transformers color

[dolph]

How are the saturated blue shadows and warm lights being achieved. Color timing? Filters?

[Scott Fritzshall]

Lighting.

[dolph]

How about the day time shots?

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

How about the day time shots?

 

More lighting, plus a DI

[Andrew Brinkhaus]

"Plus a DI" is the important part of the sentence. That is what pumps up the color, and makes them as saturated and vivid as they appear.

[David Mullen ASC]

"Plus a DI" is the important part of the sentence. That is what pumps up the color, and makes them as saturated and vivid as they appear.

 

A little, but remember that "Armageddon" didn't go through a D.I. and has a similar look.

[Satsuki Murashige]

The Transformers DVD has a special featurette that has comparisons of uncorrected plates for effects shots with the final color graded composite. They give a very good indication of what kind of color correction was done in the DI - basically, increased contrast, increased color saturation, and a warmer tone overall. A lot of the yellow/blue color palette you were talking about is in the negative on interiors, night exteriors, and basically whenever they were able to control the lighting. On those huge day exteriors with multiple handheld cameras, you can tell that they had to shoot in natural light with little to no augmentation, so they probably went further with color correction in the DI to match the rest of the footage.

 

* You could probably get a similar effect photochemically by printing onto a high contrast, high color saturation print stock like Kodak Vision Premier.

 

Original plate:

 

Final shot:

Edited February 9, 2008 by Satsuki Murashige

[Satsuki Murashige]

More comparison stills.

 

Original plate:

 

Final shot:

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

Original plate:

 

Final shot:

 

I think that's the same girl from the extremely low angle shot where we can see a missile flying over her head and it's as if we're seeing this from just underneath her breasts. Bay at his worst...but then best.

[Satsuki Murashige]

Original plate:

 

Final shot:

[Satsuki Murashige]

I think that's the same girl from the extremely low angle shot where we can see a missile flying over her head and it's as if we're seeing this from just underneath her breasts. Bay at his worst...but then best.

You mean this? ;)

 

We don't really see much more than that, unfortunately.

[David Mullen ASC]

You mean this? ;)

 

We don't really see much more than that, unfortunately.

 

This is just some extra, which is particularly why it seems gratuitous to put her chest in the foreground.

 

The trouble with the "uncorrected" examples is that scans usually come up on the flat side -- if you took that same shot and photochemically timed and printed it, it would probably look a little closer to the final digital color timing in terms of richness.

[Tom Lowe]

So for the exteriors it basically comes down to "crank the contrast and saturation." The first two tricks any noob learns on Photoshop. :lol:

Edited February 9, 2008 by Tom Lowe

[Satsuki Murashige]

The trouble with the "uncorrected" examples is that scans usually come up on the flat side -- if you took that same shot and photochemically timed and printed it, it would probably look a little closer to the final digital color timing in terms of richness.

Sure, but I think what the stills show is the difference in approach the filmmakers took in controlled vs. uncontrolled lighting situations. In the night exterior, the original plate is very close to the final shot in color and contrast. In the day exterior, they instead just shot it flat and used the DI more extensively. I think that at least somewhat answers the question of how much of the look of the film was created in DI vs. in camera.

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

In the day exterior, they instead just shot it flat and used the DI more extensively.

 

I think you're missing the point David is making. They didn't shoot the exteriors flat - the image you're looking at is from a scanned negative so it appears flatter then it would had it been printed. Im sure they may have relied on the DI to help match weather consistancy for their exteriors and to facilitate Michael Bays need to shoot quickly, but i think its unfair to think the look of transformers isn't on the original negative. Michael Bay has said before that he isn't crazy about heavy DI manipulation.

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

You mean this? ;)

 

We don't really see much more than that, unfortunately.

 

Ha ha, yeah, that's the one. On the big screen it's so much more gratuitous. I could have sworn the camera swooped underneath her breasts for a low angle shot of the Decepticon flying overhead.

 

Here are 2 frames from the final shot:

 

 

[Matt Pacini]

Michael Bay do something gratuitous?

Naaaawww, just must be joking!

 

I wonder if she had fillings in her teeth, and they whited them out?

Don't laugh, a friend of mine does CGI and he's had to fix people's teeth before in post.

 

MP

Edited February 22, 2008 by Matt Pacini

[Nate Weaver]

In my experience, as I have made it a hobby of mine to learn as much as I can about color work (along the way as I shoot)...

 

There's a ton going on in these frames from the colorist. Not drastic music video looks mind you, but I can say:

 

1-Shadows are bent blue cyan

 

2-Almost a full desaturate as the toe hits black.

 

3-Skin tones are being secondaried out, and flattened in chroma (this means they're bent towards warm, but then desaturating again, reducing spurious chroma)

 

4-Overall contrast boosting via s-curve

 

It should be noted that putting a cyan or blue tint in the shadows and then desaturating below that is a VERY common look these days. Often then the below-key parts of the frame play complementary to skin tones. Blue/orange or green/orange (in subtle amounts, natch) always looks nice.