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I agree and this is why I originally mistook it for set extensions or matte paintings or something across the board. I am starting to think vfx is a bigger part of this process than is being advertised though. And I imagine just lining things up between film and video was a bit tricky. Not sure why they didn't just use two Alexa65s other than wanting to keep things shot on film. I recently shot some traditional day for night footage and used the red channel as the luminance values (after getting it into linear space). There are issues with purple fringing or CA, where if you have CA there are dark black edges around trees, for instance. But just using the red channel as the luminance channel and otherwise working traditionally (underexposure and shooting with tungsten white balance outdoors with heavy ND to open up the aperture) works really well and results in a similar look to the look Nope. (Except very very primitive.) Infrared photography does darken skies, but it does strange things elsewhere, so I can't imagine the luminance for Nope was just from the IR channel, I bet it was a mix of things. Not sure. And not sure how different that would look from just using the red channel either. Regardless, I suspect there is a tremendous amount of compositing involved here. I still liked the look a lot and felt it was very cool learning it was done more in-camera than I first expected. But now I'm thinking a lot of it is compositing. Still refreshing compared with full CGI sets, and it looked better to me than that would have, and fit the movie's story better.

Thanks, David, I appreciate your patience and expertise. Trusting your eyes (and using references) is probably the way to go. I was wrong to claim 2383 print stock turns blues cyan. But the emulation LUT in Resolve does tint shadows cyan and highlights orange. I posted the result I got with it on a grayscale gradient, and it's consistent with the look of recent films I've watched that have been printed on that stock. And different stocks do render colors differently, even those intended for neutrality. I feel like 50D is a bit more magenta, more similar to Portra maybe, and 200T is more gold – but the host of variables with processing and scanning and what filter you have in front of each make this statement sort of meaningless, especially when you can correct for it digitally in a much more meaningful way. Chances are I'm responding to something as simple as older movies having a simple rec709 LUT and newer ones having more attention in the grade. I don't actually remember what things looked like in the 90s in theaters beyond a vague impression. I do remember thinking Lord of the Rings had a "heavily color graded" feel when I saw it in theaters, but the impression, not the specifics.

*gain toward orange, not gamma

I understand how digital color correction works. The optical side is where I'm confused. I'm overthinking this, not under thinking it. I should have posted this question in another thread anyway. But now that we're discussing it.... Where I might be confused is in how the look of a print film affects the final image in an optical workflow and how that is emulated if you're delivering digitally. I always assumed print film LUTs were meant to emulate a specific print film, and each film print has its own look (color and contrast) that the LUT is emulating. So either you use a film print LUT to preview how something will look before printing it back to that film, or keep the film print LUT on to output a digital master that emulates the chosen print stock. This is where I might be wrong and would appreciate any correction. I understand how lift/gamma/gain etc. and the fundamentals of Resolve, etc. all work, but not print films. Resolve's 2383 LUT, and similar ones available online, do add a teal bias to darker areas and an orange one to highlights. I ran a monochrome gradient through the 2383 LUT in Resolve and posted it here. I understand the teal/orange look is normally applied by moving lift toward blue and gamma toward orange – but Resolve's 2383 LUT turns highlights warmer and shadows cooler, too. So I have to assume 2383 prints take on a similar look if you're doing a DI and printing to that stock. You seem to be implying print stocks all have an identical and neutral color rendering, and I don't think that's the case, even if the differences are relatively small compared with creative decisions in the DI. I associate this look (however it's applied) with contemporary films - and 2383 is a contemporary print film (I think late nineties forward, not sure?). I notice the Pulp Fiction frame grabs (and most 80s and early 90s movies I see on streaming) don't look like this. When I work with film (lately mostly 5213/7213 for some reason) using the LUT the lab provided it has more of the "old school" Pulp Fiction look compared with the more "modern" look of Resolve's 2383 LUT – but that's just my subjective impression. So this is where I really don't understand what's going on, and I should have just posted this question (in another thread) in the first place: If you're going back to the camera negative for a Blu Ray or streaming or DCP release, I figure the intent of the color grade is often (not always) to emulate the original print. Not precisely, but approximately, and not always. But let's say it is.... For something like Pulp Fiction, where the print stock that was used at the time is no longer available, what do colorists use to emulate it? The Blu Ray is scanned from the camera negative, not a print, right? (I could be totally wrong here.) I could be wrong (this is where I genuinely have no idea how this works), but for the digital release of something where the theatrical release had gone through ENR or bleach bypass – ENR or bleach bypass is typically not done on the camera negative, right? Usually on the internegative? So in that case, for a digital remaster or for the Blu Ray, you'd be scanning the internegative, or the camera negative and then applying an ENR LUT or otherwise matching the look of ENR in post? This is what I should have been asking from the get-go rather than derailing this thread. I've been watching more movies from the 80s and 90s, made before the DI, and wondering if the digital versions are scanned from the camera negative or from the internegative or print film – and, if from the camera negative, how optical processes like ENR or beach bypass or just printing to discontinued print stock are emulated digitally in a contemporaneously accurate way. Long story short I was trying to get the look of something from the 90s while shooting on an Alexa or with 7219 or 7213 and accidentally completely derailed this thread in the process. I understand the basics of digital color correction – but not how to do that. The Blu Ray of Pulp Fiction or Catch Me if you Can looks approximately how I remember the theatrical release looking (just cleaned up). I was wondering how to accurately recreate that look on something shot today.

