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".

At the risk of repeating myself one too many time, everybody does this, and a highly negligible minority do not. The fact that production companies and distributors are still standing at all in spite of VHS, TV replays, DVD burners, torrents, streaming websites, is proof of this. People never stopped paying for content, and they will keep paying for content. The argument you have put forward in your last message - the fact that pirated material very often is of piss-poor quality, is one of the reasons. Other reasons include the will to support an industry that still makes people dream, and the power of the cinema experience. There is nothing piracy can do to really harm filmmakers, at least today, because they are one against a million, if even. They hold no weight whatsoever, and if their numbers have not grown significantly since the creation of counterfeit material, and if their technology has never been able to convince people to flee theatres and stay home to watch their illegal copies, then I really do not see why mentalities would suddenly shift. You all seem to think that there is a vast majority of evil pirates out there who never pay to see a single film and spend their time on bit torrent. This is where you are wrong.

I appreciate that, but unfortunately we are missing critical data on how exactly piracy affects the film industry on a short and long term, so it's hard to come up with a definite view on the problem. What we can agree on is that pirating a movie rather than paying to watch it is theft, as long as a paying alternative exists (It is ridiculous to call a thief someone who desperately wants to see a movie that is not available in their home country - while that problem might seem ridiculous to Americans and to a somewhat lesser extent Europeans, this is a very real problem for other people throughout the world). It is the industry's job to make sure all content becomes available everywhere to make sure that kind of piracy becomes irrelevant, and they are making progress on that front. What we can wonder is how exactly piracy is more destructive to the film business than camcorders and VHS were in the 90s, when everybody and their mothers were recording movies on TV and passing them around freely. What we can see is that theatres' attendances are breaking records steadily, year after year. If I were to take into account that fact only, which is verifiable, it is hard to claim that piracy has had a negative impact on the industry at all. That's my point exactly: People are still willing to pay. The numbers prove it. People will always love the cinematic experience, and will always pay to fill theatre seats.

I'd like to add, for our friends who speak French and/or Italian, that this Italian study, provocatively entitled "Pirates saved Cinema", is available online: https://www.actualitte.com/usages/les-pirates-ont-sauve-le-cinema-la-contrefacon-salvatrice-52283.htm It correlates, amongst other things, the 33% increase in cinema visits between 2009 and 2014 to the increase in available pirated copies of film online, also on the rise. I might attempt a translation later on, if I can be bothered. In the meantime, you can try Google's horrible translating device.

That's only one edge of the sword. Another one is to say that thanks to piracy, your movie can be seen by many more people than had it been seen by regular, paying moviegoers. What if Richard's Against the Wild is not commercially available in the Asian market - not saying it isn't, it's just for the sake of the argument. What if piracy allowed countless people in Asia to watch the film, and what if they liked it and clamoured for his next film to get a theatrical release there? http://movies.ndtv.com/bollywood/anurag-kashyap-i-m-thankful-to-piracy-for-saving-my-career-387981 I already stated in my previous post that piracy undeniably has a negative impact on sales, and yes, that is theft. Whenever you watch a movie online rather than in a theatre seat, you are denying money to someone. What I was trying to challenge in my post is the idea that because a movie is available for free online, people will immediately flock towards it rather than pay to see it legally, online or in a movie theatre. I still believe that the vast majority of people fall into the latter category. Current paranoia would like us to believe it's the former., but if it were true, Guardians of the Galaxy and Planet of the Apes would not be the successes they are now, because there are hundreds of available copies online. Movies keep breaking records at the box office, year after year. I find it hard to believe that piracy has "crippled" the market in any relevant way. I have yet to see any tangible evidence pointing in that direction.

