Colour grading = movie equivalent of the volume wars?

M

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Woebot said:
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
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I tend to film stuff on the fly and then heavily process so it would be really handy for me to have around, plus been going to alot of deserts recently and unfortunately my video cameras just won't take the intensity of light, so it'd be really good to have something where I could change lenses and use filters instead of (two weeks ago) standing in the most beautiful desert in the world and my video camera going "uh uh, no way am I doing that".

Ah cool about audio compression, I've been trying to understand video compression (again) recently and it just does my head in. In a good way. I like it. But I know alot of people who just go spare about it, mainly audiophiles.

Is there a fake tan/orange people correlation, do you think? "I wanna look like the people on telly!"
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Woebot said:
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.
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Must be a good deal more sophisticated, as you can no longer see the actors' short shadows that immediately give away the fact that it was shot at about 3pm!

I think you're right about how people will look back at today's films in a generation's time. CGI especially is going to look awful, but then, I think most of it looks awful anyway (I mean, more people will realise how awful it looks). Oddly, there are films where I think CGI is used to great effect, but I'm talking about Terminator II, The Abyss, Jurassic Park, The Matrix (the first one, anyway) - all films from the '90s. I don't think I can name a single CGI-heavy film from the last ten years, with the exception of the Pixar movies, that I've particularly enjoyed. The Star Wars prequels were the nadir, of course. Eurgh.

Edit: wow, IMDB says The Abyss came out in 1989!
 
M

massrock

Well-known member
re - dynamic compression in audio

Yeah it's an old argument, and the proof is always in the listening -

But... I don't think anyone with any understanding of it argues for one moment that dynamic compression is a bad thing full stop. It's the drastic limiting used in mastering to get stuff really 'loud' that bugs people, and I think that's fair enough - it has been over done and in extreme cases the waveform is effectively clipped which means you are losing part of the recording. Often the gripe is with older recordings brutalised in this way - it's certainly not how they were intended and arguably means the 'remaster' is markedly inferior to the old master. This is a very different thing to the use of dynamic compression / expansion on individual tracks in a recording. In effect that sort of heavy handed mastering leads to drastically reduced contrasts (that's the whole complaint basically) as it's all crushed to fuck. Not to say that even this is always necessarily a bad thing mind.

It's funny though, how this stuff is endlessly arguable...
 
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droid

Guest
massrock said:
Yeah it's an old argument, and the proof is always in the listening -

But... I don't think anyone with any understanding of it argues for one moment that dynamic compression is a bad thing full stop. It's the drastic limiting used in mastering to get stuff really 'loud' that bugs people, and I think that's fair enough - it has been over done and in extreme cases the waveform is effectively clipped which means you are losing part of the recording. Often the gripe is with older recordings brutalised in this way - it's certainly not how they were intended and arguably means the 'remaster' is markedly inferior to the old master. This is a very different thing to the use of dynamic compression / expansion on individual tracks in a recording. In effect that sort of heavy handed mastering leads to drastically reduced contrasts (that's the whole complaint basically) as it's all crushed to fuck. Not to say that even this is always necessarily a bad thing mind.

It's funny though, how this stuff is endlessly arguable...
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Its not really though. As you say, the argument is that over-compressing a finished track for loudness and clipping/losing audio information in the process is bad. Thats why 'people looking at truncated audio files' are basically right. Clipping = distortion as the information is just gone.

There is no credible argument Ive heard against compressing individual tracks or sounds in a tune - it actually enhances dynamics (done correctly). Over-applying blanket compression to finished tunes is bad because you lose information and dynamics.

For example - those King Jammys selectors choice CDs. When they were released on 7" some elements of the tune would have had compression, but nothing is clipping. You can look at the Wavs and see that. When you rip a WAV from the CD's you can see that they have been pushed all the way up and they are missing information through clipping - sounding brighter, louder, harsher and flatter as a result.
 
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M

massrock

Well-known member
I say it's not necessarily always a bad thing because in some cases it can constitute part of the musical style. Think things like super-overloaded Japanese psych. Have a look at a High Rise or Les Rallizes Denudes recording. There's an argument that the same can be said of some pop styles where the whole thing is recorded and mixed with a view to this kind of treatment anyway. Obv. this doesn't apply in the same way to all music.
 
M

massrock

Well-known member
droid said:
Its not really though. As you say, the argument is that over-compressing a finished track for loudness and clipping/losing audio information in the process is bad.
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It is endlessly argued about (hence arguable) even so. It is kind of 'funny'. And I don't just mean the aesthetics of it either.
 
