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Color Grading Digital For Film Like Results


ryanstrong

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Relatively new to color grading film. I've been a photographer and retoucher/color corrector for years so transitioning has had a lot of similarities and some technical differences.

 

My question is about pushing digital content (in particular footage from a Canon 5D MKII) to have a more film-like appearance.

 

Some of my favorite cinematographers have that minimal contrast look (faded shadows and faded highlights), which has been easy to achieve with good flat footage. Moving though to color grading is different.

 

What I feel like I'm seeing is that there are some magentas in some of the highlights and then a bit of cyan/green hues in the shadows, subtle but some sort of cast is there. For those that have worked directly with film can anyone confirm this? Anyone care to elaborate or have further discussion on this, probably, overly discussed topic?

 

EDIT: Because I know this can lead to some vague ideas as to what style I am referencing, in particular I really enjoy Harris Savides' work on Elephant.

Edited by ryanstrong
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Hello Ryan,

 

Have you looked in the the Tiffen Dfx v3 package? You can view their webinars they have had for the last couple of weeks on you tube. The stand alone package is only around $200 but for the Aftereffects Plugin it's $700, but you can pull off some very awesome effects with the package, AND if you do go with the added plugin, the controls are right there in After Effects so your work flow doesn't have to change, OH and btw, with the plugin it comes with After Effects, Final Cut, and Adobe Premiere Pro in one bundle, AND if you make changes in After Effects then move over to Final Cut, the information moves with it. It is one of the best pieces of software like this I have seen at this price level.

 

Sincerely, Respectfully,

Robert M. Ditto

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  • 4 weeks later...
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The problem with this is that the entire topic is intrinsically very subjective and production-specific - it's hard to know what you want, and how that's best achieved on any given show.

 

In my experience, though, when people ask for things to "look like film", what they're actually asking for is for it to look appropriate. I've commonly shown people this image and asked them to say which images they think are film and which are video. I won't drag this out by asking that here - the only images which are film are the top left two - the rest of it is graded video. Some people can tell, some can't, but I've had a really alarming number of people who waxed lyrical about how they wanted a "film look" view those pictures and tell me that's what they wanted, as if they're all in anything even remotely like the same style!

 

So, without knowing what you're after, it's hard to advise, but in general I tend to underexpose quite a bit, grade it back up in postproduction, and take a very keen interest in production design. There is no magic technique that will take a bad-looking scene and make it look great, and people frequently forget that the easiest way to make a scene look - say - green is to shoot green objects (we used to get asked this a lot after Saving Private Ryan and The Matrix became popular, with their greenish look). Camerawork begins with choice of subject, and in the current world of pretty good cheap cameras, the inevitable expense of production design can be a considerably greater barrier to nice pictures. I don't think it's any great conceit to say that the stuff I've shot that I'm most pleased with was filmed in circumstances that I controlled myself, so I could pick locations, props and costume. It all begins in front of the lens. Lighting, filtration, choice of lens, camera settings and grading can and should support the way things look, but in general they cannot do more than that unless applied with a very heavy hand. My experience of low-budget productions is that if they don't look good, it is because they fail to understand this.

 

P

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello Ryan,

 

Have you looked in the the Tiffen Dfx v3 package? You can view their webinars they have had for the last couple of weeks on you tube. The stand alone package is only around $200 but for the Aftereffects Plugin it's $700, but you can pull off some very awesome effects with the package, AND if you do go with the added plugin, the controls are right there in After Effects so your work flow doesn't have to change, OH and btw, with the plugin it comes with After Effects, Final Cut, and Adobe Premiere Pro in one bundle, AND if you make changes in After Effects then move over to Final Cut, the information moves with it. It is one of the best pieces of software like this I have seen at this price level.

 

Sincerely, Respectfully,

Robert M. Ditto

 

 

Hey Robert,

 

I am wondering, if you are color grading r3d and you want to use this program will it move the information into red cine x?

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