How I would have colour graded the footage

[Patrick Jennings]

Yes i have the gaul to re-colour grade professionally done footage, but some of the people in this forum are saying that the stills don't look all that filmic. I tend to agree with them. So here is my attempt to make the footage look more filmic.

http://www.box.net/shared/igahnliuyt

If you like it, give me a job. I need a job at the moment. I'm based in Australia, Melbourne but i will move if the money is good :)

I invite others to try their hand at colour grading the footage.

[garageman]

Just saturating stuff is not really considered what makes footage look filmic.

[Patrick Jennings]

garageman, there's a little bit more than just saturation going on in these images :) i guess it really depends on the look you're going for. what would you do to make them more filmic?

[garageman]

I think they look fine as images on their own, they've been graded well. Making stuff look filmic has more to do with the capture of movement in film and latitude. Grading stuff to look like Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers is not what I would judge as an across the board "film look"

[PaulClements]

The shine on the hand, the blokes face and the gun bring them out more. Your one of the blokes face seems a bit too dark to me.

I haven't seen the film so by editing the images they might be taken out of context. Effectively such colour corrections are changing the time of day the scene takes place. I believe a lot of those were at dusk so those colour corrections although good on still might not work on a moving image. So I think "How I would have colour graded the footage" is a bit too bold.

Nevertheless I like seeing variations of the images, if only as a bit of fun. I think the first is probably the best.

[Justin Kirchhoff]

where and how are all these people getting these grabs?

[PaulClements]

There is a second thread posted by Jarred with more pics

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1822

It's dropped to page 2

[Rodrigo Lizana]

I´ts easy to tell there´s more than saturation. There´s an evident color twist as well. Red and green I guess, what else ?. This is a funny game, like the one I play with my wife which we have to tell what lens was used in a certain pict. the other shot.

[lumiere]

If you like it, give me a job. I need a job at the moment. I'm based in Australia, Melbourne but i will move if the money is good :)

Nice Job!

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Thanks Paul. I spend an hour away from the comp and miss out on the good stuff! I'm looking through them now.

[Patrick Jennings]

thanks for all the comments.
if any ones interested here are the basic setting i used. i slightly tweaked the whites and the mids for each shot though.

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/19156/1177162338.jpg

[Simon Blackledge]

what did you cc in ?

[Zac C]

final cut pro

[Simon Blackledge]

ya tried colorista?

[Manfred Lopez]

I spend an hour away from the comp and miss out on the good stuff!

:)

I'm having the same problem as of late. I once had to run an errand and when I got back I felt like a complete stranger in the forum.

[Patrick Jennings]

i've never used colorista. i've never really had the need for a more complex program. i can usually get the exact look i'm after with just FCP.

i might check it out. i've heard nothing but good things about it. do you find it better?

[Simon Blackledge]

much much better.. Bought it for AE but may get the FCP version as it runs realtime apparently at 720p. Will wait till I get Color first though.

s

[Patrick Jennings]

i'll be getting color too. but i'm not sure FCP6 will run on my little G4 :(
i have to convert all my HDV footage to 720p DVCPRO HD just for FCP5 to work now

[Simon Blackledge]

yeah, bit miffed color won't run on my new macbook pro :( needs a 17" screen for the correct rez..

[Martin Drew]

Hi Jenningsp

One thing you should watch out for is blowing out the highlights, I think you have taken it a bit too far with the blade, all the detail has been lost. This could be a problem with the colour correction in Final cut (soon to be remedied), you may be better off using AE until Color comes out.

M

[Noah Kadner]

I was going to say the same thing- the highlights are now blown on the rolling papers, the soldier's teeth, the sky behind the biplane, the front of the rifle, the muzzle flash of the machine gun, etc.

Use the waveform monitors and the luma and chroma range check in FCP to keep these items under control.

-Noah

[Patrick Jennings]

blowing out the highlights is a bit of a style i've been working on. i like it mostly, but it just doesn't work in some shots. i don't mind losing some details. People don't really need to see all the scratches on the blade to know it's a blade :)

and flameop, i have a 12" ibook :( but i plug in my 22" CRT for editing

[Daniel Reichenbach]

I don't think that the REDteam wanted to be to much in what style ever, they wanted to show the lattidude of the REDcam from black to white. To shut the the black and white levels, to go to much contrasty would have bring up to much discussion, if RED will have this 11,5 ore 12 stops, everybody want at least.

[Martin Drew]

I am the opposite I guard the high lights and the shadow detail unless I am going specifically for a very blown out look, in which case I would want to shoot with that in mind and then take it a lot further, but It's all subjective of course.

M

[Patrick Jennings]

i find there's a real aesthetic quality if you blow the whites as much as possible then crush the mids to compensate. you lose detail in the whites, but you gain more in the mids, especially in skin tones.

[Jaime Vallés]

I have to say I really like the job you did with them! The stills feel grittier and more realistic, to me... less Hollywood.

