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? for colorists


Jeremy Walton

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So I work with a colorist right now. He works at a post house and colors on resolve. He's somewhat new to the game, but so am I. We've done a handful of projects together. Mostly on 7D and one red. All small projects, shorts, trailers, spec commercials. Low budget stuff. He usually tells me to get footage as flat as possible. Nothing too dark or too bright. This way he has the most options for coloring. For the most part I agree and understand. When shooting with 7D and having a small crew I get it. There are looks you can save to the 7D to get a flat and even color, etc. But when it comes to a feature I look at it a little differently.

 

There is a specific look I want for my feature. Simple version is a high contrast look. Besides wardrobe, set design, etc. I feel lighting is very important. I find it odd to tell my DP to light everything flat so my colorist has more to work with. I feel I want the look to be saved to the camera, in this case Epic, so I can see what it looks like on set. This way my DP can push the lightning to enhance the look. That seems the right way to go.

 

I used to mess with magic bullet looks with footage I've shot. Theres a film look. Some footage it looked great on. Some footage it looked horrible. For example on a night scene, when I applied the look it got too dark. So having the look in camera on set would of told us we need to add more light to make it work.

 

I heard about resolve 10 and a live feature, grading on set. Thats seems to me what I'm getting at. Anyways I'm looking for opinions or what people have done in the past. Thanks!

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You should always try to get the look as close as you can in camera-- and if you know how you want it to look anyway then there is no reason to be conservative (unless there is a mitigating circumstance, such as FX shots, or actors who can't hit marks perfectly, animals, children, ect. ect.)

It is mildly insulting to tell the DoP that you're letting the colorist make the choices for the look of the film, at least to me. That said, as a DoP, I am there to back up my director in how they want to shoot it. One would hope your colorist would be of a similar mind to my own.

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There is a specific look I want for my feature. Simple version is a high contrast look. Besides wardrobe, set design, etc. I feel lighting is very important. I find it odd to tell my DP to light everything flat so my colorist has more to work with. I feel I want the look to be saved to the camera, in this case Epic, so I can see what it looks like on set. This way my DP can push the lightning to enhance the look. That seems the right way to go.

 

I used to mess with magic bullet looks with footage I've shot. Theres a film look. Some footage it looked great on. Some footage it looked horrible. For example on a night scene, when I applied the look it got too dark. So having the look in camera on set would of told us we need to add more light to make it work.

 

I heard about resolve 10 and a live feature, grading on set. Thats seems to me what I'm getting at. Anyways I'm looking for opinions or what people have done in the past. Thanks!

You don't light it flat, you STORE it flat in camera to have all the tones to work with in grading. You can light to any contrast you want, actually. The point is to not crush the digital negative (to not throw away tones in camera so you can restore them later if you want)

 

You can create looks with redcine and apply them to the monitor output and metadata in camera. Epic stores RAW, however, so the applied look does not affect the actual recording (otherwise than it can be saved to metadata and can be restored from there if you want)

Some looks can be hard to light without having proper monitoring lut to see what it should approximately look like after grading...

 

I usually light by eye and check the scopes to make sure the whole scene contrast (or at least the important part of it) is stored to the recording.

Lighting to very low contrast look and trying to later make it very high contrast is difficult and can end to weird results.

 

You can light by looking through your lut, but don't crush anything permanently in digital negative (always look your raw scopes! ) , then you can later restore the look more easily and also tweak it without ruining the image by over-exposure etc.

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I also think your colorist will be thankful when the DP does his own job well and he don't have to create all the image in post B)

(otherwise than if the colorist is some kind of show-off and wants to steal the show by doing the DP:s work :ph34r: )

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You light for the look you want. But if part of the look is somewhat crushed blacks, like a skip-bleach print would look, then you have to factor this into your lighting and you may find yourself adding a bit more fill to compensate. If you can load a look into the camera so that while recording a log or raw file, your monitor image has this extra contrast added, then you can see how much fill you need to add.

 

This is still different from the notion of lighting flat and creating the look in post. That doesn't really work because the contrast will look artificial in some shots, and besides, you can't really take a front-lit face and make it look side-lit just by adding more contrast in post... You have to light for the effect you want.

 

If you use a camera that records log or raw, you don't really have to light flat just to give yourself more information in post. But as I said, if the final look is supposed to have crushed blacks, then you may want to monitor with that effect because it may influence some lighting decisions.

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