Do you grade your own films?

[iamWZA]

I would assume that lots of people who shoot their own films also edit and grade them, but I am just assuming. I wonder if people hand the footage to an editor and they will edit and grade, or do some people edit their footage and hand it to a colourist who will then grade it. I'm asking this because there's a very specific look I want in my films, but it's one I'm not entirely sure how to get. As usual, I would much prefer this thread to be helpful for everyone, but I am just going to post a few screen grabs to show you the look I'm talking about and if anyone can give me some rough pointers on how to achieve it, then that would be great.

Thanks

 

[Kholi]

For a second there I thought those were stills form your project. I was gonna be like "How did you get Kang-ho Song in your movie!?"

Haha.

I hand anything important over to a real colorist, but have been practicing in my spare time on my own recently.

 

[stefanhuberfilms]

For now i grade most of my stuff on my own - mostly because there is no budget for a real colorist.

Its kinda hard to say how you can achieve this look without seeing any screen grabs... please post some (raw of course)

 

[iamWZA]

Haha just for a second you thought I was a big shot!
Kholi - if you don't mind me asking, how much do you usually pay a colourist? Let's say 30 minutes of footage to grade, what sort of money are we talking? And are you always satisfied with what they do?

Stefan - screengrabs are up!

 

[kittykatro]

Do you really need to grade your film? I mean decades ago there weren't any computers and grading software... What if you manipulate the look using only lights, filters,etc? You can get some really good images on some DSLRs straight out of the camera with no grading.

 

[Josh Bass]

Disagree. I think everything, no matter how well shot, can be made better with at least a subtle grade. I believe before computers etc. they used photochemical timing to achieve this with film. I think they still do sometimes. So yes, even "When Harry Met Sally" went through some kind of timing/grading process. You weren't seeing the look of the raw footage up there on the screen.

I'm pretty sure that almost nothing you see on TV or in a theater (at least in the US) ISN'T graded. That includes reality shows (maybe some of the cheaper reality shows aren't graded, I don't know. This is all based on assumption), commercials, probably everything save for the very cheapest local commercials and the news. Even the news is in a sense 'cause they have an engineer tweaking stuff to get all the cameras to match, messing with color saturation, etc.

 

[iamWZA]

Do you really need to grade your film? I mean decades ago there weren't any computers and grading software... What if you manipulate the look using only lights, filters,etc? You can get some really good images on some DSLRs straight out of the camera with no grading.

True, but decades later we're in 2012 and there's an obscene amount of amazing technology and I'd be a fool not to use it. I don't want to sound snobby, but my preferred aesthetic is quite specific, and it's something that I can't really achieve without grading, and certainly something that can't be achieved with a DSLR. It may well be possible to manipulate light to get the desired look, but it's not something I'm capable of doing. I'll shoot it flat and see what I can do in post, but I'm considering getting a colourist. Any more views very much welcome!

 

[hscully]

I am shooting, editing and grading my own stuff right now. I would like to engage a real colorist soon as soon as I can. As I go along myself I have found Color Correction Handbook by Alexis Van Hurkman to be a real revelation, not only on how but what to do. I keep hawking this book but I have no relationship to it or the author. I wish I could find such comprehensive information for all aspects of post as this book provides on grading.

I'm working on a short right now where the screen grabs you show would be a great match. I need to de-saturate but maintain reasonable skin tones, sort of like Road to Perdition, or North Fork. I found that just desaturating pulls too much out of the skin tones to get to the level of de-saturation the director wants for the rest of the world. They just become blue gray. So my plan is to use secondary color correction or HLS to pull down some of the background, like green leaves, etc.

You can accomplish a lot of this in camera through production design also. David Mullen ASC tells a story about North Fork where the colorist, actually timer I think, asked how he got the colors out of the American Flag in one shot. He said that production made a black and white one!

 

[starcentral]

There are a variety of answers to your question and I think it all depends on the type of production itself (indie, big, small, etc..) and which scenario you have for your specific project.

As a DP/camera operator some people just want you to shoot and hand over footage. You might get to have input on it or you might not. Chances are someone else will end up doing it and you will not like it I see this happen a lot. I prefer to be involved in the grading process well BEFORE its decided what kind of look you are after. That is the professional way of doing it.

