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[Stip]

I understand that it’s a tempting shortcut

I think you misunderstand the term “show LUT”. Roger literally shoots under one and any big movie you have watched did so too. This does not even mean that you use a LUT in post, but exporting the intended look as a LUT is the only way to get it into a camera/monitor.

“Show LUT” means a look creation. If Roger would shoot his movies with the standard Arri transformation and there would not be any look applied, his movies would feel very different.

Yes, you can’t just slap any LUT on your footage and expect it to magically turn it into something it is not – if you carefully read what I wrote, the essence is that the look needs to be created before shooting.

Usually experienced colorists do it but I mentioned some transformations above that provide a great starting point for everyone.

This is the way the industry works, you can work differently but it’s the safest way to continuity under a pre-crafted idea for a look, which is what you were asking for.

[LucaM]

Thanks a lot Stip!

I am using Resolve but i don’t like LUTs, i feel i have little control on them and i learn nothing from them , since for me this short it’s mainly a learning experience, not only a creative one. I tend to learn through “backward engineering”, so i try to begin with Roger’s shots in the movies going backward to (try to) understand how he shot them (and this forum and upcoming Roger’s book are like treasure for me for that).  I think Roger’s style is created by every aspect of cinematography (camera movement and placement, lens choice, lights, etc etc) and how he uses them to tell the story (and each story has its own different way to be told), something a LUT can’t create on the spot. I undersand that it’s a tempting shortcut, but i’m one of those persons that prefer the longest and hardest road to get to the peak of the mountain, ah ah ! 😀

This said, i need to take something usable out of my shots, so after some testing this workflow seems to work:1) i shot the scenes (and in the AI era it’s not that obvious that the images were created with a camera with real actors, ah ah!) trying to create with light and production desing the palette i wanted. Given my limitation i couldn’t create “the look” in camera for all the shots, just something vaguely close.

2) i looked for some shots that had a similar composition, mood and lights to grade my shots. I understand a professional wouldn’t work that way but i’m not and i need some kind of guide to know the path to follow.  I grade my shot until my waveform, parade and  vectorscope are close to the reference. Of course there’s an enormous difference in the quality of referencing shot and my own, but somehow my humble shots are turning decent in this way. By dissecting the waveforms and the vectorscopes I’m slowly beginning to understand the work behind the shots, something impossible with a LUT (at least for the way i learn).

3) I know how i want the scene to look  and i find that look working on palette , temperature, saturation, etc. In this phase i move from the reference point and i use my instinct and creativity. And this is the phase that i’m struggling with : the shots are not that bad, the scenes look more or less as planned, but i feel i need to do a step further to make them look like part of the same movie, with more harmony and coherence among the shots. So far, this made me learn that i can’t work backward (first the shots and then the look of the entire work), i need to plan how the entire work should look and then create the shots according to that. Next time i’ll improve on that : better late than never!

EDIT: sorry for the long reply, i hope it was not too boring. I think the problem with my backward approach is that i am referencing to too different works to grade my shots. I need to study just one movie to make this approach usable, i suppose.

[Stip]

Look development of a project is usually done before shooting. Colorists call this “Show LUT”. The main driver is mostly the contrast curve and saturation, then there might be some hue rotations or tinting of shadows, highlights. This ‘look’ is applied to all scenes. The LUT is loaded into cameras/monitors and the project is shot under it. Costume or set design choices should be made under the show LUT as saturation and density changes can change a color’s appearance.

If it’s a well shot production, very little additional grading will be made in post production outside of obvious color correction to match shots within scenes. Additional grading may include changes of color temperature and tint, which have great impact on emotion but don’t change the ‘look’ itself.

Roger’s movies don’t need a show LUT because he already shoots under his own LUT, crafted by Joachim Zell of Arri and based on print film data sets – as far as I know Roger named “True Grit” as reference. It is essentially one of the best print film emulation LUTs ever created. Iirc Roger usually only makes very little tweaks to exposure and saturation in the grading suite. Everything has already been made on set using lighting, set design and costume.

If you are using Davinci Resolve, there are great, free transformations like Juan Zambrano’s 2499 pipeline or OpenDRT for clean look development.

[LucaM]

Thanks for your answer!

You are right as always, in effect I’m more looking for the right look for the scenes than refining the shots. It means that i didn’t really create the scenes in the way I wanted them to look, I simply exposed them correctly (well, kind of). I didn’t reflect on that.

In my defence I have to admit that, apart from one scene that was created with a precise look in mind that  more or less i obtained in camera (and all the knowledge the forum gave me helped me a lot in creating that shot, so i am extremely grateful to you all for that) , for the other scenes i had to do my best to overcome lack of knowledge, lack of time, lack of decent lights, lack of budget, lack of everything but problems, ah ah! So now I am forced to rely on the sinful and dreadful “fixing that in post” to get what i figured in my mind. I hope to be able to do more in camera in my next short, but for now i’m afraid i’ve to find not only the right look for each scene, but also make them all look part of the same thing.

