Colour grading = movie equivalent of the volume wars?

that is a big video though!

I think it's like anything, a tool that can be used well as well as misused. I think some films look great when their colour grading (I don't know the technical terms) fit in nicely with the atmosphere. Grimey/green/cold stuff especially. I still think late 60's/early/mid 70's film stock looks best though. Digital shit looks too clean and overproduced, much like alot of music these days, as you say.

Terminator II is very blue. All the Matrix films are just green, green, green. Because computer screens are green, right? Er, or they were in 1982, at any rate.

Anyone else notice this?

Edit: I should add that I think the green works quite well in The Matrix, because it fits the general dystopian cyberpunk vibe nicely and in any case, most of it's set in a supposedly virtual world so it's not as if it should adhere to any particular standards of realism. I guess if you were 'in the matrix' for real you'd never notice how green it was, because that would be all you'd ever known.

I think theres definitely alot of paralells, theres groups of people that swear by super-8's and polaroids much like with analogue synths. I think its a combination between the elements of "randomness" compared to digital, which has none, that is pleasing. Probably nostalgia aswell. They can create some randomness if they are trying to emulate a sound or image quality but it would be impossible to replicate the pure chaotic randomness of real life interactions.

I generally am not a fan of those colour filters, flicked onto the matrix the otherday and hadn't noticed how green it is, looked terrible. They seem to do it alot with those really slow american films about someone trying to find something out that you really dont care about or political dramas with densil washington.

Mr. Tea said:

Terminator II is very blue. All the Matrix films are just green, green, green. Because computer screens are green, right? Er, or they were in 1982, at any rate.

Anyone else notice this?

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I was going to mention Green and The Matrix. I think I liked it at the time because I was 10 and it made an impression on me - it did fit the vibe very well I thought. Nowadays I'd be more inclined to back off it a little...

michael said:

In both cases it's irreparably stripping out detail in the hopes of increasing impact, to seem more dramatic than the preceding thing. Well, maybe "irreparably" is an assumption that future generations will happily counter, but in both cases I feel like it's a bit of a one-way street where somewhere down the track people see the mistakes being made and won't be able to do much about it.

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Good thread. I'm not sure it's about making impact though, red is a hard colour to use because it shows up the flaws in all of the joins - it's more vivid - of the CGI so they just mute the red, and if you do that then it follows that you increase the blue to make up for it. It's a way of not having just total darkness through the whole film as well - films are so dark nowadays cos they have to in order that, again, the lacklustre CGI techniques don't get shown up, so the black becomes blue by taking out the red.*

My bugbear is that because of codecs you still can't make a film with direct transference, so nothing on domestic equipment looks anywhere near Hollywood quality. It's getting there but it's not there yet. All this crap about 'made for 200 dollar' or whatever is gump.

* I'm postulating here and would like to be corrected if I'm wrong. Spanked, preferably.

And making it blue is better than just blurring it all, which is what Lucas did with the Star Wars sequels. What was that about? Did he think no-one would notice or care?

this thread needs pictures
i want to see how skin tones pop

i'm also curious how to get that silvery skin tone - like this for e.g.

thoughts.

indeed an interesting thread! and actually one which sheds a great deal of light on the idiocy that is the compression argument as well.

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the thing about movie grading is that in terms of the balance of brightness movies are graded much darker - everything is within the 0-60% band - and here's the key fact - with the exception of the 90-100% band which is used for the illumination/explosion effects.

the way it works is that when you're in the dark you're eyes become accustomed to the gloom and then the bright highlights - when they are used - really burn into your retina (like WOW that's bright)

as a side-note - ever watched a movie on TV and thought: "hmm it seems a bit dark" - that's because the grading is geared for the cinema.

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so i suppose to say that the image levels are crushed is slightly misleading. i know what you mean about the tinting though. to me i think the colorist/grading thing can produce really lovely results. it's just how it's used isnt it?

BUT yes very much analogous to compression in audio.

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lots of the best graders are apparently color blind!!!!

