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The Colours of Woody Allen's Paris and Rome


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Hello!

 

I was wondering if any of you could tell me how do you think the colours of Woody Allen’s films Midnight in Paris and To Rome with Love were achieved in postproduction?

 

How would you define the look and the colours?

 

I'm particularly interested in what you think was tweaked, if there is anything that you recognize that might have been fiddled with right away.

 

Here are some Web pages with screenshots from the films:

 

http://www.thecinetourist.net/an-american-tourist-in-paris.html

http://thecinescapader.blogspot.com/2014/11/visiting-filming-locations-of-to-rome.html

http://movie-tourist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/midnight-in-paris-2011.html

http://movie-tourist.blogspot.com/2013/01/to-rome-with-love-2012.html
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews55/midnight_in_paris_blu-ray.htm
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film4/blu-ray_reviews_58/to_rome_with_love_blu-ray.htm
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Midnight-in-Paris-Blu-ray/26512/#Screenshots
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/To-Rome-with-Love-Blu-ray/58388/#Screenshots

 

Have in mind that the Movie Tourist screenshots look different than the films themselves.

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It's mainly a combination of warm-toned production design and lighting combined with color-timing the movie towards the warm side. Woody Allen was doing that even before his movies were finished digitally just with standard printer light technology.

 

With digital color-correction tools, the warming-up of the image can be a little more sophisticated since you can add more or less warmth to different parts of the frame if necessary -- I don't think a lot of time was spent on his movies doing that sort of selective area correction using "Power Windows" but occasionally it is necessary when just adding warmth overall does something odd to part of the frame, like making the shadows go too red or some blue object get too green.

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Thank you, David.

 

Yes, Woody Allen talked in one of his interviews how he likes to dress his characters in autumnal colours – brown, beige, gold – and how he has a great tolerance for red. He joked that his character's skin makes it all look like a Matisse painting.

 

Obviously, there is a lot of shade and diffused light (achieved with special “cloud mattresses” in Rome), a preference of both Woody Allen and Darius Khondji.

 

However, if I compare the photos of the behind the scenes of the films, for example the ones in The Cinescapader blog post or MovieStillsDB.com, the light is very harsh and white and not at all as beautiful as in the film. He somehow made it red for the Rome film and there is a sort of yellowish glow over his Paris imagery.

 

Here is the opening montage of the Midnight in Paris (available in HD):

 

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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The difference in warmth between the movies and some tourist snapshots is just color correction and production design; the difference in contrast is mainly that Allen shoots on film and he and his cinematographer try to use soft light when possible, whether using silks or shooting at the right time of day, whatever -- tourists don't have the advantage of a grip department flying large silks over them...

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Yes, that is precisely what I meant. I want to know how they might have corrected the colours. How might they have warmed the images? Did they change white balance? Did they fiddle with the red channel? What did they do to the shadows?

 

Take a look at this image of Rome's Capitol:

 

https://filmsatmidnight.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/the-cinematography-of-darius-khondji/

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There are lots of ways to warm up an image in digital color-correction. Generally there isn't a "white balance" setting if the material was shot on film other than the color balance of the film stock and whether additional correction filters were used, but I don't believe these Allen films were shot with extra filtration to bias the color temperature, so the scan of the negative probably would reveal a more or less neutral colored image in daylight exteriors (scenes that were artificially lit might have warm-colored lights employed).

 

So given a more or less neutral image, the colorist along with Allen and his cinematographer would ask for a warm bias as a starting point -- as for how the colorist starts to shift an image towards warmth, you'd have to talk to the colorist since there are a number of paths... yes, you could push the red channel or reduce the blue channel for starters, you could play with the chroma saturation levels in those channels or their brightness, gamma, etc. And you can do these gamma and color corrections to the shadows, midtones, or highlights only instead of overall.

 

"Warm" is a somewhat vague concept -- a warm image could have a yellow-green bias or a red-magenta bias depending on your tastes. Plus as I said, if you are warming up an image, you may find that blue areas, like skies, shift in different directions than naturally warm areas like skin tones, and thus require some extra work separating those areas so that they can be colored independently.

