Nicolas Courdouan

Desaturating the blues while bringing up the reds and greens - the digital equivalent to a Technicolor two-strip process could be a good place to start for an experiment - then adding warm filters such as sepia, coral or orange, or a mixture of those. Of course, Jeunet's distinctive style is also the product of a meticulous work by his production design team, the use of wide lenses, and a somewhat expressionistic approach to lighting, as opposed to a naturalistic one. The ASC article on the photography for A Very Long Engagement gives a few pointers - although I would argue that Jeunet's usual style was intentionally toned down on this film when compared to the more striking visuals of The City of Lost Children or Amélie. https://www.theasc.com/magazine/dec04/engagement/page2.html It also mentions the use of an 81EF filter for some of the trench scenes.

Usually, Jeunet develops the trademark look of his projects during the color grading process at the Duboicolor facilities, not in camera.

I sure did, thank you all.

Thank you Kenny, it makes perfect sense.

Thank you both for your replies. I was only asking this out of sheer curiosity since I've been digging up some old threads on this forums and articles elsewhere, and came upon several statements from respected people claiming that film was noticeably better when it came to human skin tones, even though these same people were not particularly pro-film or pro-digital.

Thank you for your reply John... I'm still a little confused. As expected certain film stocks offer a better rendition than others when it comes to colours, especially the midtones, which is what human skin often falls into. I still have a hard time understanding why film stocks - overall - are said to offer better skin tones rendition than digital - overall too. And why people claiming this single out "skin tones" rather than something far more global and generic, i.e. the entire colour space. Is it that human skin has specific properties that lend themselves well to being captured on film but not on digital? If it that film grain gives better texture to our skin? Does that mean that skin tones captured on film are always more pleasing to the human eye, and if so what makes them more pleasing? Or that they are always more faithful to the actual person's skin tone? But if so, why can't it be a matter of lighting, or fail that, grading? Is it that they are always more/less yellow on film? More/less green? What is, objectively, this better rendition of skin tones that everyone is talking about as if it were an obvious and glaring difference? With the amount and variety of film stocks and digital cameras around, and the different results they all produce regarding colours, I just find it extremely curious that one would say that Film (again, in general - all film stocks) makes for a better choice when it comes to skin tones than Digital (all formats, all cameras). This is just mind boggling to me. Especially, like I said before, with the amount of post-processing that goes into a movie picture nowadays, and the important part that lights, filters, and lenses play in the rendition of colours. I mean, who can look at that still from Terminator Salvation (shot on 35mm) and say that the skin tones look better than they would have had it been shot on digital? It all seems highly subjective to me, if not completely cryptic.

Hi Jonathan. When I started as an assistant editor, those problems would always drive me nuts. I would focus so much on making sure that the actors' every moves could be matched that I would often suggest that a perfectly valid take should be left on the editing room floor because the actor's movements did not match from one shot to the next. After a while my chief editor would call me back and show me the "fixed" scene. And it would look terrible. He would then show me the first, "flawed" version of the scene again. And it would run like clockwork. The truth is, if you watch any single film, low or high budget, you are bound to see these things: An actor will say a line and lift a glass up to their mouth, then on the next shot they are seen lifting it up again. Or a hand suddenly appears on the actor's chin because they were scratching it in that take and not on the previous shot. It happens all the time. I'm sure you're already familiar with this scene: It does not matter in the grander scheme of things - you have to just pick the best take and find a way to make it work. A little trim here or an extension there will often make the mistake less noticeable or irrelevant. For example, in the case of an actor walking in one shot and being static but moving his arm in the next, matching the two movements together - one frame makes all the difference - can trick the audience into thinking they are watching a natural continuation of the same movement. The brain naturally copes with most continuity errors. Do not be too clinical about it. If you hunt down all the little human imperfections in every take, you will be left with a stale scene that has no soul and does not work. That being said, there are those cases mentioned by David Mullen where a scene has to be carefully choreographed to make sure it is usable during the editing process: games, fight scenes or scenes where what the actors are doing outside of delivering lines is the focus of the scene. In those cases, actors are expected to hit their marks like robots to make the scene work... But the impression I got from your message was that you were worried about a little pen showing up in one hand and disappearing in the next, or an actor's arm being bent at a different angle on two consecutive shots... In truth, if you picked the right take, you will be the only one to notice.

