I got into a discussion yesterday about how I was finding color grading much more complex doing movies than I originally thought. I originally thought I would just do it myself as I'm pretty good with color and can grade photos pretty well, but I'm finding movies a different beast altogether. Of course another photographer chimed in and was telling me the wisdom he has acquired, but to me grading a photo is much easier than a movie...but I can't articulate why. Trying to Google the difference I can't seem to find much. What is the difference? Perhaps I'm wrong?
Color grading: photots vs movies
- Thread starter boulder
- Start date
In moving pictures, the picture changes constantly. Even subtle changes can have a big effect on grading.
That said, not really sure what exactly you find that much more difficult.
That said, not really sure what exactly you find that much more difficult.
Thanks. What I find more difficult is the way a photograph can simply be printed so it is pleasing to the eye, whereas a movie you have to take into account numerous additional factors such as mood for the scene and the surrounding scenes, broadcast requirements, changes in light throughout the shot, audience perceptions to color, multiple vignettes for display, etc. Some of these apply to photographs but generally to a lesser extent. I guess if you ask a colorist what is so hard, they might be able to tell you better than I. I have a much deeper respect for colorists since working through tons of tutorials and books and working on my own film, and realize there is much more to it than making it just look good. It most defiantly is an art and I have gained much respect for that art.
The time and effort to control what is going on in front of the camera and how that effects what you shoot can greatly simplify the grading task. Lighting control, fill ratios, optical filters, consistent color balance, consistent exposure values within and between shots in a scene can go a long way to ease the post process. Just because the power of the grading tools at our disposal now tempts us to shoot less thoughtfully with the idea that we can fix anything in post doesn't mean that is an efficient approach to the end result.
Understood. However, because these tools allow us to do stuff simpler than ever before sometimes it requires more effort in the grading. Case in point...due to my limited funds I decided to shoot an alien sequence using a static background and make it pulse with tools from the color applications. It saved me thousands but is hell masking. The end effect is very cool and much better than if I had green screened it, and I didn't have to make an expensive pulsating wall. Of course I always shoot for the best exposure given the location and try to stay consistent, but shadows creep up especially if I'm shooting outside and the day wears on. I think there is grading to make things look good and then there is grading that is heavier and more artistic. My point is I'm finding it more complex than a single photograph. I think that is a pretty safe point to make.
Visual effects isn't the same as grading. Your pulsing sounds like visual effects.
Photos can be colored for moods and correction in exactly the same ways. Your statement that you can just make a photo 'pleasing to the eye' and leave it at that is a simplistic way of looking at things, and ignores a lot of what you can do with photos. Mood matters there, too, maybe even more so since you don't have dialog. Getting practice with grading video might help you realize this and apply it better to stills. A video is just a lot of stills stuck together.
As for your point, I don't think that's accurate. Building your wall would have been just as difficult as grading, if not more so. At least if you wanted it to look good. But you'd probably hire someone who knows how to make it look good, so your personal effort would have been minimized. Or at the very least you would have had help. If you hire a colorist and a visual effects person this job would be really easy for you. Doing things on the cheap is always difficult. If it weren't everything would be cheap.
Photos can be colored for moods and correction in exactly the same ways. Your statement that you can just make a photo 'pleasing to the eye' and leave it at that is a simplistic way of looking at things, and ignores a lot of what you can do with photos. Mood matters there, too, maybe even more so since you don't have dialog. Getting practice with grading video might help you realize this and apply it better to stills. A video is just a lot of stills stuck together.
As for your point, I don't think that's accurate. Building your wall would have been just as difficult as grading, if not more so. At least if you wanted it to look good. But you'd probably hire someone who knows how to make it look good, so your personal effort would have been minimized. Or at the very least you would have had help. If you hire a colorist and a visual effects person this job would be really easy for you. Doing things on the cheap is always difficult. If it weren't everything would be cheap.
Building the wall would have been more difficult, but easier to grade. Yes just making a photo look good is too simplistic, but I think generally grading a movie is more difficult. And I am hiring a colorist, I have arrived at that decision while exploring the complexities of movie grading (plus I was told grading it myself ain't gonna happen)...it probably never was a decision on my part actually [SUB]Really, I'm never disagreeable as long as you hold my same view[/SUB]
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A skilled colorist is a true artist. Yeah grading a few million frames for a feature film could qualify as more of a task than grading a still.:cheesy:
I always figured "well I could do that" I'm good at color and am an artist, but the more I learned the more I found I didn't know. I have the utmost respect for a good colorist now. The tools are available to anyone now and everyone is coloring their own stuff, but unfortunately it looks like it.
Bruce Watson
Veteran
You're not wrong. Comparing working in stills with working in video is sort of like comparing playing trumpet with playing clarinet. Two completely different beasts. All that translates from one to the other is your ability to read the music, understand the notations, how to play with others, even how to breathe and breath control. But embouchure is completely different, as are fingerings. Basically, years of playing trumpet translates not at all to playing clarinet. You know what you want to do, but not how to do it.
Photoshopping stills has about the same relationship with color correcting / grading video. If anything, it's even worse, say the difference between classical trumpet and jazz clarinet.
The big difference to me is the addition of the variable of time. With a still, you can spend hours photoshopping it to get it just the way you want it. Then you print it, and I view the print, and can take all the time I want to examine it in as much detail as I want. A video has a great many individual frames -- if you spent the same amount of time working the frames in video as you do with a still, it would take centuries for you to finish. And when you get done and show it, the frames fly by at 24+ frames per second. As a viewer, I can't control the frame rate. I can't take my time and examine your work. Worse, I experience each frame relative to it's neighbors. The individual frames can't stand alone; they are dependent on adjacent frames to create the flow of the video.
One of the big tasks with color correcting / grading video is to facilitate this frame-to-frame dependency, this flow of frames, to make it work. And especially, to make it work at cuts -- to make scene changes flow. None of this has any analogy in the world of stills photography.
I'm not being very articulate this morning, but I hope at least that you get my drift.
Two people who are considerably more articulate than I have written a couple of excellent books that might shine some light on the subject for you. First is Van Hurkman's Color Correction Handbook. This is the most lucid technical book I've found on any technical subject; and it's a very accessible read too. The second is Block's The Visual Story. Both books are highly recommended. The first book tells you, more or less, what to do. The second book tells you, more or less, how to tell a visual story. Between the two of them you can get an idea of both what to do, and how to do it. Which is, I think, your real question.
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
Coming from stills Ive been battling video colour since day one.
A thin codec is like a jpg at 2.
But beyond that Ive found resolve is the tool that I can actually work video with.
You have layers, opacity, and the criitcal motion tracking.
Since peaking into Resolve I now feel I can start getting some colour in my videos.
my 2cents
S
A thin codec is like a jpg at 2.
But beyond that Ive found resolve is the tool that I can actually work video with.
You have layers, opacity, and the criitcal motion tracking.
Since peaking into Resolve I now feel I can start getting some colour in my videos.
my 2cents
S