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The shot on the Capitoline Hill was made in the evening when the sunlight just was more or less that colour. Very simple. The contrast has been controlled a bit, to open up the shadows, but that's about all.

An image from my DSLR would look like that with a bit of care. So, for that matter, would one of my Agfachromes from years ago.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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The difference in warmth between the movies and some tourist snapshots is just color correction and production design; the difference in contrast is mainly that Allen shoots on film and he and his cinematographer try to use soft light when possible, whether using silks or shooting at the right time of day, whatever -- tourists don't have the advantage of a grip department flying large silks over them...

 

 

There are lots of ways to warm up an image in digital color-correction. Generally there isn't a "white balance" setting if the material was shot on film other than the color balance of the film stock and whether additional correction filters were used, but I don't believe these Allen films were shot with extra filtration to bias the color temperature, so the scan of the negative probably would reveal a more or less neutral colored image in daylight exteriors (scenes that were artificially lit might have warm-colored lights employed).

 

 

As I said previously, that's exactly it! Colour correction! This is what I was hoping to find out: how they did what they did. And, obviously, I didn’t expect to find exactly how Allen’s team did it, but to find out about some possible pointers, tricks, and streams of thought as to how they achieved it.

 

I have to point out – and I hope that Mark reads this, too – the links I’ve told you about aren’t tourist shots. At least, not all of them are. I specifically listed the Web sites that contained the images shot by a photographer on set. Take a look at the image of Woody Allen directing Alison Pill and Flavio Parenti in front of the Fontana di Trevi on The Cinescapader’s Web site. Or all of the images on MovieStillsDB.com.

 

When I mentioned white balance, I meant correcting it in colour-correction software. That surely can be done?

 

The shot on the Capitoline Hill was made in the evening when the sunlight just was more or less that colour. Very simple. The contrast has been controlled a bit, to open up the shadows, but that's about all.

An image from my DSLR would look like that with a bit of care. So, for that matter, would one of my Agfachromes from years ago.

 

I was expecting someone to say that.

 

How would you achieve it?

 

Sure, if you check where the Capitoline Hill stands and how it is positioned, it is clear from the scene that the Sun was in the West. However, take a look at how orange the Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Palazzo Nuovo, Palazzo Senatorio, and Palazzo dei Conservatori are. It helps that the façades are orange, such as those of the Capitoline Hill palazzi, or brown, such as the one of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. Even the shadows and the pilasters of the palazzi are orange.

 

How did they manage to that, for example, and not ruin the sky and the foliage?

 

There is another scene, the one where Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) gets lost in Piazza del Popolo, with the famous 360° shot, and there if you compare the photos from the film’s photographer, you will see how harsh the light is, even though, again, the Sun is setting.

 

Or the scene in Villa dei Quintili.

 

How do you make non-magic-hour light orange?

 

What about Paris? How does one achieve that yellowish cast?

 

And to ask again, how did the Kodak film used affect the colours, if it did at all?

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I have any number of images of Venice, Treviso, Trieste, you name it, which aren't too dissimilar. I often add a bit of clarity and saturation but in general Renaissance Italy just is that colour.

I haven't studied the film and my knowledge of Roman geography isn't encyclopaedic so I don't know what you're referring to, but it's clear that there's some correction to that scene- the sky and foreground are a little orange, just not enough to make the faces look unnatural.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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I already explained how it was probably done... now we are going in circles. Why is it so hard to understand how warmth can be added to an image? Are you expecting some other answer because you don't like the one you are getting? Do you want someone to take you into a color-correction suite and show you step by step how you can add warmth to an image, how you can isolate a blue sky or a green bush, how chroma and luminance keys work, how Power Windows work, how you can adjust colors either overall or in the highlights, midtones, or shadows, how you can adjust either the primaries or the secondaries, how color is affected by changes to gamma/contrast, by black level?