In my experience 2383 emulation LUTs apply a teal/blue cast, pushing blue more toward green than toward magenta. When I google 2383 LUT that’s what I see, too. I could be wrong, it's just what I see. I don’t mean that Tarantino wouldn’t strike new prints, just that the original prints (and the blu ray) have a look that reminds me of its era. And I'm wondering how that's maintained in the blu ray, assuming it's been scanned from the negative and not a print. (What film emulation LUT – or none at all and just contrast – is applied to the grade.) I think I was mistakenly ascribing too much of a "look" to the print film/print LUT. But when I work with 200T it usually looks more like Pulp Fiction than it does a contemporary film – until the grade…. Nevermind. I’ll just trust my eyes and/or hire someone. I should have saved this for its own thread and not gone off topic.

Thanks, that makes more sense. I guess a better question is: the 2383 film print emulation LUTs I see have a teal/orange look that looks "modern" for lack of a better word to me. Those scans of Pulp Fiction don't have it. How similar do those scans from Pulp Fiction look to how the movie looked in theaters (on print film) and how do colorists account for whatever the contemporaneous print film was being different from what's used today? I much prefer that look in Pulp Fiction. I've been watching late 80s and early 90s movies and the colors feel much more neutral than Last Jedi, for instance. I'm wondering what's responsible for it.

As others have mentioned, lighting is a major factor, Pulp Fiction favoring hard light. Lenses are another. C series Panavisions have a lot of optical flaws. Even where they're not "soft" they have flaws. I think the biggest factor is the grade. I remember LOTR had a really aggressive DI. Pulp Fiction didn't have one. Speaking of which... I notice some of the log film scans I get (both S16 and 35mm) end up having a more "old school" look when I apply a simple Log C to rec709 LUT than the final graded material. I've also noticed film emulations look more like late-80s or early-90s films before applying a print stock emulation. After a print stock emulation, they take on a teal/orange look that feels modern. For something like Pulp Fiction – or any other feature from that era, how true is the Blu Ray to the release print? I imagine the scan is from the negative, so there has to be a film print emulation LUT applied thereafter; however, are any contemporaneous film print stocks even available to model? What is the reference point for the "look" of the Blu Ray and what, if any, print stock emulation is employed?

Just curious if anyone has any BTS or diagrams from larger shows (I remember Deakins had some but not sure they're still available – would love a link to them if they are)? Curious to see anything from Kaminski, Elswitt, Richardson, or any forum members working on larger shows!

