Post vs in-camera - grading, NR etc?

Originally Posted by jls4
I always color correct for the most "importaint" person. Got this from photography in weddings. If the shots are only of one person, no big deal just color correct each shot, but when two people are in the same shot then you have to make a decision. For my next movie the lead is dark skinned so the whole movie will be color corrected based on him.


Thought, light the set for the film, then add a floating, color corrected gelled key light for the lead.
Use this for when he is center frame and open it full for wide shots! This is his key light only and flag from spilling. Cheers
 
DEPTH OF PHIL said:
Originally Posted by jls4
I always color correct for the most "importaint" person. Got this from photography in weddings. If the shots are only of one person, no big deal just color correct each shot, but when two people are in the same shot then you have to make a decision. For my next movie the lead is dark skinned so the whole movie will be color corrected based on him.


Thought, light the set for the film, then add a floating, color corrected gelled key light for the lead.
Use this for when he is center frame and open it full for wide shots! This is his key light only and flag from spilling. Cheers
Click to expand...


Phil just saved you hundreds of post man hours, man.
 
DEPTH OF PHIL said:
Originally Posted by jls4
I always color correct for the most "importaint" person. Got this from photography in weddings. If the shots are only of one person, no big deal just color correct each shot, but when two people are in the same shot then you have to make a decision. For my next movie the lead is dark skinned so the whole movie will be color corrected based on him.


Thought, light the set for the film, then add a floating, color corrected gelled key light for the lead.
Use this for when he is center frame and open it full for wide shots! This is his key light only and flag from spilling. Cheers
Click to expand...

Hey dude I appreciate it. I'll definately take a look at that. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
I tried a superflat as well and also found the mid-skintones not appealing as well as too much shadow noise.

I still find the "Neutral" profile a good all-around choice and tweak a bit from there for your post goals (as well as taking care with exposure). I will echo the pola as ND filter trick and ND filters to help smooth bright/sharp shots and light sources with a touch of underexposure to keep the highlights smooth.
 
DEPTH OF PHIL said:
Thought, light the set for the film, then add a floating, color corrected gelled key light for the lead.
Use this for when he is center frame and open it full for wide shots! This is his key light only and flag from spilling. Cheers
Click to expand...
Hmmm...Interesting.

jls4 said:
I always color correct for the most "importaint" person. Got this from photography in weddings. If the shots are only of one person, no big deal just color correct each shot, but when two people are in the same shot then you have to make a decision. For my next movie the lead is dark skinned so the whole movie will be color corrected based on him.
Click to expand...
This seems similar to what Phil is suggesting. But he's adding another light in the equation. I'm gonna need more lights....sigh
 
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jls4 said:
Have you tried Colorista? from Red Giant Software. After Effects Saturation is a joke, it isn't intellegent at all. Saturation in Photoshop is much more intellegent. Both Colorista and Magic Bullet looks have their own interpretation of Saturation and they work awesomely. You can pump past 50 and not have any problems except maybe an orange colored actor! :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

I've played around with the 5D and a pretty neutral Flat look - Saturation all the way down, Sharpness all the way down and contrast all the way down. Looks pretty decent to me and even after a few tests I was able to get a decent final look. I've also done some green screen and compositing work. I do want to play around more because I've seen some grain that I'm trying to reduce, but with Magic Bullet Looks and Colorista I haven't had problems with 90% of my grading.

Also to note, I mainly deal with African-American skin tones (lots of saturation lol)
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. I usually colour correct on a combustion suite (which has some of the Flame colour correction tools) but I'm on a sabbatical at the moment so I only have my laptop with AE. I brought in my workstation from the office and checked out Looks and it certainy produces a lot less noise than the quick tests I did in AE.

I brought my workstation in from the office and graded the Marvel's flat style - shifting it towards a bleach bypass look and there was actually very little noise compared to my previous AE test (the vimeo one). Comparing again my in-camera bleach bypass has a lot more mid-tone noise for some reason - I'm not sure why, but it is probably how the compression works in the codec.

What I also like about these flat styles is the greater dynamic range over setting up a look in-camera. Chances are one is going to crush the blacks anyway and that seems to remove noise from the shadows so that's a good thing.

Like I said my opinion is subject to change and changing it is! I'm going to do more tests as well and will post results....
 
Okay more tests...this time with Combustion's color corrector (same as Flame except 8-bit) - indeed much more forgiving with saturation. The only issues I'm having is banding in areas with little detail (shallow DOF) - seems like the compression algorithm creates lots of macro blocks in areas with less detail and reserves bits for the detailed areas. I'm having this with my in-camera grade as well as with superflat, however I can't push superflat far enough to match my in-camera grade before it falls apart!
 
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