 

You seem to think there is some special trick being employed by Woody Allen and his cinematographers that is outside the realm of normal color-correction or photography because you don't like the answers you are getting, they seem too simple to you or something. Do you think CGI effects are being employed just to get a warm tone to his images? There are dozens of ways to warm up all or part of an image and I think we've listed them all for you and still you think there must be some other answer.

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Oh, I’ve made you angry, haven’t I?

 

I don’t want this to sound blunt and confrontational, because it isn’t intended to, but let us remind ourselves that you talked about production design in a subforum dedicated to colour correction in a topic about the specifics of colour correction of two films.

 

I asked twice about the film. You haven’t replied.

 

You’ve now listed the features of a colour-correction program.

 

I ask to tell me the specifics. Have in mind that I am not only talking to you, but that I think that perhaps some other people, too, will chime in.

 

When someone want to create all these very popular pastel images, one can type it into Google, for example, and get a full tutorial on how to do it. This isn’t something I was going for on in here, but I was, to use one of the things you listed, expecting you to say: Look at this parameter and try to change it this way. Or something like that. All you listed is very general and unspecific.

 

However, I am very thankful to you.

 

Mark, here is something for you: quite by accident, looking for something else entirely, look at what I bumped onto!

 

http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/guq4I2AYmbv/Allison+Pill+Flavio+Parenti+Judy+Davis+perform/kD9bO7SsA51/Flavio+Parenti

http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Flavio+Parenti/Allison+Pill+Flavio+Parenti+Judy+Davis+perform/PGKxxAQRyQJ

http://www.caughtonset.com/flavio-parenti-sexy/?full=true

http://www.dromemagazine.com/woody-allen-to-rome-with-love/

http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Flavio+Parenti/Allison+Pill+Flavio+Parenti+Judy+Davis+perform/8TsFHqeO5x2

http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Woody+Allen/Flavio+Parenti/Allison+Pill+Flavio+Parenti+Judy+Davis+perform/0s5BsUZugoD

http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Flavio+Parenti/Allison+Pill+Flavio+Parenti+Judy+Davis+perform/Nd7eHONH8JA

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/to-rome-with-love-i1859650/d807f417

 

Take a look at that last one.

 

There you go.

 

I know the colours of Italy, but those are not these colours in the film.

 

And the geography is simple. If you look at that scene, the buildings you see from your left to your right are the ones I listed, in that order.

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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I'm being general and unspecific because I'm not a colorist, I'm a cinematographer. An internet post is too limiting to give a tutorial on how to use DaVinci Resolve or a FilmLight BaseLight set-up. A starting point might be a book like:

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Technique-Digital-Color-Correction/dp/024081715X/ref=la_B001JS0LHO_1_1/187-8993088-2871639?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435699650&sr=1-1

 

The author, Steve Hullfish, also has some YouTube tutorials.

 

However, keep in mind that is always easier to add contrast than to lower it -- in other words, it helps to start out with footage containing a wide dynamic range, i.e. shot on color negative film or a high-end digital cinema camera, or in stills, a raw file.

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I was thinking about what you said previously today, and I think that what I find most astonishing and what I would like to know is how they managed to turn such unflattering light into what one sees in the films?

 

Does that mean that you can shoot in whatever conditions you wish and with simple colour-correction trickery you can turn it into whatever you like to turn it into?

 

Why are then those attitudes about golden hour so unflinching?

 

I bumped onto this photo of the behind-the-scenes state of affairs on Midnight in Paris:

 

http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/VNng8xUcPW_/Carla+Bruni+Set+Midnight+Paris+2/Q2_1yGTgagJ/Woody+Allen

 

and I was wondering if you could tell me why is it that they felt the need to put that huge source of light there (does it have a precise name), together with that diffusing panel and the huge bounce one?

 

What does it achieve there? If one looks at the scene in the film, you can see that the side of the faces nearer to the bounce panel seem to have more shadows.

 

This was the colourist for both films:

 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0310695/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

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I think that what I find most astonishing and what I would like to know is how they managed to turn such unflattering light into what one sees in the films?