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what i've always liked about julian house's films is that he respects the very bland/broad grey spectrum of old TV. nowadays i always fight the temptation to crush the levels on the photos i take - so perhaps that is the loudness wars impinging on how we handle digital imagery.

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@sufi. it's called a bleach-bypass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach_bypass

of course in the eighties it was all about filters on the cameras themselves

What's funny is when you see old films (say, '50s/early '60s) with scenes set at 'night' that were clearly shot in broad daylight but with a dark filter over the lens. It just looks so crap, but I guess maybe the film they had in those days wasn't good enough to shoot actual night scenes with? Would audiences back then have been able to suspend disbelief do you think, not having more modern films to compare against?

grizzleb said:

I was going to mention Green and The Matrix. I think I liked it at the time because I was 10 and it made an impression on me -

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As evidenced by your avatar!

Woebot said:

of course in the eighties it was all about filters on the cameras themselves

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And may yet be again, have you seen this?

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul10/articles/canoneos550d.htm

Any thoughts would be good cos I think I'm desperately coveting it.

Woebot said:

actually one which sheds a great deal of light on the idiocy that is the compression argument as well.

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Is compression all rubbish then? Don't quite understand that bit.

mistersloane said:

And may yet be again, have you seen this?

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul10/articles/canoneos550d.htm

Any thoughts would be good cos I think I'm desperately coveting it.

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oooh! i really coveted that canon 5d and this is presumably the next thing. ended up getting a dmc-lx3 tho. just not into lugging a big dslr around. for me that is one of the really risible sights, people and their gigantic cameras, up there with people fiddling with their iPhones.

i mean, not to say it's not cool in a "pro" context - or if you're a serious photographer but for the crap that i imagine most of these people shoot with them. squirrels in the park etc then its strictly jokes.

i had to shoot in HD recently and i ended up hiring a "proper" video camera - a canon HD one, and it was a dream. actually sloane, if you just plan out what you want to shoot, then hire a really proper camera (£100/day) you're quids in

mistersloane said:

Is compression all rubbish then? Don't quite understand that bit.

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oh i was referring to the whole loudness wars things in audio. compression in that sense.

(not directed at sloane specifically but)

i think that is one of the most tedious over-rated arguments ever.

sure there's the whole argument about sloppy re-mastering (i mean if it wasn't intended that way originally then fair enough) but somehow all these twits opening files in waveform editors revealing the truncated levels - that proves precisely nothing. it's got to be as though somehow compression is bad - FULLSTOP?!?!?!?

if you open a beautifully-constructed photoshop image and look at the levels often you'll see the same thing. why this idea that somehow if something is thrown into strong contrast (in audio or image) that thats a bad thing? i mean the "clipping" might be leavened by subtlety elsewhere in the construct - but that's only going to be revealed by listening or looking at the work - by definition that won't be visible on the waveform.

compression in audio is a hugely creative tool. firstly you have things like "pumping" which is one of the key dance music tools (first discovered by the daft punk guy's father in the disco days!!!) where you chain up the channels with a compressor in such a way that sounds disappear under one another - a big bass kick shadows a bassline etc.

then you have the fact that compressors have their own unique sonic fingerprints. i mean all the beatles stuff was compressed to fuck. compressors also have a key, perhaps quintessential, function in separating various elements within a mix into particular regions - thus the drums inhabit one part of the sonic spectrum, the voice elsewhere. it what's makes great mixes.

anyway. old argument innit.

Mr. Tea said:

What's funny is when you see old films (say, '50s/early '60s) with scenes set at 'night' that were clearly shot in broad daylight but with a dark filter over the lens. It just looks so crap, but I guess maybe the film they had in those days wasn't good enough to shoot actual night scenes with? Would audiences back then have been able to suspend disbelief do you think, not having more modern films to compare against?

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shooting "day-for-night" is still standard though the grading has become a bit more sophisticated. ultimately though it's just today's visual language innit. i mean, in thirty years people will read our visuals in a similarly skeptical way.

funnily enough though. my wife was watching this cookery show last night, that nadia sawahla in morocco. the graphics were just atrocious and it was really really badly graded - i did think that michael had a point actually. the presenter nadia was just like ORANGE.......