A coherent look among different scenes

[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! 🙂

Topic

[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’.

[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.

[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 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]

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 apologize if i misunderstood, i was referring to the LUTs that are used in post. Your example helped me understand, but unfortunately i can’t use this approach with my camera since it can’t show LUTs (this made me misunderstand), so i am forced to more or less guess what the final look could be After grading. I am planning to update my gear for the next short and i’ll keep in mind the show LUT technique.

[Author]

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