 

Lighting and grip is a big one. Big frames of silk overhead to diffuse harsh toppy sunlight; big frames of Ultrabounce, muslin, and silver/gold lamé near the actors to softly bounce light from one side; big frames of black on the other side to create negative fill; HMIs through smaller diffusion frames either direct or in large soft boxes like your posted pic above. Gels on lights and different colored bounce materials allow you to change the color of the light. Also, there are some basic outdoor photography strategies like shooting towards the sun so that your subject naturally has a bright backlight and soft frontal light that you can enhance with a bounce card, or framing a lit subject against a dark background and vice versa.

 

Add to that various lenses and filters to soften the image and lower contrast, create pleasing artifacts and aberrations, grads and polarizers to darken a blue sky, and you have a nice set of tools to control the image in camera. Then you can warm or cool down the image overall in post color grading, adjust contrast and color of highlight/mid-tones/shadows individually, select and adjust individual colors in the frame, add vignettes and power windows, remove and replace entire parts of the frame.

 

Basically, a cinematographer has to develop an eye for good compositional possibilities while noticing all the potentially distracting elements within and also develop the skills and toolset to systematically eliminate them. That's probably where you and David Mullen are misunderstanding each other. Being very experienced, David probably assumed that you could infer these things on your own. If you haven't worked on big sets where these tools are used everyday then it can seem like a big mystery. But these tools are basically the bread and butter of every cinematographer, so it's understandable that we discuss them a lot on Cinematography.com.

 

Does that mean that you can shoot in whatever conditions you wish and with simple colour-correction trickery you can turn it into whatever you like to turn it into?

 

Absolutely not. Color correction in the digital age has come a long way compared to traditional film timing but you still need to begin with well-shot footage. That's why you'll see cinematographers still using bounces, negative fill, nets, and flags to achieve the desired contrast ratios and quality of light. What digital color correction does allow for is easily exaggerating subtle differences in contrast or color ratios that already exist in the footage. It's still very difficult to make a completely flatly lit face look like a Caravaggio just using post color correction or make a pimply raccon-eyed sun-lit face look like a L'oréal ad. It ends up being much quicker and cheaper to shoot and light the shot well to begin with.

 

I bumped onto this photo of the behind-the-scenes state of affairs on Midnight in Paris:

 

http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/VNng8xUcPW_/Carla+Bruni+Set+Midnight+Paris+2/Q2_1yGTgagJ/Woody+Allen

 

and I was wondering if you could tell me why is it that they felt the need to put that huge source of light there (does it have a precise name), together with that diffusing panel and the huge bounce one?

 

What does it achieve there? If one looks at the scene in the film, you can see that the side of the faces nearer to the bounce panel seem to have more shadows.

 

To really see what that light is doing, you should go through the film and try to find the exact shot that they are lighting. Then look where the light is aiming by seeing where the shadows fall and try to imagine what the image would look like without it. In this case, it's probably just a soft frontal fill light to bring the actors up relatively to the background and make them pop. High frontal soft light is also usually very flattering, filling in any skin imperfections, creating a big reflection in the eye, and minimizing an unshapely nose.

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Does that mean that you can shoot in whatever conditions you wish and with simple colour-correction trickery you can turn it into whatever you like to turn it into?

 

No, you still need grip and electric work, etc. The thing with post is that there is a rule "garbage in / garbage out" or to put it another way, the shots that come in closest to the final look and are the easiest to correct tend to be the best and the one's that need the most work often still end up being less good. So a cinematographer does what he can to get it in camera and then finish the look in post. But in terms of adding warmth, that's so easy to do in post that most (not all) cinematographers don't mess with warming filters for day exteriors (warming up lights for interiors and night exteriors is still done though.)

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David will probably get mad at me again for asking this for the third time, but I just have to. I would like to know two things. First, how would you two describe the colour scheme of Midnight in Paris? Second, what are the properties of the film used (Kodak Vision3 200T 5213, 500T 5219) and how did it affect colour, if at all?

 

Let’s get that straightened out first.

