Push/Pulling vs. Printing Up/Down

[Jeremy Asuncion]

Hey everyone,

 

I will be shooting my first show on 35mm film this coming April and I really want to put Kodak 5219 to the test in terms of grain control and contrast. Please bear with me for I've only shot 7222 and 7266.

 

Can anyone tell me the effects that these variables create together in terms of grain, contrast, and saturation? Perhaps how this affects the characteristic curve?

 

1. Over-exposing and pulling

2. Over-exposing and printing down

3. Under-exposing and pushing

4. Under-exposing and printing up

5. Over-exposing, pulling, and bleach-bypassing

 

My goal is to differentiate between different timelines of the film. Flashbacks are as the director said "dream-like" and he immediately liked my recommendation of having low grain, glooming highlights, and high saturation. Can this be achieved with #5 on the list? I am very open to using glimmer glass or nets on the rear element.

 

I've heard that when skipping the bleach, it is recommended to change a 7:1 ratio to a 3:1 ratio due to the contrast that it brings.

 

This is for my thesis film at my school and I think it is the perfect opportunity to experiment on film! I do not want to be experimenting on set, but I do want to do a camera test at the prep. As always, thank you for taking the time to respond.

 

-Jeremy

[David Mullen ASC]

Trouble is that contrast (gamma) and saturation are interconnected, so it's hard to lower one but increase the other except digitally in post color-correction.

 

You can overexpose and pull-process to lower contrast and reduce (tighten) grain, but the colors will also look creamier, more pastel. If you use diffusion that blooms the highlights and lowers contrast, the colors will look more pastel.

 

Skip-bleaching the negative increases density and adds grain (silver grain) to the highlights causing them to burn out faster (and look noisier in a scan). So if you overexpose and pull-process back to normal, the skip-bleach processing will add overexposure back to the image. Plus counteract the lowering of contrast and reduction of grain from the overexposure and pull-processing. But colors would not get more saturated from all of these processes combined, if anything, it would get reduced (skip bleach is like adding a touch of black paint to a color, in the highlights when it is done to the negative, in the shadows when it is done to the print -- some colors will look harder and maybe darker, but not necessarily more saturated.)

 

Short of cross-processing an E6 reversal stock (which I don't think that Kodak sells anymore for movie production) it's hard to find a photochemical way of increasing saturation beyond normal, except for perhaps using a print off of the negative to make a dupe negative off of. Beyond that, there is only the more subtle technique of just overexposing a negative and printing it down for a more snappy contrast and thus richer colors. And there is printing onto Vision Premier print stock, if it still exists, but that would mean the whole roll would get the saturation boost, not just flashback scenes.

 

Digital color-correction would be the easiest way of boosting color saturation.

[Jeremy Asuncion]

Digital color-correction would be the easiest way of boosting color saturation.

 

Gotcha! We will be doing dailies at Fotokem, and hopefully I can get the same colorist that did my 16mm project—however, that was in black and white, so it was mostly exposure that he was fixing. Is this where I could ask for more saturation to compensate for the pull processing?

 

When it comes to in-camera effects, I am curious about using color cards to get a certain color balance—for example, I 2nded for a DP who was shooting 500T. At the top of every magazine, she would have us bump a grey card under tungsten-balanced light... but when we shot the scene, she lit it with mosty HMIs with a lot of ambient fill from outside. On top of that, she had me write on the reports to "print to card." I haven't seen any dailies from the project but I assume that the footage on the cooler side.

 

Do you lose some information when utilizing this process? Or is this similar to non-destructive metadata on a HD camera? (Unfortunately my experience on film has been and will continue to be limited, so thanks in advance for your patience)

[David Mullen ASC]

It's a print so of course it is non-destructive to the negative.

 

But if you are asking if you get unattractive artifacts from pushing an image towards a certain color cast, it just depends. In her case, shooting a grey scale on 500T stock under a tungsten (white) light and then lighting the scene with blue lights for a blue look just means she was giving the timer a neutral reference so that they wouldn't correct out her blue lighting. So in this case, the image wasn't pushed in any direction from normal, the color effect was all done with colored lighting.

 

But let's say she shot the grey scale on 500T stock under a full orange light and told them to "time for grey scale" so that the following scene shot under white lighting looked blue. Now the image is being pushed in a color direction that was not in the original. Essentially you are missing the amount of blue information you want so you are having to print up that blue layer, which was effectively underexposed for the look you wanted. You may pick up some artifacts, your blues may look grainier for example.