As a filmmaker and director/DOP working on my own material I am very much grading my own work and so I can shoot and light it a certain way that will help me later. Knowing how to do that comes with experience and lots of practice. A big mistake I see is people don't even know how to expose images consistently, whether there is variance between shots, scenes, or throughout the film is a whole other problem but good grading comes with lighting and image exposure and that's especially true if you're using footage with codec. (ie. h.264, XDCAM, AVCHD, etc..) RAW or near RAW 10 or 12 bit footage will give you much more room to really move gammas around. If you are just adding some subtle contrast to a scene to crush blacks, etc.. I wouldn't call that "real" grading, but many people do refer to that as "grading". Complex and advanced grading is re-exposing or colouring only specific aspects of an area within a frame. ie. In matrix you want green mid-tones but you want to preserve the skin-tones as skin-color looking so you can't just do a range based color correction job because everything in the skin-tone area will be affected. The answer is to apply masks and other trade secret methods which allow you to selectively alter specific areas of a frame.


Anyway, do you "need" grading to make a "good" film or project?

No you don't but its yet another aspect of filmmaking that gives you a chance to personalize, stylize, and more importantly tell the story. Its part of an overall process of filmmaking. Whether you choose to do it or not is up to you but for some major films its been part of their signature leaving people talking about it years later. ie. Matrix, Saving Private Ryan, 300, etc...

 

[Tolin]

I will often play around with some of the footage trying to nail the look that I'm going for, only to hand it over to the colorist saying "This is the look I'm going for, now do your magic" - because I am not a great colorist and I'm not going to pretend I am; There are people out there who are great at what they do, and I would be doing myself a disfavor going at it myself. Of course it is your responsibility as a director to make sure the colorist is guided so that the final grade is as you imagined it (or better).
I mean, all this stuff about light curves and balancing the shadow and highlight detail while punching the colors this way and that way - You really got to know your color in order to make it as good as it can be.

 

[Kholi]

Haha just for a second you thought I was a big shot!
Kholi - if you don't mind me asking, how much do you usually pay a colourist? Let's say 30 minutes of footage to grade, what sort of money are we talking? And are you always satisfied with what they do?

Stefan - screengrabs are up!

A solid colorist should be around 150~200/hr depending on his or her facility, which is usually built into the hourly cost. My average is about 175/hr inside of a theater with a Barco projector and 16 foot screen, 60" Plasma, everything.

Depending on how much work you have to have done, a 30 minute shoot could take you three to four hours to finish. As a frame of reference, we typically deliver thirty minute beauty shows, some of the shots are repetitive, some need windows, all have to look pretty good. We'll spend about five to six hours in the suite to finish one.

I think a decent short film should be around there, but would also say get some other opinions.

If you're working with LOG(ish) or RAW images, and it's not a simple contrast, saturation etc. tweak then the colorist becomes pretty vital. At the same time, if you put in the research and man hours to learn why/how/when, and then how to technically do it? I think you would be fine.

Just make sure you have an accurate color source or two... man, stuff on the infonet lately's been chaffing my eyes. >.<

 

[iamWZA]

If you're working with LOG(ish) or RAW images, and it's not a simple contrast, saturation etc. tweak then the colorist becomes pretty vital. At the same time, if you put in the research and man hours to learn why/how/when, and then how to technically do it? I think you would be fine.

The footage will be shot in C-log on the C300. Trouble is, I'm not sure what getting the above look entails. As hscully said, to get the look that's shown in my frame grabs you can't just desaturate it because it will take away the natural skin tones. So what do I do?! Do you think it's easy enough to learn how to get this kind of look with some solid practice or am I better off handing it over to someone who knows what they're doing? Bearing in mind I don't have a big budget but getting the right look is very important for me. Also, just to make sure, you are a colourist right?

 

[Kholi]

Haha I am NOT a colorist.

The gateway to achieving whatever look you're going for is through controlling light. This look that you're going for is initially low contrast, so you have to light for that.

If there were any blaring hot spots in these three images the look would be completely different. I think it's easier to learn how to get this look in camera than it is to learn how to change something in post.

My advice is to grab a camera and do some tests, or better yet find some footage that you really like and test your color abilities on that. REsolve Lite is free and works up to 2K.

 

[iamWZA]

My average is about 175/hr inside of a theater with a Barco projector and 16 foot screen, 60" Plasma, everything.

For some reason I interpreted that as the average you charge not what you pay. Silly me. Thanks for the help anyway

 

[Bruce Watson]

I would assume that lots of people who shoot their own films also edit and grade them, but I am just assuming. I wonder if people hand the footage to an editor and they will edit and grade, or do some people edit their footage and hand it to a colourist who will then grade it.

I do my own editing, and my own color correction and grading. Gives me the control I want. And I've got more time than I have money. There is that. Sigh... OTOH, the more I do the better I get. And it completes the feedback loop -- the more editing and color correction I do, the better my camera work gets.

 

[Kholi]

For some reason I interpreted that as the average you charge not what you pay. Silly me. Thanks for the help anyway

Oh, nah sorry about that. This is what I generally pay, and the tools/sources that I get to see everything on.