I have always heard that as far as skin tones were concerned, film had a noticeable advantage over digital. Unfortunately (for me), I cannot tell the difference. I can see variables in the overall rendition of colours depending on the film stock or camera used, but nothing that makes the skin tones particularly stand out on one or the other. I don't know if this is because my eye is not trained well enough, or because the amount of grading and post-production that images undergo nowadays are able to nullify that advantage, but I'm still curious: - What does one mean when they say that film has a "better rendition" of skin tones than digital? - What is/are the property/ies of film that allow this? Can it be explained scientifically?

I saw a 70mm print in Dublin less than a year ago, and it was so flawless that I am still wondering whether it could have been a new generation of prints or a print that had been kept safe and hidden for all those years. The colours were superb, and not a single scratch or hair to report. Not ONE.

Indeed, I perceived no irony in George's last post. I wonder if I failed to detect it, or if it simply wasn't there. It is not the first time the "speeding" allegory is used by George to describe the behaviour of pirates in this thread. That being said I think it is a pretty valid comparison, so the irony, if there is any, is lost on me.

Do you speed while driving if the police isn't there? If not, why do you assume a majority of others do? If yes, why would you complain about people who speed? You're basically saying that you have the decency and honesty to refrain yourself from pirating audiovisual content, but that "a good few others" are lowly criminals. You have the moral high ground and the willpower to do what others can't, or rather in this case to not do what everybody else does. I know the world can be rotten sometimes but damn, that's a healthy dose of cynicism right there. With a bit of arrogance spread on top.

I could just as well ask you to prove your claims by showing me numbers. You know these numbers do not exist and are impossible to establish. The only numbers we have access to tell us that the industry is doing as well as ever - I'm not going to post them again: tickets sales on the rise, Blu Ray sales on the rise, VOD the best thing since sliced bread, etc. We can therefore extrapolate that the impact of piracy is marginal. Yes, it is and will remain an extrapolation, but at least it makes sense. On the other hand, extrapolating from those same numbers that piracy has a devastating effect on the industry does not make any.

I do not think anybody here is arguing in favour of piracy, and clearly the world would be that much closer to perfection if piracy did not exist. When we argue that the losses caused by piracy are marginal, that does not mean that piracy is therefore OK. It just means that just because you're offering bootlegged DVDs at a flea market for 50 cents does not mean that you're going to sell any, because the people who actually spend their lives watching stolen content for free are but a handful of individuals compared to the millions of people who pay to get what they want to watch. Does that mean we should leave them be? Nope. But the sun is still shining, audiences are paying, and films keep getting made every day, big and small. If piracy could really do anything against that, we would all be flipping burgers by now.