Of course, color grading is entirely subjective. There was nothing wrong with the original stills in the first place, it just depends on the look the director and DP are going for. Blown-out highlights don't bother me at all, as long as the transition from color to white isn't "video-harsh ugly". In this case, I think jenningsp was very successful in making them look like something out of "Letters From Iwo Jima" or "Saving Private Ryan". Clearly that wasn't the intent of the filmmakers when shooting and grading the footage initially, but that's what jenningsp wanted, and that's the beauty of what the modern NLE can provide for us all.

Nice job.

[Noah Kadner]

Sure enough. But if anyone else reading this intends something for broadcast or DVD, blown highlights are often unacceptable. As in, your footage will get bounced back to you for another go at grading to make everything fit within broadcast safe guidelines. Learning to use the scopes is key. Here's some additional info, if anyone wants to learn more:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/cc_legal_fcp3.html

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303801

Noah

[David Mullen ASC]

Film does not have one monolithic "look" -- not when in the history of cinema, you've got movies shot on film that range the gamut from "Singin' in the Rain" to "Saving Private Ryan". High-con, low-con, saturated, desaturated, warm, cold, sharp, soft, grainy, fine-grained, widescreen, square-screen... movies have done it all.

Technically, all that really matters when designing digital photography to look like film is to eliminate uniquely digital attributes and artifacts that film couldn't have. For example, interlaced-scan video artifacts are unique to that process. In more subtle ways, chroma clipping (one channel clipping before the others) is also a tendency that film emulsions don't suffer from.

[Appleton]

Film does not have one monolithic "look" -- not when in the history of cinema, you've got movies shot on film that range the gamut from "Singin' in the Rain" to "Saving Private Ryan". High-con, low-con, saturated, desaturated, warm, cold, sharp, soft, grainy, fine-grained, widescreen, square-screen... movies have done it all.

Technically, all that really matters when designing digital photography to look like film is to eliminate uniquely digital attributes and artifacts that film couldn't have. For example, interlaced-scan video artifacts are unique to that process. In more subtle ways, chroma clipping (one channel clipping before the others) is also a tendency that film emulsions don't suffer from.absolutely. the amount of film stocks and unique attributes alone should put to bed the phrase 'singularly filmic'. that's what's so exciting about RED ; you should be able to achieve many subtle styles/film stocks.

jennings, sorry but your color grading seems amateur hour. it looks like you just applied preselected looks, like on dv footage or sumptin'. the bests colorists adjust in a wide array of areas. sorry , if that's harsh but we're dealing with a pro camera here. keep trying, though. :-)

[wshultz]

I like the bleaker and overall gloomier tone for the setting. I'd like to keep a little more white detail though. FCP CC as it stands isn't capable of the nuances you can get with "pro" systems.

[Poi Boy]

Wait till you try COLOR !
-A

[wshultz]

Definitely looking forward to the new COLOR.

[Deanan]

I don't think that the REDteam wanted to be to much in what style ever, they wanted to show the lattidude of the REDcam from black to white. To shut the the black and white levels, to go to much contrasty would have bring up to much discussion, if RED will have this 11,5 ore 12 stops, everybody want at least.

Once we left NZ and handed over the redcode footage, everything was (thankfully) done by Peter Jackson's excellent team. Editing, conform,
vfx, grading, audio, and output were done in NZ. The first time
we saw the footage playing was Sunday at 3pm (yikes). The only
thing we did do was sit with the DP, Park Road Post's colorscience guy,
the editor, and the sound guy on sunday and try to get the sony 4k
looking as close as we could to what they saw in NZ. There's not
alot one can control on the projector so we got it reasonably close.

Deanan

[GlennChan]

Part of the problem with color grading is that everyone has different tastes. My favorite color is blue, and I'm sure there's lots of people who don't share my favorite color.

2- If you look at the whole film, the tone is pretty light-hearted... so that's why it is lit bright, sunny (and I think they were going for early morning) instead of a gritty war look.

If you look at the images out of context, it might violate your expectation of what a "war" film should look like. Because PJ's short is more of a comedy/light-hearted piece than a war film.

[Tom Lowe]

Well the shot with the guys behind the machine gun looked a lot better. pretty simple stuff.

[Seán_T]

some of the people in this forum are saying that the stills don't look all that filmic. I tend to agree with them.

Well interestingly enough I was watching The Lord of the Rings DVD today and then came across the posted stills. Some of the scenes in the movie have almost the exact same grade as the posted stills. I assure you if you watched it in a big theater and the story's good enough you think it was plenty "Filmic".

I've even had plenty of projects I've graded and felt that it looked very clean and digital and then been blown away at how "flimic" the print looked.

