May need help/suggestions on CC for BERLIN (pics posted)

Norm Sanders

Norm Sanders

Script Wrangler
Hey guys, I've possibly got one of the camera operators from BERLIN coming over soon to help with the CC, but he's a FCP guy, so the help may be limited. Anyway, I've always felt that CC was one of my weaknesses, and I also tend to stay on the conservative side, as you can see from these CC results...

I'm wondering if anyone can lend suggestions to get a more dramatic CC that would still show LOTS of details, but perhaps make things pop more, as well as still look good on a number of viewing options (i.e. internet, tube TV's, LCD, etc.)?

For anyone that's interested, I've posted the full resolution, RAW PNG images of each of the below to the following folder, pretty much in order of what's below: www.eefilm.com/berlin/cc

You'll see some of the CC is hardly noticeable.

For the park scene, I'm wanting bold & vibrant colors to really show the beauty of the fall exterior, as well as distinctly separate the look from the present to the past.

For the INT house scene, I've probably gone the most drastic in CC here (for older, desaturated sepia tone) as it's our first step into 1940, and I really want to sell the idea/feel.

Once outside, and in a passionate embrace (the music here just rocks - thanks, Herman!), I bring the colors back up again, to pop the colors of the tree they're under, also reflecting the passion of the embrace, etc.

For the Cabaret & Dressing room scene, I want rich, warm colors, but with a bit more of the noir feel ... punchy lighting, shadows, etc ... but not too much, as I don't want to lose too much detail.

For the rescue scene in the barn, also desaturated some, as I wanted a colder, stark feeling, but instead of going with the typical blue hues, I chose green, as it's more of a military/war feel I wanted.

Thoughts?

berlincc_01.jpg
 
Cool, look forward to it! In the perfect world, I'd love to upload an AVI file of the film, have someone do a master bus CC on their end, with key frames, and then email the file for a CC credit in the film. :) Or at least provide all the various settings, I guess, lol.
 
Here you are, right click to download:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/images/berlin.mp4
I went mostly for the dramatic film look rather than "show as much detail as possible" look. The first image is the raw one, the second one (or more) is the color graded one(s). I used Magic Bullet under Vegas for color grading, usually with custom options.

One small advice because some shots are not very CC-friendly (they were shot with no adequate lighting). The more dynamic range, the better the CC can be because the plugins find more room to work with the details. Usually, it's best to shoot with a "washed out" well-lit look and then let CC to give the movie its own unique look rather than having lots of dark scenes that don't respond well to CC.

If you like it, I will be glad to help you out and walk you through it, or do the rest of it (I don't need money for it).
 
Wow Eugenia, I just checked out your CC samples and was very impressed. Great work.

I may be contacting you soon to see if you're interested in helping me cc/grade a couple shorts I'm working on.
 
Thanks, I'd be happy to help Larry as long as your projects were made with Vegas, so it's easier to interoperate.
 
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Oh yea, I am a devout user of Vegas. I tried to switch to Avid recently so I could work with HVX P2 footage and was very disappointed (no where near as easy to figure out as Vegas). I now have Raylight so I can work with the footage.

I'll PM you later when I have more details, so we can work out the best way to transfer the footage, et al. One nice thing, I work near where you live, I work in Pleasanton so if I had to do a physical hand off of the footage, it's doable ;)

Ok, Norm, you can have your thread back ... looking fantastic by the way :thumbsup: When do I get my advance screener :grin:
 
Thanks, Eugenia. Let me import this into Vegas later tonight, so I can compare the CC with the original footage, etc. (I need to see things side by side).

Magic Bullet scares the heck out of me, however, due to the insane render times that comes with it! :(

Also, something you said triggered a thought ... it's not so much that I think we underlit the scenes, but that we lit it for the looks we were wanting .... so much so that you're right, it does make it more difficult to manipulate in post for CC, etc. That said, it may also be a reason why in many shots I'm not seeing drastic differences, because the scenes were already very close to the lighting & look that I wanted anyway (aside from possible color tones).
 
> Magic Bullet scares the heck out of me, however, due to the insane render times that comes with it!

If you have a GeForce card, then it's accelerated, only about 2x to 3x slower. Not too bad for the kind of benefits it brings. MB can do looks that Vegas alone can't.

>but that we lit it for the looks we were wanting

Yup, which it should be subtle. On the Hollywood movies the look comes primarily from color grading on post. This way, you can actually change the look if the director changed his mind on the way. The more washed out/dynamic-range the look, the better will behave on post. Here are some examples of how the scenes looked like before and after on a Hollywood movie:
http://prolost.blogspot.com/2007/07/color-makes-movie.html
 
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