Desaturated colors with solid blacks

[Laurent Navarri]

Hi,

 

I'm a french student in cinematography.

I'm actually working on a short film that will be shot in 35mm during the first week of december.

The action takes place in the 70's during a power grab in Morocco.

For this film, i want to have desaturated colors with solid blacks (most of the action takes place in an underground prison. Darkness is important: corridors, cells)

 

That's an example of the kind of look i'm searching for:

http://picasaweb.google.fr/laurent.navarri...feat=directlink

 

The film i'm working on is a small budget film. We don't have the money to do special laboratory treatment like silver retention or to do a lot of tests.

I was thinking to use a low contrast desaturated film (fuji 400t) but i'm afraid of the black quality. (maybe shoud i overexposed ?)

 

Do you have some advices to get desaturated colors while preserving solid blacks ?

 

Thank you very much

 

Laurent

 

PS: sorry for my bad english :)

[Bobby Shore]

Hi,

 

I'm a french student in cinematography.

I'm actually working on a short film that will be shot in 35mm during the first week of december.

The action takes place in the 70's during a power grab in Morocco.

For this film, i want to have desaturated colors with solid blacks (most of the action takes place in an underground prison. Darkness is important: corridors, cells)

 

That's an example of the kind of look i'm searching for:

http://picasaweb.google.fr/laurent.navarri...feat=directlink

 

The film i'm working on is a small budget film. We don't have the money to do special laboratory treatment like silver retention or to do a lot of tests.

I was thinking to use a low contrast desaturated film (fuji 400t) but i'm afraid of the black quality. (maybe shoud i overexposed ?)

 

Do you have some advices to get desaturated colors while preserving solid blacks ?

 

Thank you very much

 

Laurent

 

PS: sorry for my bad english :)

 

 

hey,

 

if you dont' have the money to test or for special processing, you're definitely on the right track in terms of working the look in through the choice of neg., how you expose it, and how it's printed. I've shot with the eterna 400t, has a nice soft pallette to it, and you could definitely crunch up the blacks if you overexposed it and printed down. unfortunately, that'll also bump up your color saturation a bit as well. In the stills you posted, a lot of the desat. look actually comes from the set and costume design. Not sure how much control you'll have, but if there aren't any strong colors in the frame to begin with, then you're half way there.

 

hope this was a touch helpful. If you can swing it (which it sounds like you've already thought of), beg the lab to skip-bleach the neg. But that'd defintiely mean a test so you'll know exactly how to rate and expose the stock. Good luck man!

 

 

Bobby Shore

mtl/la

www.bobbyshore.com

[Tebbe Schoeningh]

I can pm you the email adress of the DP who shot that feature. Write him and and ask him what he did to the neg and how he lit the scene you´re using as reference.

[Laurent Navarri]

Bobby, Tebbe,

Thank you very much for your answers.

 

Do you think that the fuji 400t overexposed will remain less saturated than the "classic" eterna 500t ?

 

I've read that it's possible to desaturate colors by lighting the neg with a blue tint (for example with HMI lights) and to compensate the tint when you go to print.

What do you think of this solution ?

Could it be combine with the overexposure ?

Does it affect the image quality in other ways ?

 

 

Laurent

[David Mullen ASC]

I think using the most pastel stock out there and then overexposing and printing down is the best approach if you can do a silver retention process, so overexposing Fuji Eterna 400T is a good approach. Making the lighting more blue-ish will help desaturate skin tones.

[Satsuki Murashige]

Hi Laurent,

 

Are you finishing on film or on video? You can easily control contrast and color saturation separately in the video world, but it's much more difficult on film. Usually, every step you take to increase contrast will also increase color saturation, and vice versa. For example, overexposing and printing down will get you richer blacks, but also more color. Printing on Premier stock will do the same. Flashing the film and using low-con filters will lower color, but also fog the blacks.

 

The one exception that I know of is silver retention processing, which will lower saturation and also increase contrast.

 

I think your best bet is to try to make the art direction as desaturated as possible, then add contrast with lighting and by overexposing the negative. Then you only have the skin tones to worry about. Good idea about using blue light, that will help. I think your stock choice is spot on, 400T will give you a significant amount of desaturation. It is a bit grainy compared to Eterna 500T.

[K Borowski]

You'd have to find a lab willing to do this for you, and the cost of the camera stock will be slightly higher, but I've seen striking examples of reversal film (5285 or Velvia) cross-processed in the standard negative developer (ECN-2) that look stunning.

 

I'm sure the printer lights/colorist's timing/grading would be unusual, but these images had the densest blacks and most muted colors I have ever seen in tandem.

[Andy Karkut]

I can pm you the email adress of the DP who shot that feature.

 

Excuse my ignorance, but what feature is this? The images look very striking indeed.

[Tebbe Schoeningh]

Excuse my ignorance, but what feature is this? The images look very striking indeed.

 

It´s called "Garage Olimpo" by Marco Bechis. Argentinian film about a prisoner during the military government in the 70´s who starts to have a love-hate relationship with er torturer.