 

But it's all a matter of degree, you have some flexibility to correct a film negative in different directions within reason.

 

Yes, you'd ask your colorist for a more saturated image when color-correcting for video transfer. Now whether you'd get that if only paying for a one-light dailies transfer, I don't know. Maybe not if you are sending them footage that needs different levels of color saturation. You'd probably have to save it for the final color-correction.

[Jeremy Asuncion]

Yes, you'd ask your colorist for a more saturated image when color-correcting for video transfer. Now whether you'd get that if only paying for a one-light dailies transfer, I don't know. Maybe not if you are sending them footage that needs different levels of color saturation. You'd probably have to save it for the final color-correction.

 

Thanks for the advice, David. While I do want to have some control in the ultimate look in the film, I think it would be best to give post more options when it comes to coloring—and I think in that regard they can have more to work with!

[Mathew Collins]

It's a print so of course it is non-destructive to the negative.

 

But if you are asking if you get unattractive artifacts from pushing an image towards a certain color cast, it just depends. In her case, shooting a grey scale on 500T stock under a tungsten (white) light and then lighting the scene with blue lights for a blue look just means she was giving the timer a neutral reference so that they wouldn't correct out her blue lighting. So in this case, the image wasn't pushed in any direction from normal, the color effect was all done with colored lighting.

 

But let's say she shot the grey scale on 500T stock under a full orange light and told them to "time for grey scale" so that the following scene shot under white lighting looked blue. Now the image is being pushed in a color direction that was not in the original. Essentially you are missing the amount of blue information you want so you are having to print up that blue layer, which was effectively underexposed for the look you wanted. You may pick up some artifacts, your blues may look grainier for example.

 

But it's all a matter of degree, you have some flexibility to correct a film negative in different directions within reason.

 

Yes, you'd ask your colorist for a more saturated image when color-correcting for video transfer. Now whether you'd get that if only paying for a one-light dailies transfer, I don't know. Maybe not if you are sending them footage that needs different levels of color saturation. You'd probably have to save it for the final color-correction.

 

David,

Could you have look on the questions.

 

> In her case, shooting a grey scale on 500T stock under a tungsten (white) light and then lighting the scene with blue lights for a blue look just means she was giving the timer a neutral reference so that they wouldn't correct out her blue lighting.

 

If she wanted 'not to correct her blue lighting' she could write on the report 'Do not perform color correction'

or

Skip the 'shooting a grey scale on 500T stock under a tungsten (white) light' and shoot the 'the scene with blue lights' so that the Colorist would not have done any changes.

 

Could you correct my understanding,

 

In the first case, the Colorist observed that the Grey card appears as grey, so he is not doing any color correction.

In the second case he observes that, the grey card appears as orange, so he pushes the blue lit scene towards 'more orange color side'. In effect the scene appears in deep blue color.

[David Mullen ASC]

Generally you'd write on the camera report "time for grey scale at head of roll (or scene)" and after they did that, if the next shot came up under a colored light or filter, they would assume it was intentional and leave it that way. But to be doubly sure, you could write a note saying that the scene has an intentional color of whatever you picked.

 

I usually also shoot a sign at the head of the scene that says something like "COLOR: ORANGE FIRELIGHT" or "COLOR: BLUE MOONLIGHT" etc.

 

If a grey card or scale appears at the head of the roll or scene and you told the colorist to "time for grey card or scale" then they will balance the levels until that grey card look grey, whether you put white light or colored light on it. If the card is lit orange, he will shift away from orange to neutral, but this shift will mean that the image that follows will be pushed in the opposite direction of orange, towards the blue. It's just like doing a white balance with a video camera on a colored card. The timer is only making adjustments to the grey card and then letting the scene play out in that setting.

 

So, no, he doesn't observe that the grey card looks orange and then pushes the blue lit scene towards the orange. If he observes that the card looks orange he will add blue to it until it looks neutral, but that means that everything that follows will have that shift to the blue.

[Mathew Collins]

Generally you'd write on the camera report "time for grey scale at head of roll (or scene)" and after they did that, if the next shot came up under a colored light or filter, they would assume it was intentional and leave it that way. But to be doubly sure, you could write a note saying that the scene has an intentional color of whatever you picked.

 

I usually also shoot a sign at the head of the scene that says something like "COLOR: ORANGE FIRELIGHT" or "COLOR: BLUE MOONLIGHT" etc.

