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Throw them out and see if the edit keeps its emotional power. Keep in mind people will probably not be as critical of individual shots as you are but if a particular shots keeps rubbing you the wrong way, every time you watch an edit, then you should probably throw it out.
Maybe someone else has better tips though.
Mood can be a vital part of the story – think of horror movies. So these shots may carry value for the story even though they are not necessary driving the plot itself. I work intuitively so like to make an edit, wait a few days, and when watching it back I can easily identify what feels wrong. Of course that is not how a paid editor can work but I understand you edit your own short movie here.
The Japanese have a word that can be translated with “Ma” and it means something like the emptiness between two events.
Replying to a question about the “gratuitous motion” in his films, Hayao Miyazaki clapped his hands and said:
“The time in between my clapping is Ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”
I think this can also apply to editing a scene but – as with so many things – it will always depend and I don’t think there’s a golden rule that fits all. You may just have to experiment, let it rest for some days and then come back to the edit.
You could study Sidney Lumet’s “12 Angry Men” for this matter.
As for planning, what can help is to implement changes in blocking, e.g. have someone leave the table to go get and open a wine while still participating in (or reacting to) the conversation. Making changes to the blocking in general is a good way to keep long dialogue scenes dynamic and not repetitive, plus it’s hardly ever a bad idea to give the actors something to do 🙂
CPC in London call it ‘Truegrain’:
“We use our state-of-the-art technology to record your digital content to positive 35mm motion picture film and scan back to digital to achieve authentic film grain and texture”.
They do not use negative film stock, only positive film stock.
I don’t know who made the print for ‘Dune’ but would assume it was a similar or the same process.
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.
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.
Flex lights like Litemat are great for this since you could literally tape them to the wall if space is super tight.
Some higher end monitors can be calibrated with these devices (LUT calibration, not ICC). Lower end monitors usually not but they can have color/tint/contrast/brightness controls, so you can get them in the ballpark by dialing it in manually when comparing to a calibrated monitor.
Thank you Roger!
There’s no need for pre-flashing, or even film, today but I still find these processes, and how people used them to achieve certain goals, very interesting.
A follow up question since you mentioned ENR.
Aesthetic saturation is much easier to achieve than aesthetic desaturation in a digital pipeline in my opinion.
With silver retention techniques, do you know if there was anything special about the desaturation of colors? Was it an even process or were some colors or densities more affected than others?
Since many movies that used it then still had digital color correction afterwards, it’s not easy to tell just from looking at the films.
Wow, thank you so much, David.
The ‘black/white paint’ analogy helps me understand the impact on color.
There is an element of anarchy in these analog processes that are not present in the digital world. To be clear, I don’t think they are missing or needed, nonetheless I find them – and the way people found ways to tame, mold and then use them – fascinating.
Thanks again.