I've been hearing the "HighDef(digital) dosent look like Film" complaint for about 6 or 7 years now and I believe its just down to conditioning and familiarity. People are used to epics looking a certain way. Well they should let go of that idea (which I know you guys are embracing)

Offtopic: I think its funny that less info (24Fps) is considered better then more info (30Fpr and higher) Thats conditioning for you. But it works out better for me because I have less frames to worry about :biggrin:

[casey warren]

I also felt as if the scenes looked similar to how LOTR was graded, slightly less greenish though, but really similar. Stunning if anything.

LOTR is probably my favorite film, color grading wise (and also story wise for that matter, Peter Jackson and his team rule!) They did an excellent job that cannot be put into words - they have inspired a whole generation of filmmakers.

[PaulClements]

(and also story wise for that matter, Peter Jackson and his team rule!)

Gotta give Tolkien some credit for that lol :)

[Antoine Baumann]

Part of the problem with color grading is that everyone has different tastes. My favorite color is blue, and I'm sure there's lots of people who don't share my favorite color.

Color grading is part of the story telling. You must ask yourself why, what is the purpose of this or this Color grade, what is it bringing to the story, how will feel the audiance, etc...
more than apply your "favorite" color on all the movies you color grade.

antoine.

[Adrian T.]

Another thread back from the dead. :blink:

But I second your opinion, antoine.

[Steve Freebairn]

Color will be great for most of us, but I kind of doubt it will really make a large dent in the Da Vinci style market. I think OpenGL is great for a lot of things, but for Professional color correction, I'm not quite sure.

[Rob Lohman]

Why do you say that about OpenGL?

[Antoine Baumann]

I think Scratch powerfull color grading module is mostly based on the nvidia graphic card, not much on the cpu. Might need an update from Lucas here.
I saw a demo at NAB and it runs very nicely, playing RT while color grading even the 4k REDCDOE RAW.

Sure Color and Scratch are not in the same price range, but Color comes from Final Touch, and the 2k version was not cheap. As I have never used Final Touch, I wonder if Color is really able to play RT color corect footage, and if it is possible to use format such as dpx/tiff.
While I think Color might be a very interesting budget alternativ, I will have to see how it works and what are the limitations.
For exemple is it possible to output to broadcast monitor via HD-SDI from color or does it need to go back to FCP?

antoine.

[Steve Freebairn]

Why do you say that about OpenGL?

I've noticed problems rendering out of After Effects with OpenGL. (not that that means it is bad as a whole).

In talking to Synthetic Aperture at NAB this year they were talking about how Color and others were using OpenGL instead of the CPU and that it wasn't as high of quality.

I like the idea of having OpenGL be a part of the Red workflow as long as it doesn't reduce any of the quality. I love the speed of OpenGL, I just don't want it affecting the end quality.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'd really like to know if my OpenGL problems have just been my own fault. :biggrin:

[Nick Shaw]

Surely it depends what you're using the GPU to do. Different GPUs may use different qualities of filtering when doing things like scaling and 3D, but when applying a customised LUT, or applying mathematical transforms to the colour channels, which is the basis of most colour correction, surely a GPU would do it at the same quality as the CPU.

[GlennChan]

GPUs don't implement IEEE standard floating point calculations (yet), so the results are slightly different than CPU calculations. Not sure if this is an issue with video... I don't believe it is because 32 bits should have sufficient overkill where this doesn't matter.

2- It might be that the quality differs because the algorithm is altered so it runs on a GPU well. You see this with After Effects, where the openGL render looks significantly different than the CPU render.

Though I don't think it's fair to diss GPUs because of this.

Perhaps someone who knows more about this than I do could chime in here.

[Seán_T]

Well two of the highend grading products that get mentioned a lot around here Scratch and Lustre both lever gpu power extensively.

[GlennChan]

In Lustre not all the features work on the GPU (don't know if this has changed)... so sometimes it is left off.

[Lucas Wilson]

At least as far as SCRATCH is concerned...

all of our color operations are GPU-based and processed at 32-bit float. Our rendering pipeline is also GPU, so any differences or anomalies between what is seen and what is rendered are non-existent.

In general, problems arise where a GPU instruction set is being used for display, and then a CPU instruction set is being used for rendering. To be fair, if this is done properly, you will never see a difference even with the most exacting QC standards. But if it is done poorly, then there will definitely be a difference in the viewed and rendered results.

But as far as quality - it is a non-issue. A few years ago, before GPU technology really became professional quality, then sure, it was an issue. That has not been true for several years now.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

[Joe Carney]

So Lucas, are you saying you are talking to the gpu directly, using the manufacturers api instead of OpenGL?

Joe C.

[Steve Freebairn]

Just found an interesting link, dealing with GPU processing power

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39829

If the card is really 3x the power of the 8800 series, things are going to really be speedy in the future!

[C-Workflowers]

Sometimes people associate film look with Technicolor 2 stripes, would be good digitally, only requires 2/3 of the info for file transfer :D

Cedric
www.workflowers.net