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Max,
I find the tools in Resolve very limiting or too imprecise for these kind of tweaks and almost only use DCTLs (“DaVinci Colorspace Transform Language”) now.
You might want to look into it, I find it much easier to get pleasing (and mathematically “correct”) colors than with Resolves’ own tools.
“Film Density” and “Tetra” from Paul Dore (in the “DCTL” folder on his Github page) are two all-time classics and free.
There are also great free DCTLs from IridescentColor .com, one that’s also called “Tetra”, “Saturator” and “Split/Tone”. He also has videos on them and affordable commercial DCTLs.
More expensive but fantastic DCTL programmers are Mononodes and Kaur Hendrikson.
I recommend trying the free ones, they are already great!
I also love the color density that film stock has, it is not easy to “replicate” with digital files until I don’t work with a high-end camera and expert colorist.
Max, if you use Davinci Resolve Studio, there’s a free DCTL from Paul Dore (ACES color scientist) called “Film Density” that emulates the darker luminosity in saturated colors of film.
You can find it on his Github site.
Until he replies (hopefully)…I think simply a high color temperature in camera would swallow the blues in this particular scene as well.
I’m not Roger so I can only guess but looking at the hard shadows there doesn’t seem to have been diffusion. And I would imagine the relatively bright sand bounced the sun enough to not use any additional bounce. Obviously, I may be wrong though.
That’s a lot!
As you mention these shreds of thoughts are out of context but they do form an interesting overview on how a world class cinematographer approaches situations from small to big and film work in general.
I see few scenes covered in a wide shot when I watch a series but, maybe, that is just because directors and cinematographers have a ‘go to’ setting for TV.
I can’t help but think it has to do with courage, too. You once told about a dialogue scene (between Brolin and del Toro I believe) out on a road in ‘Sicario’. After shooting the wide shot, Denis loved it and said to you: “let’s not shoot close shots because then I will use them in the edit”.
I believe that even though with tools like “Sora” it will still take time until consistency and precision are good enough for longer formats.
Once they are, I think that:
1. If everyone can make a movie from home, stories will become even more important than today. A good thing.
2. Live-action content will never go away. The more artificial content we’re thrown at, the bigger our longing for ‘real’ will become.
I was hoping someone else would attempt to comment on this post!
I for one am pretty glad that you commented 🙂
I wouldn’t know what to improve in lighting, you seemed to use the sun at different times of day very well. It’s very natural, which I think is mandatory for this topic. Overall I personally pay more attention to mood, and this one has a fantastic mood. Also great pace and timing, deep colors and a natural sound mix. Great job!
For Alexa’s I agree but especially mid and low end cinema cameras do not have such great latitude and dynamic range, or choice of (lossless) codecs.
Edamame,
I haven’t shot to codecs in years. I think it’s very different than shooting raw and also camera dependent. It might work for low key scenes I guess? In general, using ISO when shooting raw works counter intuitive as opposed to shooting codecs because the former has no internal processing and sensitivity stays the same (sensor’s sensitivity) and the latter has internal processing and dialed in ISO values change the sensitivity.
One example, on a sunny day in the desert you may raise ISO when shooting raw to protect the highlights from clipping while raising ISO when recording to a codec would accelerate clipping.
Max,
I am bad at explaining. First, what I described is only valid when shooting raw, not when shooting compresses codecs like Prores!
Let’s say your camera shoots raw and has a base ISO of 800. And let’s say the camera has 10 stops of dynamic range. And that at the base ISO 800, dynamic range is evenly distributed at 5 stops below and 5 stops above middle grey.
If you now lower the ISO to 400, the image on your monitor gets darker, right? That’s all that happens when shooting raw and changing ISO – the preview image gets brighter or darker (except the camera has dual ISO). Changing ISO from 800 to 400 darkens the monitor image by 1 stop.
If you now expose and light according to that monitor image, you let 1 stop more of light hit your sensor compared to ISO 800. You now have 6 stops of dynamic range below and 4 stops above middle grey, so more in the shadows.
Again, this only works when shooting raw. By changing ISO, basically all you do is change the preview image and thus your behavior in lighting and exposure.
Maybe an easier example: You light a low key scene at ISO 400 and T2. Now you change ISO to 800. The image gets 1 stop too bright. To compensate, you close down the aperture to T2.8. Now exposure looks the same as at ISO 400 T2, but 1 stop less of light hits the sensor and the shadows get noisier.
Sometimes Visual Effects want a very clean image and then it makes sense to try and get a low key scene as clean as possible.
When I shoot raw, I like to dial down the base ISO one stop (2 for extreme low light) when shooting a low key scene.
The only thing this actually does is it makes the preview on the monitor or EVF one stop darker. So I still create the look ‘in camera’ but I get cleaner shadows (because one stop of the dynamic range is moved from above to below middle grey).
Some cameras (Alexa) look great underexposed and don’t necessarily need that.