 

If a grey card or scale appears at the head of the roll or scene and you told the colorist to "time for grey card or scale" then they will balance the levels until that grey card look grey, whether you put white light or colored light on it. If the card is lit orange, he will shift away from orange to neutral, but this shift will mean that the image that follows will be pushed in the opposite direction of orange, towards the blue. It's just like doing a white balance with a video camera on a colored card. The timer is only making adjustments to the grey card and then letting the scene play out in that setting.

 

So, no, he doesn't observe that the grey card looks orange and then pushes the blue lit scene towards the orange. If he observes that the card looks orange he will add blue to it until it looks neutral, but that means that everything that follows will have that shift to the blue.

 

 

> Generally you'd write on the camera report "time for grey scale at head of roll (or scene)" and after they did that, if the next shot came up under a colored light or filter, they would assume it was intentional and leave it that way. But to be doubly sure, you could write a note saying that the scene has an intentional color of whatever you picked.

 

>If a grey card or scale appears at the head of the roll or scene and you told the colorist to "time for grey card or scale" then they will balance the levels until that grey card look grey, whether you put white light or colored light on it. If the card is lit orange, he will shift away from orange to neutral, but this shift will mean that the image that follows will be pushed in the opposite direction of orange, towards the blue. It's just like doing a white balance with a video camera on a colored card. The timer is only making adjustments to the grey card and then letting the scene play out in that setting.

 

Any difference in the above instances?

 

 

>So, no, he doesn't observe that the grey card looks orange and then pushes the blue lit scene towards the orange. If he observes that the card looks orange he will add blue to it until it looks neutral, but that means that everything that follows will have that shift to the blue.

 

If Colorist doesn't observe that the grey card looks orange, why would he push the scene?

[David Mullen ASC]

You said "In the second case he observes that, the grey card appears as orange, so he pushes the blue lit scene towards 'more orange color side'."

 

I'm not saying that he doesn't observe that the grey card looks orange, he does... what I'm saying is that he doesn't push the blue-lit scene towards the orange color side after he sees the orange grey card.

 

He doesn't necessarily do anything to the scene itself -- what he does is push the orange grey card towards the blue direction in order to make it look grey (neutral) instead of orange.

 

Then the scene that follows the grey card on the roll will look now more blue because the color levels were set for the grey card and that correction is still working over the rest of the footage unless he stops and makes another adjustment.

 

If you want a blue-looking scene, you could shoot a grey card under white (neutral) light and then light the scene that follows under blue light. The colorist will set the color for the grey card (and since it is already lit under white light, he doesn't have to do too much) and then when the blue-lit scene follows next on the roll, he will know that the blue is intentional because he has a neutral frame of reference. If there was no grey card and the first shot was a blue-lit scene, he might think the blue was a mistake and try to make it neutral white.

 

Or you could shoot a grey card under orange light and the scene that follows under white light. The colorist will see the orange-lit grey card and because you told him to time to the grey card, he will rebalance the RGB levels so that the grey card looks grey, not orange. To do this, he would have added a lot of blue to the image to cancel the orange. Now when the white-lit scene comes up next on the roll, it will look blue because he is still using the same settings from the previous shot of the corrected grey card.

[Mathew Collins]

You said "In the second case he observes that, the grey card appears as orange, so he pushes the blue lit scene towards 'more orange color side'."

 

I'm not saying that he doesn't observe that the grey card looks orange, he does... what I'm saying is that he doesn't push the blue-lit scene towards the orange color side after he sees the orange grey card.

 

He doesn't necessarily do anything to the scene itself -- what he does is push the orange grey card towards the blue direction in order to make it look grey (neutral) instead of orange.

 

Then the scene that follows the grey card on the roll will look now more blue because the color levels were set for the grey card and that correction is still working over the rest of the footage unless he stops and makes another adjustment.

 

If you want a blue-looking scene, you could shoot a grey card under white (neutral) light and then light the scene that follows under blue light. The colorist will set the color for the grey card (and since it is already lit under white light, he doesn't have to do too much) and then when the blue-lit scene follows next on the roll, he will know that the blue is intentional because he has a neutral frame of reference. If there was no grey card and the first shot was a blue-lit scene, he might think the blue was a mistake and try to make it neutral white.

 

Or you could shoot a grey card under orange light and the scene that follows under white light. The colorist will see the orange-lit grey card and because you told him to time to the grey card, he will rebalance the RGB levels so that the grey card looks grey, not orange. To do this, he would have added a lot of blue to the image to cancel the orange. Now when the white-lit scene comes up next on the roll, it will look blue because he is still using the same settings from the previous shot of the corrected grey card.

