward higher contrast levels," he told AC. "The backgrounds drop off and the center arena becomes more prevalent." Then, deep into the fight with the Crazy 88, the Bride pulls a man's eye out, and in the US theatrical cut the picture drops to black and white on that beat.

The reason was the rating. In October 2003 Tarantino told The New York Times that he used several techniques to make sure the film was rated R and not NC-17, "including tempering the bloody red with grainy black-and-white film and sequences hand-drawn in cartoonish Japanese anime," so the anime was doing part of the same job as the gray. The color never left the negative, though. In Japan the fight played in color, and when Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, both volumes joined into one cut, opened in US theaters on December 5, 2025, the sequence ran in full color.

Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes: a red curtain above, blood from the neck of Holofernes, Judith in white and gold. — Black and white, and only the red, applied live to Caravaggio's *Judith Beheading Holofernes* (about 1599; Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome; public domain). Drag the line. In gray, the blood is one more dark shape.

The gray was made after the shoot, from color negative, which is why the color could be put back twenty-two years later.

A second account is often given in the press: that in the 1970s and 1980s American television would switch kung-fu films to black and white to tone down the gore, and that the Crazy 88 gray is a nod to those broadcasts, as Far Out put it in 2021. Tarantino's own reason on the record in 2003 was the rating.

The gray had a practical upside too. Gaffer Ian Kincaid rigged more than 300 practical fixtures on the 140-by-80-foot set and ran 400 dimming channels from a small board he held while hiding behind the camera.

300+practical fixtures on the set

400dimming channels, on a handheld board

140 × 80feet, the House of Blue Leaves stage

22years before the color fight got a US release

The catch, Richardson said, is that every dimming cue shifts color temperature, since a tungsten lamp turns warmer as it dims. "It's virtually impossible to get around," he said, but "it's actually a far easier task in black-and-white."

One tungsten dimming cue, in color and in black and white. AC (2003): Richardson points out that every dimming cue means "a corresponding shift in color temperature"; in black-and-white, he says, it is "a far easier task."

Then comes the blue, and Richardson described the cue himself: "The foreground on one stage fades, the colors go through a lighting change, and we reveal a much larger stage where the battle continues in silhouette." The fighters turn into black shapes on a blue ground, and a silhouette shows no blood. This one was built in camera, with light, right there on the stage.

The House of Blue Leaves, beat by beat, in the US cut and in color. Richardson described the lighting arc and the blue silhouette cue to American Cinematographer (2003); Tarantino told The New York Times (2003) that the black and white was one of the ways he kept the R. The fight plays in color in Japan and in Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.

Robert Richardson's lighting: the hot top light and the halo

When the American Society of Cinematographers gave Richardson its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, its profile named the look most people connect with him, "a high top- and backlight, which might blow out the rim, bounce off tabletops, or accent the space," and noted that he's dialed it back in recent years.

Picture it from the side. A hard source sits high and a little behind the actor, and the hair and shoulders clip to white: the halo. The same light lands on a pale tabletop in front of the actor and bounces back up into the face, a fill from below that nobody had to rig, and the background sits on a dimmer. On Kill Bill, Richardson told AC, he used the halo only "here and there" and bristled at being typecast by it, but he maintained that the lighting "is brutal when it needs to be."

The top light of the ASC's 2019 profile, built one piece at a time. On Casino Richardson put the table lighting and background zones on a dimming board; on Kill Bill his gaffer ran 400 dimming channels.

The method grew up in rooms full of tables. For Casino (1995), shot inside the Riviera in Las Vegas, Richardson said, "We enhanced the lighting over the tables by adding 50 percent more bulbs." His crew wired more than 100 Par cans to a dimming board, "allowing me to raise or lower the value of a background or foreground zone, thereby drawing or repelling the camera's eye." On the Kill Bill stage it's the same idea, top light plus zones on dimmers, running the House of Blue Leaves.

The arrangement is a lot older than the movies. A hard source high to one side with a pale table catching it is how Caravaggio lit a supper in 1601.

Caravaggio, The Supper at Emmaus: Christ and three men at a table with a white cloth, lit hard from the upper left. — Caravaggio, *The Supper at Emmaus*, 1601. Oil on canvas, 141 × 196.2 cm. The National Gallery, London. Public domain. The hard high light and the pale table, four centuries before Richardson.

The Hateful Eight: Tarantino cinematography at 2.76:1

On The Hateful Eight (2015) the thing being quoted is the format itself. Tarantino called Ultra Panavision 70 "the widest format there is, outside of three-screen Cinerama." Its last film had been Khartoum in 1966; Richardson found the original lenses on a shelf at Panavision, and The Hateful Eight became the eleventh film in the format.

The format is 2.76:1, nearly half again as wide as the 1.85:1 of Jackie Brown at the same screen height, and Tarantino spent most of that width indoors, in one cabin, so other characters are standing in the background of every close-up and nobody ever gets a frame to themselves. The stage in Los Angeles was chilled to 30°F so breath would show.

