spaghetti western look

C

Cheesesailor77

Veteran
ok, i know this is very hypocritical but im going to do it anyway.

I dont know what I want... but i want you to tell me how to get it... OK stay with me!

My spaghetti western got pushed back to hopefully next semester because its so rainy there's no where to shoot that will pass for deserty whatever. So while im working on the storyboards and other projects i want to start testing looks for my western.

My problem is that i dont really like the way western look now. I want that '60s Sergio Leone looks that todays film stock and lighting techniques outdate. But the same time if i managed to shoot just like they did, it probably wouldn't work either, hmmm, hard to explain.

Anyway keep in mind I AM goin out and doing my own tests, I just wanted to here if any of you had any thoughts on the subject, and im a little bored at the moment.

Offer anything you wish, but i think my first real question is if anyone has ideas on color correcting to get a more 60s stock look. I'm also thinking about adding some grain (this will never go passed dvd, so no blow up or anything).

Thanks guys
 
Re: spaghetti western look

My suggestion is to study SERGIOS films to the 'T'.

1. Compositions
2. Framing
3. Lighting
4. Coloring

I would also try mimicry/homage/appropriation/stealing ceratin scenes/shots. That stock you refer to is high contrast with a de-
saturated look with no special 'Color Correction' I can notice. The skin tones don't seem to be REDDISH or PINKISH but more a dusty/yellowish complexion.



Here's a great link:

http://www.fistful-of-leone.com
 
Re: spaghetti western look

I don't know if you video guys do this, but here's a tip from the wonderful world of audio.

Reference clip.

What I mean by this is, let's say I wanted to emulate a particular sound, say Liberace with Strings, doing a cover of a Slipknot tune. Ok, I'd copy and load that track into my audio app as a track that I could continually listen to and compare what I'm doing to it. Where are the drums panned, where is the bass panned. Let me analyze the clip with scopes so I can see what I'm hearing, let me hear the reverb. Let me play with the EQ so I can understand how it was mixed.

Once I do that, then I can start to make changes to the song I'm working on, matchiing it up to my reference track. A skilled sound engineer could make it sound like another track off the same album.

You already do this in video. When you cut a coverage shot into a master shot, you have to color correct and what not to make them match up - this is simply a more drastic version of it.

So, here's what I'd do (in addition to EVERYTHING John said). Import a few reference clips. Make a form that you can keep track of camera settings with and start shooting a variety of settings marking down your settings for each shot (you might want to shoot with a slate). Make sure one of your settings is pretty flat/clean. Then I would log all my clips with the various settings into my editor and start playing with each one as if I were color corecting it to fit in with my reference footage. The clip that matches (or comes the closest) is the winner. You make a note of what camera settings you used and what you did in post and you're good to go (assuming you paid attention to what John said above). If none of them come close, then you have to figure out what went wrong and where.

Best of luck,

Matt
 
Re: spaghetti western look

I like spaghetti westerns
I like the way the boots are all reverbed out
walking across the hardwood floors.
In fact, everything's got that big reverb sound.
;)
 
Sergio is the master. Composition, blocking and lots of sparse dialogue in scenes.
 
Damn my message got a erased. Basically what I said was, That leone used music to cut his movies. he stated when he did the end seqence and all over once upon a time in the west that he had music playing on set of the soundtrack would be. So the pacing the character and all was cut to it. look at the ending of the good the bad and the ugly pacing and c uting is key but the great compositions make it stand out. look at the all of once upon a time in the west 15 page script, 3 hour movie. pacing and movie and lack of dialouge makes great SP westerns.
 
i did a movie called Western Bossa Nova (click here to watch a small qt version of it)

what me and my co-director did was just to study all the leone's films we possibly could in our time frame between pre-production and shooting (about 4 days fyi ;)) and just did the framing as much alike leone's as we could!

also the music (as stated above) is very important for the tone.

we experimented a few filters for the yellowish look... but as we didnt have much time we decided to do that in post!

if you have any more questions just let me know!!
 
TECHNISCOPE - 2PERF 35mm

TECHNISCOPE - 2PERF 35mm

A couple things.

1) Those films were shot on a old low-budget 35mm format called "techniscope."
The big advantage was that it was "2 perf" meaning it did widescreen by using half that standard 35mm frame. The camera's used standard 35mm film stock but only 2 of the common "4perfs" of the format. This allowed widescreen shooting, and saved 50% of film stock. The downside was, you essentially lost half resolution when projected.

2) Many of these camera's (and films) were shot MOS - that is without syncsound. I don't know if they actually recorded production audio or not. But it certainly wasn't in sync. The same techinique was used by Robert Rodriguez on El Mariachi to great effect.

So... how to emulate that?
Shoot wide and without sound!

-b
 
well the big reason they did shoot with out sound was because they were going to be dubbed for the american releases.
 
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