help with monochrome desaturated look?

[astrozombie]

Any thoughts on how to achieve the muted brown look in Festen? I want to use a similar look for a horror movie I'm shooting.

I'm guessing:

Keep saturated colors out of sets and costumes (except of course for the BLOOODDD that will spill bruahahahahah)...

and of course desaturate in camera and/or post.

am I missing anything though?

The Dogme guys like to talk all this naturalism we-never-touch-a-thing crap but its the unified color of Festen that helps make it look good/like a movie (ditto for the blue and yellow super grain processed Julien Donkey Boy). I doubt Ill find an interview with any of them talking post production color or anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxLGFlyZuwk

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Any thoughts on how to achieve the muted brown look in Festen? I want to use a similar look for a horror movie I'm shooting.

I'm guessing:

Keep saturated colors out of sets and costumes (except of course for the BLOOODDD that will spill bruahahahahah)...

and of course desaturate in camera and/or post.

am I missing anything though?

The Dogme guys like to talk all this naturalism we-never-touch-a-thing crap but its the unified color of Festen that helps make it look good/like a movie (ditto for the blue and yellow super grain processed Julien Donkey Boy). I doubt Ill find an interview with any of them talking post production color or anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxLGFlyZuwk

I wouldn't call the example some much 'monochrome', as perhaps desaturated to some extent with some 'cast' color added in.

I've always believed in 'capture as much as possible', and use post processing to yield the desired result. You may have to experiment with the post process, to get the look, but trying to do it 'in camera', will leave
you, most likely, with a bunch of footage you are unhappy with.

You could go 'monochrome' on one layer, give that layer the 'basic cast', say 'sepia', then have a second layer with the original 'color', image and use opacity settings, like 10-50% to bring back the 'color'. There's also the use of mattes, and the like for 'rotoscoping' to yield highly selective processing on elements in the image.

None of this of course is a lighting issue...