David, just out of curiosity. Let's say you have someone standing in a field with mid to late day (directional) sun. With the sun/key hitting their face frontally (maybe softened by a net), how would you set the aperture relative to the sun/key? With the sun/key hitting half their face and the other side maybe 2-3 stops under – how would you set the aperture relative to key? If they are fully backlit so now the bounce light is the key and the sun is the backlight – how would you set the aperture relative to the light on their face? For a dark underexposed scene in an apartment with diffuse light, like someone in bed at night, how dark would you tend to underexpose a face at most before worrying about losing detail? Also what format are you shooting these days? Mostly 3.2K Alexa? Do you ever set the ISO below 800? I think the tendency with young DPs is to underexpose the Alexa a bit. Also – what kind of sources are DPs using on something like Arrival or Her? It feels like a lot of soft sources, more variation in color temperature, it looks very natural and a bit underexposed. But are these shows using natural light and augmenting with LEDs or rebuilding a natural look with large book lights? On a no budget show how could I best emulate this? Lots of dim LED fixtures to complement natural soft light?

I was using a variable ND filter with a lens that had a rotating front element. I noticed that as I focused, the amount of polarization changed. (As if rotating the lens with a polarizer.) But most of my lenses don't have rotating front elements. I had a few questions. If shooting with a polarizer, and rotating the lens to reduce the amount of polarization to the least possible, is that close to the same as no polarization? Variable NDs are essentially two polarizers on top of each other, right? So does this mean there is always some significant amount of polarization? Would there be a way to take a high quality variable ND like this: https://www.simmodlens.com/product-page/simmod-77mm-variable-neutral-density-0-4-0-8-filter And somehow rotate not just the front piece of glass, but independently rotate the entire filter to reduce the effects of polarization for each shot? Or at least try to keep them consistent? The big issue I have with variable ND filters is the variable amount of polarization. But if there a way to reduce it to a minimum consistently, I might use one more. Is there a way to do this just by adding a polarizing filter with the glass removed before the variable ND filter, and then rotating the variable ND filter to the correct strength, then rotating the empty polarizing filter to reduce polarization? Thanks.

Still looking for one of these. Not looking for the 67mm version if I can help it because I want to try the 72mm clamp on version with other lenses too. Thanks.

My bad re: the OLPF, it looks like the Ursa 12K lacks one. Regardless, I think it's an issue with the camera more than with the lenses. I don't know for sure, but try the same lens on both cameras and see.

I don't have a 12K or Phase One – I've never used either – but the pixel arrangement on the 12K is not a traditional Bayer Pattern and is designed for scalability rather than maximum resolution/sharpness. Which is to say, it's not as sharp as a 12K Bayer video camera would be, and that would be most evident at a per-pixel level. But a given 12K Bayer video camera would likely also not be as sharp as an 80MP still camera anyway; I've found video cameras have much stronger optical low pass filters (to avoid moire – while a Phase One back I suspect lacks one to maximize sharpness) than video cameras do. I remember the Panasonic S1H has an OLPF where the S1 doesn't, for instance. Try the same lenses on both. I don't think your issue is primarily optical. There are exceptions for macro work (and I think the Sigma zooms might suffer there, particularly the 18-35mm), but in my experience once you're stopped down to t5.6 or whatever any modern lens is fairly sharp. The Venice 2 or A1 (poor man's Venice 2?) and either Sigma Art or Tokina Vista (or Otus if you're not thrown off by the mechanics) would probably be worth renting and trying. I'm pretty sure your issue is with the cameras, not the lenses. I've heard the Otus lenses are still the sharpest thing out there (if you can't afford Signature Primes, which I'll probably never even see in my lifetime). Anyway, long story short: the issue is almost certainly with the camera, not your lenses. But the sharpest affordable lens would probably be Otus or a high end macro lens depending on the subject.

I'd guess they're rehoused Rokinon/Samyang lenses with polished front elements to remove coatings. The focal lengths match if you round 14mm to 14.5mm and 24mm to 25mm. The T stops are similar too.

Panasonic S1 with an f0.95 lens, just because that’s what I own. 6K mode, so per-pixel, which helps with low light I believe. I'd like to try an A7S3, I bet the result would be similar though. Fwiw I’ve been experimenting with using the red channel for luminance for day for night. (Plugging in, after a LUT or in a color managed workspace, the red channel for luminosity.) With a bit of grading, it can get pretty close to the effect in Nope pretty quickly. Doesn’t always work. You need a sharp lens because blue/purple CA at high contrast edges (trees against the sky, for instance) gets more saturated and thus deeper black than they sky itself, resulting in dark halos around leaves.