Popcorn has always been an important source of revenue for cinemas, but more and more it is becoming the only viable source of revenue for cinemas, and that is a problem. I am talking as someone who has had first hand experience of this. It was very common for films to run more than two weeks, in fact it is still common practice to have most of them run for one month. Contracts negotiated between the exhibitors and the distributors usually use four weeks as a template and then reduce or extend the length of the run depending on projected box office numbers. Of course, most of the time now, films are replaced before the length of their contract has been honoured, due to a mutual agreement between both parties that the film does not generate enough revenue to justify four weeks of screenings when the sequel is already on the way and a catalogue of fresh new films that could break attendance records is fresh out of the oven. There are more big budgets films around now because there are more films around now. I'm sure that if one were to study the market proportionately, they would find that the percentage of big events movies has roughly been the same for a very very long time. Long before piracy was even possible. That's exactly why it is hard to discuss the impact of piracy. There are no numbers detailing the loss generated by it, and it is only a matter of "I would say..." and "I would say the opposite..." The only thing we can use as a basis for our argument are the numbers telling us how much money came in. Here they are since 1980: http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/ If we were to look at the number of tickets sold only, we can see that the numbers are steady. Therefore, I'm tempted to say piracy has no impact as far as the theatrical experience is concerned. And it is the same story every year: http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0322/377886-movie-box-office/ OK, so the box office is not the only source of revenue for movies. Let's have a look at the state of affairs on the home video front: Full article here: http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2013/06/08/blu-ray-the-state-of-play-may-2013/ And a quote from a study by BCC Research: The numbers, again, are pretty easy to dig up: DVD sales have been declining since 2008 (the year Blu Rays were introduced), Blu Ray sales are increasing year after year, legal streaming is exploding (+50% between 2010 and 2012 in the US only, according to the DEG). Who said the market was in a bad shape? What will it take for us to realize that piracy indeed has no influence whatsoever on the market or people's mentalities? Customers keep being customers and paying more and more to consume more and more films. The industry is as healthy as ever, piracy or not.

For the record, this is not entirely true, at least not everywhere. Contracts between distributors/producers and theaters usually state that in the first two weeks after release, the bigger share of the ticket price (after deduction of the "Nut") goes to the producer/distributor. As time goes by, the percentage that goes to the theatre becomes bigger and bigger, while that of the producer/distributor becomes smaller. This is why nowadays, films rarely stay more than two weeks in theatres: Why would the producers lose money when they can replace their two-week-old film by a new one that will allow them a larger slice of the money pie? Only the major blockbusters - and then, only if their BO numbers are sufficiently high in the first two weeks - can justify being held over, because even the constantly decreasing shares going into the distributors' pockets remain more lucrative than a bigger share on a less successful movie. This is also why in the last ten years, film food prices have increased by as much as 150% in certain areas: Theatre companies, even multiplexes, see less and less money coming their way because of the speed at which their entire film catalogue is renewed, and have to sell more and more food to break even. In other countries the percentages are fixed, but again, the theatre does not get a bigger share than the studios or producers. In France for instance, 41% of the ticket price goes to the producer. Another 41% goes to the theatre (this includes the house allowance / operating costs, so the actual earnings for the theater are much less than 41%). Over 10% of the ticket price represent a tax payed to the Centre National de la Cinematographie, which uses the money to finance new films. The rest goes to the SACEM, an organism in charge of protecting authorship and fight copyright infringements. Unfortunately there is no viable way to verify that statement. Interestingly though, independent studies (not backed by the MPAA, screen associations and other copyright companies) have often found that pirates are also often spending a lot more money on films, music and games, than regular paying consumers. A few links that might be of interest: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/12/05/swiss-government-study-finds-internet-downloads-increase-sales/ http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397173,00.asp http://bgr.com/2013/03/20/music-piracy-study-digital-revenues-385611/ https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090119/1943093458.shtml Again, Hollywood and distributors complain so often about movie piracy that people tend to get this idea that there are hundreds of millions of pirates around the world staying at home and watching films for free all day long. The numbers point to a much different truth: people are still paying for movies (in cinemas, yes, but also DVDs, Blu Rays, Netflix and the likes) because they are much more intelligent than what a lot of you give them credit for. They understand the problem, know they have to support the industry and oh, just maybe, they are decent people and want to pay for what they get. I will not subscribe to this paranoia that pirates are everywhere and cost millions to the industry. And frankly, there is nothing to back up that claim, other than the constant whining of an industry that feels like it is losing touch with its consumer base because it has failed to keep up with the pace of modern living. But like I said, they are making progress... Finally. Ironically, one of the studies listed above states that Hollywood has already spent three times as much on anti-piracy campaigns as what piracy has actually "stolen".