[Tyler F]

Not Roger,

But you can use your reference or any movie for that matter which has a scene for people sitting around a table and imagine all of the different eyelines and dialogue you’d account for.

If it’s two people talking to each other then it’s typically a setup and then a reverse setup. You may have variations such as different lens lengths or if a character turns their head to look at something in the hallway.

You can approach it in that same exact way but by adding math to account for each individual. If you don’t have time then you might want to shoot multiple people in a shot and save the ‘important’ dialogue between two main characters as singles to signal significance.

As far as lighting goes, well that depends on TOD, but you could rig up an overhead soft light and light everyone at once so you don’t need to spend time re-positioning lights for each setup.

Hope that helps

[Roger Deakins]

I am confused by your approach as it seems you are attempting to grade your way to a ‘look’. For me, grading is only finessing what you have recorded not attempting to ‘find a look’.

[Roger Deakins]

I was not on Burn After Reading but from working on many other films with Joel and Ethan I can say that they would have had a clear idea of the shots they wanted. It is rare they shoot a shot they don’t intend to use. They edit their films and know the flow of a scene before they get into the cutting room.

[tuckertota]

I’m preparing for a shoot that has a scene of six people talking around a table. These scenes seem deceptively simple since they’re almost entirely dialogue, but there’s so many angles and eye-lines you need to account for. I’m curious how a scene like this one from Burn After Reading was prepared and shot. I know the Coens don’t get full coverage of every scene, but I wonder in a case like this if it’s best to get as many angles as possible and assemble it in the edit.

[LucaM]

For my little short i’m trying to calibrate the grading on some shots i feel create the feeling i’m looking for. As a starting point i’m referencing to two scenes from 1917, one from Prisoners and one from Intersellar. I know they are very different movies but somehow they have  composition and light scheme similar to my shots. Even with my lack of experience this technique gave me the right starting point and put me on the right path to create acceptably decent shots. Now i’d like to give the short a coherent look, but i don’t know which could be the best way. Giving all the scenes a bit of the same hue? A similar level of contrast? Or can i rely on  my camera movements and shots editing to create coherence? Thanks in Advance!

EDIT: to clarify, i used the same focal length and aperture for the entire short, using my lens as a prime one (even if it’s a very cheap zoom one) since i planned the shots with the idea of a coherent look as starting point. Roger’s words on 1917 really helped me! 🙂

[Exajoel]

Google “Matt Porwoll diffusion test” (can’t post links). TL:DR, magic cloth is largely not worth it. Eats up a ton of out put for a pretty minor difference.

[Roger Deakins]

I did use ND on the windows for some shots but I can’t remember exactly which ones. I would often have frames made to fit  the windows and cover one set with an ND3 and another with ND6. I found that gave a range of options and the adjustment made quite quickly. If there was the budget I would have hard gels cut to size but that was only rarely possible and there would have to be a solid reason for going that route. On A Serious Man we were working with a minimal budget and the windows in that office were quite large. We might have only ‘pasted’ soft gel directly onto the glass using soapy water.

[Steven.M]

Thank you all for your replies. I truly appreciate it.

I guess it’s a matter of testing, but as a follow-up question I was wondering if different diffusions fill up in different ways with everything else being equal.

For example Magic cloth having such a tight weave allows fewer parallel rays to pass through resulting in those rays bouncing back towards a reflector on an open face and then back again towards the diffusion itself but at a different angle than its original path.

Whereas muslin with a looser weave, despite being thick will allow more parallel rays through and be more susceptible to hotspots when the frame is not filled?

In a nutshell, I guess I’m trying to understand if some diffusions are more efficient at spreading light over their surfaces than others due to their unique properties.

Kind of nerdy question but nonetheless, curious about it.

[Exajoel]

You can use small non-parabolic softboxes as an extra layer of diff without any additional grip.

[dmullenasc]

It’s always easier to fill a diffusion frame evenly with an LED softlight or any multi-bulb unit like a Maxibrute when you lack the space to back-up a hard light. But if you have the space, then you can evenly fill a diffusion frame with one hard source if it is full-flood and backed-up enough. Or use multiple hard sources in an array…

[Steven.M]

When filling a diffusion material in a confined space without much room to move a light back far enough to fill a frame completely, would a soft source such as a Litemat fill the frame more fully than a open face/COB light with reflector at the exact same distance to the diffusion, resulting in a softer light?

I’m asking because I have an upcoming shoot in a very confined space and would like to create a soft light on the subject (not concerned about spill at this point). I have 4x and 6x diffusions but only hard sources. If starting with a soft source is going to significantly soften the light then I will look into renting one.