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Lion Color Grading (Olivier Fontenay)


Robbie Fatt

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Hey all!

I've been trying really hard to figure out how Olivier Fontenay works as a colorist. Everything he grades has this amazing pastel, faded blacks, low contrast look which is absolutely amazing. I asked a lot of people about it, but no one has been able to help me out with more complex tips on getting shots to look like his. Lion (Shot on Alexa with Vintage Lenses), is the movie he really excelled earning Greig Fraser a nomination for Best Cinematography. Here's a quote from him:


“That's why I believe Greig Fraser deserved the Oscar nomination and the ASC Award for this film. He was taking a risk – exposing down but not too much, almost to the point where you could see the noise when you were raising the brightness of the image. This meant I could pull the blacks down and really work on them. Although you can't actually see the noise, you can feel that something is there and have the impression that you are seeing film grain. It doesn't look noisy, but it gives the image a special texture and feeling.

I've attached some screenshots here, so if any colorist can give me some more technical advice rather than just fading blacks, or even help develop a LUT, that would be amazing. I've been shooting on Amira in LogC with so should be able to get a very similar look.

Lion_38722.thumb.jpg.78001e7be25b3d2724f18ddc46c8114c.jpgLion_6352.thumb.jpg.a744bd0183ab80a5bfbcddee6044efc5.jpgLion2.thumb.jpg.e0d03f85c4aae7296f677a8fc9c37f54.jpg
 

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  • 4 weeks later...
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There's an awful lot that could be going on here and I don't want to speculate too much.  A couple observations though:

- This is definitely the result of a unified image authoring pipeline where colorist and DP really get their heads together.  Sounds like you're DP and Colorist so that offers you the opportunity to make decisions top to bottom too!

- A lot of folks, myself included, like to push the ISO of the Alexa up a bit, both for highlight protection, and a bit more texture.  Maybe this is what Olivier Fontenay is getting at.  For example - Fraser might have set the camera to 1280 and then his meter to 1600 (to get a gentle underexposure).  Try playing around with this, maybe you'll like how the Amira responds.

- If you like this look, check out some of Fraser's earlier work - it's all shot on film so...  this might be the look Fraser and Fontenay are chasing after.  In particular, this short film: 

 

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As Dan says, Fraser could well be setting the camera at a high-ish ISO, and then underexposing. Because that will tend to crush the blacks, they are then being raised in post to flatten out the contrast, almost to the point where they become noisy.

Those stills are low contrast, slightly underexposed, lifted blacks, reduced saturation. A lot of it will come down to your source material, but you could try not using a 709 LUT in post, but instead adding a mild curve to the LOG footage, and then adjusting contrast and saturation from there.

I don't know if there are any professional colorists on the forum, but hopefully they'll chime in if so.

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