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Lost Souls (2000)


Boris bruno

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Hi I just recently watched lost souls by Janusz Kaminski, and wanted to know how to create the lighting effect and color grade he had throughout movie. I’m interested knowing to how to create these effects and lighting. I can send pictures for example. I shoot on Arri 35mm. 
 

 

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The overall look, besides the lighting, comes from the bleach bypass (aka skip bleach) processing where black silver is left in the image — there are LUTs that can simulate that. It helps to view the image on set with that type of high-contrast LUT because it can affect lighting (and even things like make-up, wardrobe, effects blood, etc.)

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If you are shooting film, then it helps to shoot tests to know what to expect, and the effect of a skip bleach is different whether you do it to the negative or print (and if print, you’d have to simulate the effect for all electronic forms of distribution so you’d want to create a LUT for dailies with that look). If your budget is too tight for skip-bleaching film tests at least take some straight footage into post to create a dailies LUT — basically with crushed blacks and some desaturation. The extra silver grain from a real skip bleach would have to done in some other manner, either on film from push processing or in post from extra sharpening and/or grain effects added.

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Here is a quick and dirty simulation using a photo of myself, the first is "normal" and the second has the blacks crushed, contrast increased, color lowered, and some grain added. You can see why this might affect how you light a set, for example, a weak fill light would probably drop away and yet you'd get a hotter reflection of the light in the eyes.  Because the increased contrast causes texture in skin to be more visible, especially if you increase sharpening to bring out the grain, sometimes you can get away with more diffusion for close-ups.

skipbleach1.jpg

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44 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

If you are shooting film, then it helps to shoot tests to know what to expect, and the effect of a skip bleach is different whether you do it to the negative or print (and if print, you’d have to simulate the effect for all electronic forms of distribution so you’d want to create a LUT for dailies with that look). If your budget is too tight for skip-bleaching film tests at least take some straight footage into post to create a dailies LUT — basically with crushed blacks and some desaturation. The extra silver grain from a real skip bleach would have to done in some other manner, either on film from push processing or in post from extra sharpening and/or grain effects added.

Thank you. I’m going to try bleach bypass. I wanted to create this exact look in my future films. Do you have any recommendations of lighting I need or lense to create this look as of course bleach bypass. Also I shoot on Arri 2c and wanted to try on this camera. What lense would be good for it. 

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I suspect you won't be able to afford to do actual bleach-bypass, labs sometimes have a $500 set-up fee, which is why it made more sense to wait until the time of release printing rather than pay for it daily for the negative.

The lighting is whatever lighting you want to do, there is no bleach bypass lighting... if you want to copy the lighting style of "Lost Souls" then watch the movie and copy that lighting.  The only technical issue is the big increase in contrast in the shadows might cause you to compensate on set, which is why you need to shoot some tests to develop the look so if you are shooting on film and your tests with the look applied show that shadows go black at 3-stops under instead of 5-stops under, which is usually part of the skip bleach look you want, but there may be moments where you need to add more light to something dark or more fill, etc.

Lenses aren't part of the skip bleach look either but you could look at "Lost Souls" and copy whatever lens choices they made.

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