 

Lighting and grip is a big one. Big frames of silk overhead to diffuse harsh toppy sunlight; big frames of Ultrabounce, muslin, and silver/gold lamé near the actors to softly bounce light from one side; big frames of black on the other side to create negative fill; HMIs through smaller diffusion frames either direct or in large soft boxes like your posted pic above. Gels on lights and different colored bounce materials allow you to change the color of the light. Also, there are some basic outdoor photography strategies like shooting towards the sun so that your subject naturally has a bright backlight and soft frontal light that you can enhance with a bounce card, or framing a lit subject against a dark background and vice versa.

 

Yes. A lot of that was done here. I talked about what Darius Khondji called “cloud balloons” (I called them “cloud mattresses” above; there is a picture of them somewhere online, but now I can’t find it), made by a firm from Milan, that was used for certain outdoor scenes in Rome. For example, this one:

 

vlcsnap_error379.png

 

There was also a lot of backlit shots. Some I liked:

 

vlcsnap_error072.png

 

Some I didn’t (I found the subjects too dark and the sky overexposed, which was to be expected and probably an intentional thing):

 

vlcsnap_error766.png

 

I much preferred the direct-sunlight shot at this location (check the Movie Tourist blog).

 

I really must learn to love backlit photography more. It sometimes seems as if nothing else is even to be considered.

 

I think that David and I are probably misunderstanding each other is that I wanted him to describe the approach to colours in both films as something else other than “warm” and that I wanted him to tell me what he thinks might have been done in the various options, tweaks, and settings in a colour-correction program. By that I mean stuff like expecting him to say that maybe they added red to shadows or changed the tone curves in a certain way and things like that. Obviously, without ultimate precision, because, as he himself say, there are various ways to achieve it. I was just interested in the possible thought process involved, approach, and what they ultimately wanted from these colours.

 

Another thing is that, it seems to me, David isn’t really thrilled with the way these two films look while, on the other hand, I’m almost extatic.

 

I also wanted to know if you can colour sunlight. Many of these scenes seem to have been shot in white sunlight, but they ended up as if being lit by a red star. That brings me to the following point:

 

Of course, when I asked about shooting in awful light and not worrying about it because colour-correction will solve everything, that was a hyperbole. I am glad that David mentioned that rule about “garbage in, garbage out”, which is valid not only here but in so many other endeavours as well, something the two of you also know.

 

Darius Khondji talked in one of his interviews about a lot of things that you mentioned above. However, I don’t think he mentioned this light source

 

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/midnight-in-paris-i1605783/7687ac01

 

Is that some kind of LED panel? Darius did mention Kino Flos, however, and this panel looks sort of similar to them. I can post a screenshot of that scene if you want. The shadows are in the opposite direction of the one expected from the placement of that light source there.

 

Here is how that scene with Carla Bruni and Owen Wilson ended up looking:

 

vlcsnap_error418.png

 

He also said nothing, I think, about these lights:

 

http://www.afcinema.com/IMG/arton7908.jpg

 

What are they?

 

What I also have as an impression, and it might probably be wrong, is that I know that while filming they wanted to eliminate this and that and achieve this or that, but that ultimately they didn’t know with certainty that the films looking the way they did. It was, ultimately, a process of exploration, and a very successful one. You can do a lot of preparation to meet certain preconditions in order to get as close as possible to what you want to achieve.

 

Another very important thing: Take a look at two screenshots on Movie Tourist blog – first, the Sabatini café one, with Leopoldo and his lady friend, and the one in Via Vittorio Veneteo, with Leopoldo and his wife. There are also a few other scene with the similar phenomenon I will try to describe. It is as if there are there irregular blobs of light over the frame floating around. Take a look at that orange-ish patch around the middle of the frame or the orange-ish reflection on the street and the building across the street in Via Vittorio Veneto. It looks like some sort of reflection or something like that. I wonder if that was intentional.

