Joshua Kohler Posted January 27 Posted January 27 Hello, First time writing on this forum so I hope I'll be clear with my question, I'm as well a young cinematographer trying to learn and connect more. I have an upcoming shoot for a short-film next month and for a first time I would like to shoot with a viewlut and get as close as possible to the look directly on set. The movie is about skinheads in the 90s and we're trying to recreate a raw look ("Pusher" would be one of our main references); as for the colour palette I realised that it is quite close to Fight Club, especially the cyan/green, which I would like to recreate. We'll be shooting on Arri Mini with Cooke S4 lenses so for sure it won't look exactly the same as celluloid, which leads to my question: is there a LUT that I could upload directly in the camera that would get me closer to it? I'm also a bit lost with what kind of LUTs should I use, or how or where in the pipeline it should be affecting/transforming the image; is after the conversion to 709 or before and how does it change depending on the LUT. This question might makes less sense without taking in consideration set design, lighting, costumes but it is really only a "plus" that I would like to try for a first time. I hope I was clear enough and I'm looking forward for any advices, experiences, explanations. Thank you! 🙂
Albion Hockney Posted January 27 Posted January 27 on a bigger project you have a DIT with live grade capabilities —so your feed is going from the camera into their setup and back to your monitors all live. This allows you to work with a couple luts and play with things as you go. Without Live Grade you can load in a Lut to the camera and you treat it just like using the arri viewing lut. Remember the picture you see on the camera normally is also a Lut the camera is shooting LOG, but the arri rec709 transform is just being applied internally to your monitors. no matter what its all pretty simple at its core. The camera shoots arri log and you are just applying versions of a rec 709 transform. in the color grade many colorists use the DP's lut or their own luts as a starting point for a grade instead of just grading straight off the log. you can work with colorist to make a lut and then load it into the camera ahead of shooting. I think there are also Lut's for sale or to download —but i'm not familiar with that. this stuff rarely changes what you actually do on set, I think in some circumstances especially with over/under exposure effects it can be helpful
Joshua Kohler Posted February 2 Author Posted February 2 Thank you for the answer! Yes I'm having a DIT on set so this will be pretty helpful. I'll also be shooting a few tests in the following days and I'll try to create the look I'm looking for directly from this upcoming footage and export it as a LUT; or at least it'll help me understand better what I'm looking for a final result. My main concern I guess is to keep the same colours throughout the whole shoot as we're constantly changing locations, which now thinking I think using a LUT might be more disadvantageous cause it might work for one scene and not for another one. Let's see, thank you for the answer! 🙂
Premium Member David Mullen ASC Posted February 2 Premium Member Posted February 2 You need a basic viewing LUT to convert Log-C to Rec.709. That can be tweaked to your tastes in terms of saturation and contrast. If you have a DIT, it is easy for them to make adjustments on the day using ASC-CDL values that can be sent to the colorist doing dailies using the LUT. Otherwise, I wouldn't chase down too many subtle variations in terms of daily locations -- if you shot film, you'd mostly have to fix that later anyway in the color-correction. IF your DIT couldn't make adjustments using ASC-CDL, then: With the Alexa, you could add +/- corrections in tint (Green/Magenta) and move the color temp setting a few degrees to match shots better if you want to. To match contrast/blacks, you may want to build two or three LUTs then, one normal, one lower in contrast, and one higher in contrast. That might help if you are filming in a smokey room or very flat weather and want to add some contrast, or the opposite, in very harsh sunlight conditions and you want to reduce the contrast. 1
Joshua Kohler Posted February 3 Author Posted February 3 Thank you for your answer! I think to have a few LUTs for contrast for different situations sounds like the best fit for me. I will talk to my DIT tomorrow and talk with him about the workflow. Thank you for your answer I appreciate a lot Best regards Josh
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