Color Makes the Movie
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 at 10:30AM 
One of the lovely accidental insights provided by the "deleted scenes" found on many DVDs is a little window into what a movie looks like in its unfinished form. Often these extras are dumped directly from an Avid, where they have temp sound, no music, and usually a one-light telecine transfer. In other words, little or no color correction.
Seeing how rough a multi-million-dollar studio film looks in its formative stages is a great inspiration to the DV Rebel. It reminds us that a great deal of what makes a movie feel "big" comes in the finishing and polishing stages—specifically the sound mix and the color grading.
A great example of this is Transporter 2, which features a very aggressive DI. On the DVD (it's now also available on Blu-ray), there are some deleted and extended scenes that show how unsexy the film looks without all of its intended color work.
Remember, you may not be able to hire stars or secure expensive locations, but you can apply high-quality color correction (and sound work) to your movie using inexpensive desktop tools. You just have to be willing to put the time in.
EDIT: Be sure to read the comments on this post! They expand nicely on the topic.
Reader Comments (33)
Those are nice examples. Of course, those shots are pretty well lit from the start, too.
I always find it fascinating how much the dialog edit fixes all kinds of problems in the audio track (buzzing lights, actors off-camera and off-mic speaking, etc.)
Its a very good point and would add that
for the rebel looking to create moody
ambience, see how the original is exposed vs
the final grade. I've seen quite a bit of budget
projects suffer because of lighting issues and
videos inability to handle low light.
Most of those shots look like they have a slight vignette as well. Which, naturally, every good DV Rebel knows how to achieve with 1 click. ;)
Hey jade east, _great_ point! The filmmakers obviously knew they would be doing a DI, and gave themselves a nice evenly-exposed neg to provide the most latitude in post. This shooting philosophy applies even more with consumer video, where noise and compression artifacts lurk in shadows and are just waiting for color correction to bring them out of hiding.
NICE post Stu!
I'll blog and rant on it tomorrow.
Jade - EXACTLY. Totally agree.
Stu - your bit about exposed for lattitude in post is so good and right and important MAYBE YOU SHOULD PUT IT IN THE BLOG ENTRY AND EXPAND ON THE THOUGHT...hint hint Mr. Posty Guy.
: )
Your pal,
-mike
Thanks for the comment Mike! I almost did edit my reply to jade's comment into the post, so you and I are on the same wavelength. But by now the comments have a life and contribution of their own, which I always appreciate. You'll note that I've added an encouragement to check 'em out.
Nice post Stu.
Looking at these images I wonder about something. I don't have the DVD at hand to see if it looks the same there but as best seen in shot 4 of these examples the girl's blouse looks overexposed quite a bit and all the detail on the left side seems lost. Yet with color correction they manage to bring it back to normal. I was under the impression that there's no way of recovering detail from clipped highlights. How do they do it?
martin-s, good observation. The Avid version is a bit blown-out, but _it's not the original_. The original is a camera negative, presumably with plenty of highlight detail. The Avid transfer just happens to be a bit blown-out, but the DI uses a 10-bit scan of the full-range neg as a source.
In this way the deleted scene images don't represent the absolute best way to shoot this scene on video, as you'd have to be very conscious about not blowing out highlights on video (whether MiniDV or Sony F23).
Hence the challenge of shooting video responsibly. You must preserve both shadow and highlight detail, with perilous clipping and crushing awaiting you at either end of the exposure spectrum if you fail.
Jade's point is still sound though—shooting this scene brighter than you intend it to look is still the prudent way to go. You'd just have to be really careful about those highlights!
Thanks for this.
These images make me wonder: how do they apply the greenish cast while keeping the skin tones so nice? (In the last image, for example, look how green the door frame gets.)
Man, you guys are asking all the right questions. Tom, the answer is probably worth an entire post—so stay tuned.
Hi all
Stu very good examples , the picture loos sexy and the women looks more sexy with this color correction
Yeah i agree and i see in the book too , the good use the color change all picture
Great Post Stu. I love how Color is being noticed, finally.
Color helps tell the story by creating the mood. It is an absolute, not an afterthought.
I couldn't agree more on the exposure of the original neg. Good neutral exposure, enough latitude to create the mood. When this is tried in Camera. it usually is what it is!
Again great post!
One of the Lord of the Rings DVDs has a 'before and after grading' clip as well. I believe it's the Fellowship of the Ring Extended edition extras. Certainly another worthy example to check out!
Thanks for clearing that up, Stu.
This blog comes at the right time as I'm currently adopting the DVRebel color grading workflow which has many advantages over my previous methods.
As for Tom's question about the nice skin tones I think the "push and pull" method from the Guide (p. 294) covers this pretty well. You try to push the shadows and highlights in different directions and avoid changing the skin tones.
I was reading the film scanning white paper on the Cinesite website (www.cinesite.co.uk) and it states that newer stocks hold more information than a 10 bit log scan can handle. Should these scans move to something like OpenEXR then? I remember reading a while back in the Cinefex article on "The Time Machine" and it stated how ILM's post workflow was moving towards a total floating point pipeline. I guess this is where OpenEXR came from? What do they scan in at ILM? 10 bit log or do they use Open EXR for HDR files?
hehe a few too many questions here but I always appreciate your blog Stu.
Speaking of the Lord of the Rings, there is some nice stuff on one of the three Extended Edition DVDs about how Lesnie shot the movie for DI. There is similar stuff (I believe) about "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" on that DVD. The general attitude is shoot a nice beefy negative, with lots of detail.