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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I don't think there is an inherent look to 5219 500T and 5213 200T. They are almost the only color negative stocks still available and many films that look completely different have been shot on them, so clearly lots of different looks are possible. Obviously both are tungsten-balanced (and thus biased towards blue in daylight), 5207 250D would naturally be more saturated in the warm colors. But this can be fixed in color grading or in camera with an 85 filter to correct back to neutral, plus a warming filter like Coral, Antique Suede, or Chocolate. David has already mentioned that he doesn't think any colored filters were used on camera, so that means it was probably done in post.

 

Between the two, 5219 is grainier and slightly softer, but otherwise they both have very wide dynamic range and matched color response. All the Vision 3 stocks were designed to be a good solid starting point for color grading, unlike the now discontinued Fuji Vivid stocks or previous generations of Kodak stocks which were more contrasty and saturated. So there is no special look or quality to the stock that would help create the look we are talking about.

 

As to your first question, I would describe the color scheme as overall (i.e. highlights/midtones/shadows) warm in the yellow/red spectrum but with pure and saturated primary colors (greens, reds). The contrast is soft on the faces with lots of bounce fill and soft keys. Similar in look to:

 

'Amelie' Bruno Delbonnel

'A Very Long Engagement' Bruno Delbonnel

'The Ninth Gate' Darius Khondji

'City of Lost Children' Darius Khondji

'The Double Life of Veronique' Slawomir Idziak

'The Sheltering Sky' Vittorio Storaro

'Last Tango in Paris' Vittorio Storaro

 

So clearly, this is both a common way of shooting Paris and also a favored look of Khondji. Note that most of the films listed are from the pre-DI era so it was not possible to both have a warm overall look and also pure primaries since photochemical color timing could only affect global corrections.

 

I think the problem is that you are asking for specific recipes on color grading. David has already said that he is not a colorist and doesn't know those programs well enough to help you, and yet you persist in asking him same questions. The way it works in film and tv is that the DP sits behind the colorist looking at a monitor and gives guidance while the colorist makes the actual adjustments. The DP is concerned with the results, not the specifics of how it was accomplished. So while it is possible that we may know a little bit about the technical how-to, if you really want to learn how to grade then you need to talk to a colorist. You are wasting your time asking these questions on a cinematography forum.

 

I will leave you with one of the few things I learned about the specifics of color grading from a colorist. Think of the image as being composed of three colors, Red, Green, and Blue. These are the primary colors. Combine them all in equal quantities and you have pure white. Subtract them in equal quantities and you have grey. Remove them all and you have black. Now adjust them individually and you can create any color you like.

 

The complementary colors to RGB are Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. So subtract Red and you add Cyan. Subtract Green and you add Magenta. Subtract Blue and you add Yellow. Now imagine that you have RGB/CMY control over highlights, midtones, and shadows separately, as well as saturation. You should now be able to figure out how to add and subtract any color you want. Want warm highlights, subtract blue. Want to add magenta to midtones, increase magenta or subtract green. Hope that helps.

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Satsuki, you cannot believe how grateful I am for your post. I just love it. It is precise, with just enough detail, and to the point. You told me exactly what I needed to know about three things I have been asking about since the beginning: the inherent looks of the films used and the colour scheme.

 

Of course, I am thankful to David and Mark as well.

 

I think the problem is that you are asking for specific recipes on color grading. David has already said that he is not a colorist and doesn't know those programs well enough to help you, and yet you persist in asking him same questions. The way it works in film and tv is that the DP sits behind the colorist looking at a monitor and gives guidance while the colorist makes the actual adjustments. The DP is concerned with the results, not the specifics of how it was accomplished. So while it is possible that we may know a little bit about the technical how-to, if you really want to learn how to grade then you need to talk to a colorist. You are wasting your time asking these questions on a cinematography forum.

 

I don't think this is right. Somehow, I keep going in circles for reasons unknown to me, but I don't think it is my fault. I wasn't asking about that much detail as I think you're implying. I was just looking for some pointers about what David thinks might have been added to the shadows, for example. I guess I've made a mistake in believeing that a cinematographer's / DP's education includes certain amount of colour-correction training.