 

Thank you David.

 

So the Colorist looks for a grey card in the beginning of the roll. If there is grey card and is not neutral, he would try to make it neutral(grey) and those changes would effect on the following scenes.

 

If there is there is no changes required for the grey card, he would leave the roll as it is.

 

If he is not finding any grey card at the beginning and the scenes in the roll are not neutral, he would try to correct scenes.

 

Is there any other use for the grey card?

[David Mullen ASC]

Whether he keeps making changes depends on whether there are more grey cards on the roll -- perhaps halfway into the roll you move into a grocery store with greenish fluorescent lights and now you want the colorist to correct out the green, so you shoot a new grey card under the lights (I always have a face next to the card for a skin tone reference, usually my face since it is easier to meter the card if I'm holding it.)

 

If you asked for a "best light" transfer instead of a one-light transfer, the colorist might attempt to guess the color for each scene on the roll and do whatever he thinks is needed to make it look good. I'd rather the scene be transferred according to my grey card, but as I said I also shoot a sign describing the look. The more communication the better.

[Mathew Collins]

Thank you David.

[Bill DiPietra]

I'd rather the scene be transferred according to my grey card, but as I said I also shoot a sign describing the look. The more communication the better.

 

I usually shoot a Macbeth color-chart at the head of each roll - which has neutral grey on it - and ask for a one-light work print when I send it to the lab because if I have it fully timed (same as "best light,") the timer is adjusting the printer lights for each scene rather than setting them once and going by the index mark (color-chart) that I set at the head of the roll. Unless my ASA rating was completely off for a given roll, a one-light print is usually enough of a gauge to see what you got. Plus, sometimes you want to see things uncorrected before you start making corrections.

 

There was one time where my exposure was off when I lit the color-chart and I'd asked for a one-light print. So the entire roll was under-exposed and I had to get a timed print made, which can be costly (I still edit on 16mm film.) Short of that kind of issue, I usually save the timing until the final grade. But it all depends on what will be best for your project, aesthetically and financially.

[Satsuki Murashige]

When I was taking a post-production class at the local film lab years ago, the color timer mentioned how he hated seeing Macbeth charts for film dailies because the 18% Grey patch was so small. It was difficult to get the Hazeltine analyzer to read that tiny patch especially on 16mm. He recommended that we instead use the Kodak Grey Card Plus (which had white and black reference patches on the edges) and to fill the frame with it. The white/black came in handy for video dailies since they could also use that to pin down their levels.

 

I think the Macbeth is still a good reference for the DP as you can see easily how all the colors are rendering, but I always put up the Grey Card first. Recently retired the Kodak card and got a DCS One Shot chart, which is pretty much the same but adds RGB-CMY patches.

[Bill DiPietra]

When I was taking a post-production class at the local film lab years ago, the color timer mentioned how he hated seeing Macbeth charts for film dailies because the 18% Grey patch was so small.

 

That's ironic because I've always thought, "Don't they have trouble seeing that little square?"...lol. But it comes out fine.

 

I think the Macbeth is still a good reference for the DP as you can see easily how all the colors are rendering...

 

That's exactly why I still use it at the head of each roll. I used to use only a grey card but got away from it at a certain point, replacing it with just the color-chart. But as David mentioned, the more references and information you can give to the lab the better, so I'm going to start using the grey card and the color-chart.

[Mathew Collins]

 

I usually shoot a Macbeth color-chart at the head of each roll - which has neutral grey on it - and ask for a one-light work print when I send it to the lab because if I have it fully timed (same as "best light,") the timer is adjusting the printer lights for each scene rather than setting them once and going by the index mark (color-chart) that I set at the head of the roll. Unless my ASA rating was completely off for a given roll, a one-light print is usually enough of a gauge to see what you got. Plus, sometimes you want to see things uncorrected before you start making corrections.

 

There was one time where my exposure was off when I lit the color-chart and I'd asked for a one-light print. So the entire roll was under-exposed and I had to get a timed print made, which can be costly (I still edit on 16mm film.) Short of that kind of issue, I usually save the timing until the final grade. But it all depends on what will be best for your project, aesthetically and financially.

 

Bill,

 

>and ask for a one-light work print when I send it to the lab because if I have it fully timed (same as "best light,") the timer is adjusting the printer lights for each scene rather than setting them once and going by the index mark (color-chart) that I set at the head of the roll. Unless my ASA rating was completely off for a given roll, a one-light print is usually enough of a gauge to see what you got. Plus, sometimes you want to see things uncorrected before you start making corrections.