It's worth noting that for indie filmmakers that as inspiring as this work is, you can't just fix it in post. Doing digital color correction is a decision made in preproduction, and requires skill and forethought. If you don't have a lot of money, lighting for the final image is probably cheaper than run and gun shooting and paying a post house a wad of cash to produce something inferior.
But that same wad of cash and a lot of forethought in the preproduction/production phase can produce gorgeous results.
you're all very interested about the wonders of color correction but you'll never be able to "fix" your movies like in this blog post.
why? you don't use film. film has at least 10bit images (even 32 lately).
the big advantage of film over video (for now) is is latitude. an ability to capture highlight and shadow detail. Then you can decide what to crush or burn in the grade. Also the more colour space the better.
The 'ungraded' was a one light transfer done straight after the film is processed, to get it to the editor asap to spot any problems. Ultimately the film is re-scanned more carefully, producing a far muddier looking picture but with full contrast ready, for the final grade.
Pretty much everything from dv to hd benefits from a grade, even if you get it close in the camera, a small tweak normally sweetens it up a touch. And we all need sweetening up a touch. . .
It'd be really nice if you uploaded full res before and after pictures so we could try and achieve the same colour correction :)
That un-sexy look is exacty what we've seen in most italian movies and music videos for the past twenty-thirty years. Few exceptions, like Academy Awards winner Vittorio Storaro. Reading your advices finally gives me a technical insight about stuff I've been noticing for years without being able to name it.
Well... I think the point is not to make as is in the movie. We all know that film has more lattitude that the best HD yet. I think the object of discussion is that an good color correction can give a lot more "professional" look to your film. I've seen and I've made it myself, that aspiring filmmakers tend to light it all final in shooting. On DV, this is an problem, because you'll probably make the light too hard! Since you can make corrections on post, the best way is to shoot neutral, with shadows and highlights in medium and then perfect them on post. Try to color correction an very hard lit shot and you'll see what I'm saying.
I've seen some great color correction on DV. Since a DVRebel don't have much money for the movie, in my opinion, to shoot it neutral to make it better in post is the best way. And you CAN make it look very good.
speaking of Color
Stu how have your tests been running Color (Apple)
through its paces ?
I still have not vested time into it as much as i would like to since Colorista is what im working with for indie and broadcast work.
Also i found Apple being very light on the documentation for Color .
Jim
mat, click on the images to get the highest-res sources I could snap from the DVD.
Oh they were? Oh well, cheers! Nice job!
This brings back memories of when I used to shoot lots of 16 & 35mm film . . . can you say 1979?
Even way back then, Alpha Cine in Seattle, could only pull off timing miracles with a properly exposed negative. We've come such a long way, and the tools are so much better and so much more affordable, but the truth still holds, if you don't get it in the camera, you don't get it.
I've been inspired to run a bunch of tests with HDV material from my little Sony HVR A1. I love the image from the CMOS sensor. It is going to be interesting to see what can be done with them.
Stu, this is not really related to color grading or anything. I was just wondering, what is it exactly about the text in professional graphics that makes them look so... professional? Is there a certain style of text that people prefer to use over others? Thanks.
P.S. I am making a short film about where the role of visual effects is going with relation to visual storytelling in today's mainstream Hollywood movies. Is there any chance that I could interview you over email?
All great comments. I would add that it's unlikely a film of this scale had a "one-light" transfer. I work at a post facility and most projects with any budget get a "scene and take transfer" where a colorist does do grading for every shot during telecine. This way their HD and SD dailies tapes actually look pretty good. These grading choices are not made arbitrarily either. The colorist usually has conversations with the DP to set a basic tone. Later the final corrections are made obviously, I just wanted to point that out.
I agree with some of your conclusions but I have these observations to make:
- Once upon a time, long before post editing magic was really affordable, extremely careful lighting was required in order to achieve the look so many of us hallow in vintage film making.
- Careful and copious lighting was also neede to compensate for extremely slow film stock.
- As post capabilities improved, lighting set ups became quicker and sloppier.
What you have shown us in the 'before' stills is copious but sloppy lighting technique. This is no doubt a cheaper solution than the careful lighting of Halycon and bygone days!
For my money ( as a Director, Shooter & Lighting pro) careful but copious lighting is still the way to go. Only slight nuance adjustments in post should go a long way. If an editor has to practically construct the Cameraman/Director vision of the scene, then much of the subtlety and sophistication of narrative ligting is lost.
Thankfully, we still can't really replace bad acting with good acting in post ;)
I agree with some of your conclusions but I have these observations to make:
- Once upon a time, long before post editing magic was really affordable, extremely careful lighting was required in order to achieve the look so many of us hallow in vintage film making.
- Careful and copious lighting was also neede to compensate for extremely slow film stock.
- As post capabilities improved, lighting set ups became quicker and sloppier.
What you have shown us in the 'before' stills is copious but sloppy lighting technique. This is no doubt a cheaper solution than the careful lighting of Halycon and bygone days!
For my money ( as a Director, Shooter & Lighting pro) careful but copious lighting is still the way to go. Only slight nuance adjustments in post should go a long way. If an editor has to practically construct the Cameraman/Director vision of the scene, then much of the subtlety and sophistication of narrative ligting is lost.
Thankfully, we still can't really replace bad acting with good acting in post ;)
I wrote a color grading tutorial, mostly useful for Vegas, http://eugenia.blogsome.com/2007/08/08/color-grading-tutorial/" REL="nofollow">here.
The url of Eugenia's post on Color Correction in Vegas has changed..
it's now here:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/11/13/how-to-color-grade/
Just to let you know.... a year later, folks are still benefiting from your work. Thanks!