Four ratios at one height, the way a roadshow screen widens. Every figure is from American Cinematographer's coverage of its film; Ultra Panavision 70 from December 2015.

The release was a quotation too: a roadshow in 70mm prints, with a printed program, an overture and an intermission, timed photochemically roll by roll.

Why Tarantino shoots film, and what it does to color

At Cannes in May 2014 Tarantino told reporters, "As far as I'm concerned, digital projection and DCPs is the death of cinema as I know it."

He has not always won that argument on his own films. On Kill Bill, Richardson pushed for finishing through a digital intermediate. "Quentin doesn't like that word," he told AC, but he "saw the DI as the best way of maintaining control over the imagery, which is why Quentin finally decided to go with it."

By Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), film had become the referee. Dailies were printed and projected, and the DI colorist Yvan Lucas said the film's saturation "comes partly from the print stock, 2383," a Kodak Vision print film in which "the primary colors are really separated and very pronounced," and he passed on what Tarantino told him: "When I see those colors, that's when I know it's film."

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, from negative to the print at Cannes, as Yvan Lucas laid it out for American Cinematographer (Aug. 2019). At Cannes it was the only film in the Official Competition projected in 35mm.

Back in the House of Blue Leaves, To Become Worth Destroying holds the Bride's odds in one frame. A lone figure with a long blade stands on a slope of red and yellow fire, darker than anything around it, while a skull with burning eyes fills the blue sky above. It is the blue-silhouette cue turned inside out: the fighter is the dark shape, and the world around keeps every bit of its color.

Frequently asked questions

Why is part of Kill Bill in black and white?

Two different things. The film opens on a black-and-white close-up of the Bride's beaten face, and AC lists a true black-and-white negative, Double-X 5222, among the stocks. The Crazy 88 fight is the other case: shot in color and turned gray after the eye pull for the US release, which Tarantino told The New York Times was one way he kept an R instead of an NC-17. It plays in color in Japan and in The Whole Bloody Affair.

What is the yellow suit in Kill Bill a reference to?

Bruce Lee's yellow jumpsuit with black stripes in Game of Death (1978), which Lee shot in 1972 and did not live to finish.

What camera and film stock was Kill Bill shot on?

Kodak 35mm film, shot by Robert Richardson in 3-perf Super 35 on Panavision cameras, with color negative for most of the film and Double-X black-and-white negative for some sequences, then finished through a digital intermediate. Effects stayed in camera where possible: the hatchet that flies past Uma Thurman's face was a camera on a track with the hatchet rigged in front of the lens.

What aspect ratio is The Hateful Eight?

2.76:1, from Ultra Panavision 70: a 1.25 anamorphic squeeze on a 2.20:1 image area of 65mm negative. At the same height it is 15 percent wider than 2.39:1 scope. The roadshow prints were 70mm, timed photochemically.

References

John Pavlus, "Kill Bill Vol. I: A Bride Vows Revenge," American Cinematographer, Oct. 2003: theasc.com
Stephen Pizzello, "From Rags to Reservoir Dogs," American Cinematographer, Nov. 1992: theasc.com
Andrew O. Thompson, "Fly Girl: Jackie Brown," American Cinematographer, Jan. 1998: theasc.com
Stephen Pizzello, "Ace in the Hole: Casino," American Cinematographer, Nov. 1995: theasc.com
Michael Goldman, "Wide Wide West: The Hateful Eight," American Cinematographer, Dec. 2015: theasc.com
Benjamin B, "Back in Time: Making Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood," American Cinematographer, Aug. 2019: theasc.com
Patricia Thomson, "Without Limits: Robert Richardson, ASC," ASC, Feb. 2019: theasc.com
David Bordwell, "Another Shaw Production: Anamorphic Adventures in Hong Kong," 2009: davidbordwell.net
Steve Rose, "Found: where Tarantino gets his ideas," The Guardian, Apr. 6, 2004: theguardian.com
Laura M. Holson, "Studios Are Killing (Bloodily but Carefully) for an R Rating," The New York Times, Oct. 21, 2003: nytimes.com
Jake Coyle (AP), "Director calls digital film 'death of cinema'," May 23, 2014: shootonline.com
Jake Kring-Schreifels, "How a Martial Arts Legend Brought Tarantino's Bloodiest Fight Scene to Life," Inverse, 2023: inverse.com
Umberto Gonzalez, "Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair' to Finally Be Released in Theaters," TheWrap, Oct. 1, 2025: thewrap.com
Chris Hodges, "Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair Changes Explained," Looper: looper.com
Jack Whatley, "Why Quentin Tarantino changed Kill Bill's Crazy 88 scene to black and white," Far Out, July 19, 2021: faroutmagazine.co.uk
Manohla Dargis, "Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction," Sight and Sound, Nov. 1994: archive.org