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TWO QUESTIONS


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I've got two questions that have been bothering me for quite some time.

 

Rain is often shot simply, just by showing it as it hits the ground or as constant sheets over a set. Sometimes, however, it's shot in some way so that it seems we can see each fat rain droplet. For instance in 28 Days Later, when the main character is going on his rampage at the end of the movie, we see a shot of him standing in the rain. We can see every rain drop and the shot is amazing. How is this effect achieved? I assume it has something to do with a fast shutter speed.

 

My second question: I just watched the film "Friday Night Lights". The color seemed washed out. One of the very first shots of the movie is of this huge expanse of desert that seems to be colored a bluish gray brown and has had all the bright, vibrant colors eliminated. Throughout the film, this washed out effect seems constant. How is this effect achieved? Those of you who have seen the movie and know what I'm talking about, I'd love to hear what you think. I believe the same washed out style is used in the fantastic film "Three Kings".

 

Thanks a lot for any input.

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Rain:The convention is to back light the rain. For low budgets this isnt too practial b/c of the size lights and positioning required. I have side lit rain keeping it off the talent except for a pleasing backlight, also for close ups build a rig from pvc with holes cut in it to provide larger drops of rain.

 

Bleach: As for three kings I believe it was done through a skip bleach process ( im sure to get flamed for that assumption). This can be done on video by overexposing. I shot a sequence on a dvx100 with that stratedgy and i liked the results although I would want the whole film to look like it.

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Yes, a fast shutter speed helps the falling droplets stand out.

 

"Three Kings" used a skip-bleach process to the negative for the first act. "Friday Night Lights" went for a similar look but I'm not sure how they achieved it (silver retention or digital intermediate.)

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What's silver retention or digital intermediate? How can I replicate this washed out look on video?

 

 

Silver Retention is using one of several prcesses that keeps some of the silver on the prints. This will deepen blacks and desaturate colors (since adding grey to colors does that).

 

 

Digital intermediate is telecine-ing the film into a computer so you can manipulate it in after effects, final cut, etc. and then printing it back to film.

 

 

For video, it's very easy to desaturate and change the gamma of the footage or to color correct it in such a way that the color washes out.

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Hi,

 

Simulated bleach bypass is very easy in video. Many cameras - anything from a DSR-570 or similar upward - can do it to a great extent onboard the camera, and even if not it's a suite of adjustments that's unlikely to cause too many compression artifacts if you do it in post. I'd counsel very strongly against overexposing - if you want it to look blasted, do it with a curve in post and you can get close to the hilight effect without harsh DCC clipped edges on things. Frankly, though, on video I'd expose and grade the hilights normally, and let them simply seem bright in comparison to well-crushed blacks. It may be useful to shoot off-colour-balance - that is, balance on a warm card (if you want the image cold) or a cool card (if you want it warm.) I find that in-camera desaturation and black crushing are critically useful effects to making video look less crappy.

 

Phil

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You use color-correction software in post. Many editing systems have some basic color-correction capability. You are basically adding more contrast and lowering the color saturation. Even my cheap $100 Pinnacle Studio 8 editing software can do it...

 

Whatever you can do in-camera and in front of the camera, do first, but a lot of cheaper cameras have limited control over the contrast (gamma). But if your camera allows you to lower the color level, start with that.

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Guest Daniel J. Ashley-Smith

When people say crushing blacks, do they mean just removing all the detail and filling the area with a solid pure black?

 

If so, what's the best known method for doing this?

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Technically, "crushing the blacks" means lowering absolute black (let's say, you shot with the lens cap on) below what is considered the IRE level for broadcasting black, like 7.5 IRE for NTSC. This is sometimes referred to as "super black" I think. But honestly, you can't really transmit anything illegal anyway, so what the term has come to mean is lowering the brightness of the signal so that more shadow information is lost below the cut-off point for black. Usually you compensate by also increasing the contrast so that your highlights aren't darker as a result of bringing down the image. So you are sort of darkening the image to lose shadow details and then stretching out your highlights to brighten them -- essentially changing the gamma.

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