How to shoot?

H

himynameisnathan

Active member
I'm pretty new to the film/video world, having briefly dabbled in it after doing a short stop-motion on my canon g9. I'm currently doing a film degree at uni, where we got taught on Z1's as that's what we had to use for our project. One of the thing's our teacher told us was to get as close to the look you want in camera as you can. This seem's to contrast what some people here ar saying; shoot flat so you have more to play with in post, I presume there's no definitive answer. I'm not sure if this stem's from the cameras most people are using here having more latitude than most or if generally this is the preferred workflow. Got a GH2 recently aswell so just wondering if anyone knows if those files are fairly flexible in grading?

http://vimeo.com/18729276 - Graded footage
http://vimeo.com/18727220 - Graded/ungraded comparison

Thanks for reading
 
They say shoot flat because it gives you more to work with, and because you might change your mind about the look. I usually shoot as close to what the actual thing looks like.
 
Those examples are what I would call color correction, not color grading. Color grading is imparting a "look" to your footage, color correction is making sure the white balance, blacks, mids, and whites are optimally balanced before you do any sort of grading. The individual could have just used the correct white balance when shooting and saved himself the color correcting session.

I used to shoot as flat as possible to have room to do anything in post. I don't like that way of working anymore. First off because the codecs I am usually shooting on aren't the best for pushing around in post (low bit-rate intraframe such as h.264) but secondly and more importantly was just a fundamental change in thinking. The camera is my tool of choice, not color correction software. Ideally I would have my footage look as close as I can possibly accomplish to the final look I am after. I'll tell you, my ability to light, filter, tune the camera, and work closely production design has increased greatly since starting down this road. I like it, others don't. YMMV.
 
shooting flat gives you the ability to set color and contrast more freely, in post, with time to think about it and possibility to undo

the con is that it degrades your picture quality, and if you're stuck with short-of-stellar capture codec, color sampling, etc, you may want to avoid that

consider the following example: you want a closeup of a face, lighted from the side and with very dramatic shadows
if you set your image settings in the camera, you may get it wrong (unrecoverably black areas), but if you get it right then you get the best possible image you camera can deliver; in particular, your face will have a smooth gradation of tones (say, ligh values from 0 to 200)
if you shoot flat and leave your settings to be decided upon in post, you'll always get your image right, even if "right" is defined by a client that is changing his mind every two hours; but you won't have such a smooth-enough gradation on your skin tones: if on post you decide to crush to black anything with light values under 60 and set to 200 the bits that have brightness 180, you end up with only 120 steps in light values across your face, and a pointy histogram

as you see, you're getting less definition on your color space when you shoot flat; but you get your shot right; if you had a 10 bit codec at hand, with 1024 brightness values, it wouldn't be a problem; with only 8 bits and 256 brightness values, your choice will matter (at least sometimes)

I prefer to shoot on an intermediate setting, somewhat flat but still not too far from the desired final image
 
Before you make any film you should know what you want the look to be like, this will affect all your lighting choices. Shooting flat has its place, but not narrative storytelling. Shooting flat is basically saying your not sure what you want it to look like, which basically translates to your not sure what story you want to tell. You should aim to get 90-95% of the look you want in camera and use your colour grade to add the final 5-10%.
 
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