At the risk of bringing no fresh water to the mill... Most people here saying that piracy cannot be a victimless crime are referencing an outdated piracy model that is long gone. People who watch pirated copies of films do not pay for them anymore, they just stream them for free thanks to people who got a kick out of making the content available online just because they could. So there is effectively no one being paid for the "service" provided, therefore no loss of revenue in the case of people watching a streamed copy rather than never watching the film at all. Yet and even though no study can ever prove just how much money is lost when a movie is pirated, it would be silly to claim that 100% of the people watching films for free online would never have paid to watch the film in a legal context, so there is a percentage of money that the studio and distributors never see and should have. Here's something I heard a long time ago and that I'd like to know more about - if true: Several countries would have introduced anti-piracy taxes on a lot of high-tech items generally regarded as being piracy-friendly (think DVD-R, CD-R, hard drives), a percentage of which is used and redistributed to cover the costs "stolen" by pirates. So every time you buy a Sony CD-R, you now effectively prepay your right to burn a pirated Sony album on it. And if you buy a Sony CD-R and burn a Virgin Music album onto it, even better for Sony who is recovering more money than it lost. The opposite is also true however (poor Virgin Music...), and this system - again, if true - only works for those major multinationals and companies who own businesses selling hard drives and DVD-R. Anybody here can confirm or deny that this system is in place? How do we fight piracy? I'm still in the camp that thinks nothing beats the theatre experience. There is no way in hell I would watch the latest Cronenberg on a shitty computer screen if I can watch it on the big screen. It has as much to do with quality as it has with supporting the artists that I love, and I think a majority of people still think and feel the same way about it. This is why I believe most people who will or have already watched Map to the Stars online for free are people who never gave a rat's ass about watching the latest Cronenberg movie anyway, and would never have done it if they hadn't seen it offered on their usual online catalogue. In the same way I think no one in their right mind would watch Richard's Against the Wild online and not rent or buy a DVD copy if they really cared about watching the film in the first place. That does not mean no money will be lost at all - There are, after all, people who are not in their right minds. But I do believe that most of the people who actually care about watching those movies will pay to watch them. But maybe I'm just being naive. In any case, the system is indeed outdated. We can now consume globally, so that's how we want to do it. Therefore, all content should be released everywhere at once. The example was mentioned before, but I remember a few years back when I was living abroad and I could not watch the TV series I followed in any other way than a one-year-late, shitty foreign-language version, I would give in and download the original version episodes as they were being aired in the States week after week to keep in the loop. When the choice is between paying and watching or not paying and watching, the former will get picked most of the time. But when the choice becomes not paying and watching or not watching at all, the tables do tend to turn. The cinema experience needs to become more attractive, too. Cinemas need to stop milking the cow and projecting glorified Blu Rays on an IMAX screen while asking people to shell out 15€ or more to watch it. I know for a fact that some cinemas do it, and nothing makes me angrier. The industry seem to think that raising the prices is an effective way to cushion the impact of piracy, but it's the other way around: The hot dogs stall that sells their hot dogs for $1 less than their competition is always the one that is the most successful. While being cheaper than a pirated copy (often $0) is impossible, lowering the prices of cinema tickets will surely make more people risk the disappointment of a good night out being ruined by a terrible film watched at the Odeon Leicester Square. Adding livestreamed interviews with cast and crew where the audience can participate from the auditorium via texts or emails, or screening bonus material after the show for those who are interested in seeing it could also go a long way to bring back people in the theatres. And short films too. I don't know who was the idiot who thought replacing short films by adverts before the movie starts was a good idea, but a lot of people are put off by those never-ending commercials, but would probably venture in a cinema screen more often to check out an hitherto unseen 4 or 5-minute long short film at the start of the show. Not mentioning the beneficial impact this would have on up and coming filmmakers who would find a larger platform to screen their first shorts, plus the industry in general who would help finance those shorts as part of the distribution costs of the feature film following them, and show people that they trust the new generation to make films that are worthy of being screened ahead of the new Star Wars or Spiderman film. The industry is getting better at releasing content internationally and offering more viewing options to their clientele, but I think it still needs to go that extra mile (cheaper tickets, more value) if it really means to turn piracy into a thing of the past.

Hi Weber, I don't know of any online film school, but my immediate thought was: "Online film school? They're probably expensive and rather useless." I'm sure a lot of people here will agree that the most valuable offer from film schools is the ability to start building a network by meeting and working with talented or established people from the industry. The knowledge itself? You can learn it elsewhere for a fraction of the cost. There are plenty of books about lighting and cinematography that are used by film school teachers to develop their own programme, so just skip the middle-man (or woman), go straight to the source and save some money: Buy and read the books. Watch films. If you can afford them, buy a cheap camera, some lenses, some lights, and start shooting.

Yeah I was looking for Kramer's tutorial at first but this one popped up first in the results.

For some reason, I cannot see the video you embedded. I would suggest a composite shot with a fake wall, but you'll have to plan every little detail to pull it off. What equipment have you got to shoot this? Basically, the way I'd do it would be to shoot the first room, left to right, until I hit the wall, then same thing in the second room, from left to right. You have to time it so that the speed of the camera move is consistent in both shots. Then it's only a matter of bringing the two shots in AE or another software, and add a fake "wall" (an actual picture of a wall, concrete, or even a dark texture brought into your composition) to separate the two. Have a look at this: They're doing it vertically, but you could tweak it slightly to make it work horizontally.

I am sorry to read this. A truly great artist and an endless source of inspiration. My heart goes out to his family and friends.

That, I absolutely agree with. Excuse me, but I've been saying several times now that film will never die... I'm not on the film-haters bandwagon. In fact, I can't stand their silly arguments. All I'm saying is: If your only reason to shoot film is that it has a better resolution, be prepared to face the inevitable, when digital gets higher res than film, because it will. Let's embrace both film and digital as two different options yielding two different results on screen, regardless of all that resolution, DR, etc. bullshit. I'd choose film in a split second if it made sense for a personal project.