 

I knew the bit about the DP sitting behind the colourist. I even think that both Darius Khondji and Woody Allen spoke about working with the colourist of both films.

 

Also, somehow, it flew past you that we are now well beyond colour correction and that I have now shifted the discussion to lighting with my question about the specific lights used on the set I don't think were mentioned in an interview with Darius. Where did you see me ask the same thing again? I asked about the films and the colour scheme three times, but that is because it wasn't answered and because that is something a cinematographer knows, and it was important to me to see how much of an effect the films might have had on the looks. As I suspected, pretty much nothing dramatic. Though, I should say that I think there is some lovely graininess to be seen when watching Midnight in Paris on Blu-ray.

 

Have in mind that I was also under the mistaken belief that colourists – and not only cinematographers / DPs might visit a subforum dedicated to colour grading, which is why I ask this here.

 

There is probably also the thing that I think these two films look like no other whereas the two of you don't think so and aren't at all that impressed.

 

Now I was thinking about asking again about that light seen in that MovieStillsDB photo, and I was going to post a scene where it was used, but I'm afraid I might annoy you too much.

 

Or I could again ask you about the shot on the bench, but then, you not replying already might mean that I shouldn't ask you again. I was just surprised how huge that bounce panel (or what I think is a bounce panel) might be.

 

Or the blob of orange light?

 

No one is asking you to know exactly, but some thoughts about it are more than welcome.

 

I will leave you with one of the few things I learned about the specifics of color grading from a colorist. Think of the image as being composed of three colors, Red, Green, and Blue. These are the primary colors. Combine them all in equal quantities and you have pure white. Subtract them in equal quantities and you have grey. Remove them all and you have black. Now adjust them individually and you can create any color you like.

 

This I knew.

 

The complementary colors to RGB are Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. So subtract Red and you add Cyan. Subtract Green and you add Magenta. Subtract Blue and you add Yellow. Now imagine that you have RGB/CMY control over highlights, midtones, and shadows separately, as well as saturation. You should now be able to figure out how to add and subtract any color you want. Want warm highlights, subtract blue. Want to add magenta to midtones, increase magenta or subtract green. Hope that helps.

 

This, surprisingly, I kind of didn't delve into too much so I didn't know.

 

With this topic, I have basically started my quest to become cinematographically literate, and I would have a few things to ask you about some of the techniques you mentioned above and that were used in the films.

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These films indeed had a very nice budget: $17 million each.

 

I wish I could decipher what scene is it that they're shooting in that photo. That would explain a lot. I'm intrigued about what those big lights are doing in a daytime scene.

 

I have another question.

 

This is what Darius Khondji said in one of his interviews:

 

 

 

For the big guns, I like the electricians to use the lights they're comfortable with, but when we go inside for closeups, whether I'm in Rome, New York, London, Paris or Los Angeles, the light is my light.

 

I know of a few meanings of the phrase "big guns", but what does he mean here?

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Actually, I think the frames from the film you posted look great. I just don't think there's much mystery to how it was achieved. There are a lot of ways to achieve the same look using the standard tools of the trade as we have discussed here, and no way to know for sure how it was done in this particular case unless someone who was there can tell us.

 

So I propose that you change your method of questioning. Why not post one frame grab at a time plus one BTS pic of the setup and simply ask how it might have been accomplished? You're bound to get more useful responses if you don't overwhelm people with so many questions.

 

'Big guns' in this context means large lighting units, things like 5K, 10K, 20K tungsten fresnels, 4K, 8K, 12K, 18K HMI pars and fresnels, Dinos, Maxibrutes, Xenons, Carbon Arcs, etc. Lights with similar output are largely interchangeable and can be made to look the same within reason. They just have different properties that make certain lights more efficient in particular situations.

 

For example, generally most DPs use HMIs outdoors since they are naturally 5600K in color and have greater output per watt, meaning the lights don't have to be gelled and a smaller generator can be used. But other DPs really insist on the look of tungsten light outdoors because they can see a difference and so would choose to use a 20K or Dino instead and then gel the unit blue.

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