 

Could you explain,

'ask for a one-light work print'

'going by the index mark'

'Unless my ASA rating was completely off for a given roll'

[Mark Dunn]

One-light means the same printer lights for the whole roll as opposed to grading each shot.

The other two mean what they say, I can't see any ambiguity.

[Bill DiPietra]

Matthew,

 

Say you're shooting a roll of Kodak 500T for the very first time and want to test the stock's dynamic range. At the head of the roll, you would want to place either a color chart, an 18% grey card (the respective "indexes" we spoke of) or both so that the timer in lab can properly set the printer lights for that "one" shot. If you specify that you want a "one-light work-print," he will not adjust the printer lights again. So this becomes especially useful when you want to see the different exposures you are able to achieve with a given stock, whereas with a "best light" print, the printer times each shot to look its "best" which is not necessarily something you always want.

 

But since the timer only sets the printer lights once for whatever index you have provided (color chart or grey card) at the head of the roll, you need to make sure your exposure is on the money since it will affect the rest of the roll when asking for a one-light work-print.

[David Mullen ASC]

Bill is referring to his grey card / color chart reference as his "index mark" (not a literal index mark on the piece of film).

I think when he says "Unless my ASA rating was completely off for a given roll" I think he means that using one set of printer lights for the entire roll works fine to know what he is getting unless his exposures were completely off for some reason (wrong setting in his light meter, for example, or wrong ND filter in the matte box, etc.) But of course, then the one-light print would tell him that the exposures were off, which is an advantage for Bill to catch a problem.

That's the thing with dailies, while it might be nice for your career in the short term if everything looked perfect in dailies, it is more educational and informative to see exposure variations and problems on your end.

For example, maybe for a really dark moonlight scene you've decided to underexpose everything by three stops and the dailies timer sees this and says "it's a bit too dark, I'll bring it up a little" -- and when you watch dailies and it looks good on a small screen, you think "well, I guess I was right about underexposing 3-stops" but once you finish the project and look at it on the big screen, you find that the negative was a bit thinner than you would have liked, and that a 2-stop underexposure would have been better -- something you might have figured out earlier if the dailies timer had left the image as dark as you originally exposed it and didn't try to "help" you.

At the opposite end, if the dailies look wrong and the grey scale reference at the head of the roll also looks wrong, then you know that the mistake is at the timing end, not your end. It also gives you some ammunition to get the dailies redone at the lab's expense because you clearly instructed them to time for the grey scale reference and they clearly didn't. But without it, if the lab merely timed the work print or dailies wrong but you had no baseline neutral reference at the head of the roll, they could easily say "how are we supposed to know what you intended, we just had to guess."

[Bill DiPietra]

 

Bill is referring to his grey card / color chart reference as his "index mark" (not a literal index mark on the piece of film).

I think when he says "Unless my ASA rating was completely off for a given roll" I think he means that using one set of printer lights for the entire roll works fine to know what he is getting unless his exposures were completely off for some reason (wrong setting in his light meter, for example, or wrong ND filter in the matte box, etc.) But of course, then the one-light print would tell him that the exposures were off, which is an advantage for Bill to catch a problem.

 

Exactly.

 

Another thing about shooting a color chart or grey card at the head of each roll is that I tend to shoot a lot of tungsten film under daylight-balanced light which, unfiltered, will create a blue cast over the image. So if I shoot the grey card with tungsten-balanced film in my camera, under tungsten-balanced light (which will look normal on film,) then shoot a bunch of scenes under daylight-balanced light and request a one-light work-print from the lab, the timer should set the printer lights for the grey card and leave them that way until the entire roll is printed. So, provided I properly exposed everything, the roll should come out fine.

 

But as David mentioned, sometimes you get labs that think they are helping you and will automatically color-correct the blue cast because they assume you forgot to put the 85B filter in. This is where the camera report comes into play. The minimum I will put on the report will be:

 

MAKE ONE-LIGHT WORK-PRINT TIMED FOR COLOR-CHART AT HEAD OF ROLL!!! DO NOT COLOR-CORRECT!!!

 

I started doing the annoying red/bold/italics/caps thing after a lab that I don't use anymore kept color-correcting my film even after I specifically instructed them not to. So it's something that you have be vigilant about.

[Mathew Collins]

Thank you David and Bill.