How do I get Hollywood movie color rendering?

L

LightWave

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I haven't been a color film shooter. As I watch more and more Hollywood movies, such as the Good Shepard, just finished it, I want to try to reproduce that look. :D

Is it the film? The lens? or a combination of both? And post processing in printing too? :bang:
 
LightWave said:
I haven't been a color film shooter. As I watch more and more Hollywood movies, such as the Good Shepard, just finished it, I want to try to reproduce that look. :D

Is it the film? The lens? or a combination of both? And post processing in printing too? :bang:
Click to expand...

Well, I haven't seen that movie...but the principle is the same for many...
Lighting is the key, then grading, then the film stock (or HD setup to simulate film).

While documentary makers often have to cope with available light or a simple llighting setup, movies control the lighting in fantastically complex lighting plots, with gels and other wonderful things...and have a crew dedicated to just the lighting.

Then there's the stunning quality of the lenses used - primes.

Finally, there's the color grade - on high end specialist machines like a Da Vinci. The entire look of a film can be set or altered in the grade - grain, contrast, colors etc.

In the world of consumer video, the apparent holy grail is going for 'film look' instead of the nasty pictures they get from cheap digital video cameras. "What can we do to make our video look more like hollywood movies?" The answer of course is "spend about 100 Million dollars..."
:)
 
DavidH said:
Well, I haven't seen that movie...but the principle is the same for many...
Lighting is the key, then grading, then the film stock (or HD setup to simulate film).

While documentary makers often have to cope with available light or a simple llighting setup, movies control the lighting in fantastically complex lighting plots, with gels and other wonderful things...and have a crew dedicated to just the lighting.

Then there's the stunning quality of the lenses used - primes.

Finally, there's the color grade - on high end specialist machines like a Da Vinci. The entire look of a film can be set or altered in the grade - grain, contrast, colors etc.

In the world of consumer video, the apparent holy grail is going for 'film look' instead of the nasty pictures they get from cheap digital video cameras. "What can we do to make our video look more like hollywood movies?" The answer of course is "spend about 100 Million dollars..."
:)
Click to expand...


Spielberg did all that in saving Private Ryan, then destructed it by 50%, for that particular look although I don’t know how you do that on film
 
There's a lot of info on the web for what Spielberg did in "Saving Private Ryan". Among other things he used a "bleach bypass" process in developing the film. It became all the rage in Hollywood for a few years after that. I did a google search on "exr Saving Private Ryan" and "bleach Saving Private Ryan" and found a ton of info. Here's one for example:

http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/lofiversion/index.php?t4212.html

At the bottom they talked about the opening battle scene:

"Yes, I think we answer this question once every two months here. They shot at 24 fps (normal speed) but with a 45 degree shutter angle, making the motion very crisp and jerky. The prints used a 100 IR level of ENR silver retention processing. The negative was sometimes flashed; the lenses had their anti-reflection coatings removed for more flaring, and some shots were made with a camera with an out-of-sync shutter so that bright highlights were streaking vertically in the frame. The tungsten-balanced film (EXR 200T) was push-processed and instead of a normal 85 filter, they used a half-correction (81EF) for a cooler look."
 
Lots of the film crew may be manipulating reflectors out of doors etc. Holywood was chosen for the sunlight, indoors oodles of lumens, frequently my exposure meter says it is dark out of doors here.

Even when Cinders would be ok.

Noel
 
while answering this quesiton thoroughly is far more than I have time to get into, you should know that the negative motion picture stocks we use are VERY different from the film stocks packaged for still cameras. They are not designed for printing on paper, they are designed for printing on cellulose... You can obtain short ends and bulk load yourself and experiment, I never much enjoyed the look of any motion picture stocks on paper, the grain just took on a wierd RGB thing thats kinda hard to explain. I have hundreds of feet in my fridge that I never bothered to do anything with, Im sure you could work something out of you have access to a colex but I think it would be a good amount of comittment to get something you'd be happy with.
 
doitashimash1te said:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0343737/technical
Click to expand...

Interesting. I had no idea what lens/camera was used to shoot movie until now. Does Panavision make their own lens or are they really made by Zeiss? When I was reading the Zeiss Ikon website, Carl Zeiss emphasizes a lot how they make the best Cine lens and how they are bringing that technology to the ZM line... blah blah blah...
 
You left out color timing that all motion pictures go thru. What you see in finished product can not be achieved without the use of photoshop for our still images.
 
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