D

droid

Guest
massrock said:
It is endlessly argued about (hence arguable) even so. It is kind of 'funny'. And I don't just mean the aesthetics of it either.
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I guess Id define 'argued about' as different from 'arguable'. ;)
 
Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
massrock said:
But... I don't think anyone with any understanding of it argues for one moment that dynamic compression is a bad thing full stop.
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well just the other day i saw the monolake guy say "no compression used on my album" so that's kind of tantamount to the same thing.

i only compress very little, but working with samples most of the time there's not much need (already done for you) - tee hee.
 
Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
mistersloane said:
I tend to film stuff on the fly and then heavily process so it would be really handy for me to have around, plus been going to alot of deserts recently and unfortunately my video cameras just won't take the intensity of light, so it'd be really good to have something where I could change lenses and use filters instead of (two weeks ago) standing in the most beautiful desert in the world and my video camera going "uh uh, no way am I doing that".
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no, of course. and (just me) yum yum what a lovely thing to own.

mistersloane said:
Ah cool about audio compression, I've been trying to understand video compression (again) recently and it just does my head in. In a good way. I like it. But I know alot of people who just go spare about it, mainly audiophiles.
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video compression. you probably know all about it right?

actually got in a heated debate with a fool tv producer. they insisted that the canon 5d's quicktimes were "uncompressed" and i was like, er no, actually it's H264.

in fact with the camera you're looking at it's probably only some variant of mpeg4. that might be worth considering if you're planning on either a) broadcasting it or b) processing it in any way. it might not behave too well in those circumstances. but anyway lots of people are shooting stuff for tv with those cameras.....

mistersloane said:
Is there a fake tan/orange people correlation, do you think? "I wanna look like the people on telly!"
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there's a thought! :)
 
D

droid

Guest
Woebot said:
well just the other day i saw the monolake guy say "no compression used on my album" so that's kind of tantamount to the same thing.

i only compress very little, but working with samples most of the time there's not much need (already done for you) - tee hee.
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Maybe he meant no 'mastering' compression?
 
M

massrock

Well-known member
No he means no track compression.

But he's simply talking about his choice there. Obviously you don't have to use compressors, and maybe especially not where you are using sources (like synths and samplers) where you can precisely shape the sounds anyway. It's not at all the same as saying that using a compressor is bad all together, which would be absurd, and that's clearly not what he means.

He did once famously claim that nobody needs a vocoder though which is of course completely nuts. ;)
 
M

massrock

Well-known member
It's probably true that some might conflate what are really separate cases but I doubt Henke is. Pretty sure he's making an informed decision about how he wants to work. And monolake isn't really about the sidechain rumpy-pumpy either.
 
M

massrock

Well-known member
But it is weird with this sort stuff, even if something appears to be a very clear cut technical matter, how it can be (or will be) endlessly argued. Even by people who basically completely agree. It's rather like politics in that respect.

Can be interesting and useful to a point, but also, you know... a diversion. Like internet forums.
 
grizzleb

grizzleb

Well-known member
It depends on what end you are trying to achieve. No compression used on a disco album would sound terrible. And would be completely pointless. No compression on acoustic recordings of traditional chinese instruments would be probably be a good thing (again depending on your perspective and what you want to hear). Loudness war/heavily limited pop songs sound good when you're drunk as fuck in a pub on a works night out dancing with some girl from admin. I doubt a monolake record would do too well in that environment. It's a tool, and each tool can and should be used if it creates the desired effect by the person on persons who fashion said product in fitting with their overall aesthetic ideas about what they want to do.
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
what this thread needs is....

the daybreakers
daybreakers_5.jpg


not a huge fan of that ultra artificial looking colour grading you get in films like crank 2 either but i think thats a bit less severe with orange and teal, just too heavy on that kind of look.
 
M

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Oops, was away for a bit, but thanks for the interesting follow-up comments.

I certainly agree it's all about how these tools get used, not about the tools being bad. The thread title probably wasn't helpful in that regard, but in both the example things I linked to in the first post the original authors say they like the technology and don't like how it's being applied.

I thought a particularly bad looking movie for the orange vs teal colour grading was The Lovely Bones. Some pics for Sufi. ;)

the-lovely-bones-20091202004138143_640w.jpg

the-lovely-bones-20091202004142752_640w.jpg

the-lovely-bones-20091202004212345_640w.jpg

the-lovely-bones-20090806045737211_640w.jpg
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
i hate that sort of artificial colouring you get in most things these days tbh. was just watching wimbledon and even there at the end they went a bit overboard with it! its going to date quite badly i think.
 
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