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How would you grade this?


mercer
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20 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Round 2. Never mind, ugghh.

 

 

 

???

2 hours ago, deezid said:

Glad you like it.
Made some curve adjustments to add a little bit more shadow detail without making it too flat.
Untitled_1.1.5.thumb.jpg.279c3e68c640da1e26f313cdbec03333.jpg 

Yeah, this one is wicked. I’ve been going For cooler tones, but I really like what you did here. You really pulled a lot out of the background. 

 

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2 hours ago, Stathman said:

Ok, mixed the two of them.

Also added sharpness to the face, liked what @Geoff CB did there, and blurred a bit the background.

Nice to see what others tried.

Well done creating this thread @mercer!

I believe this is the main reason a forum should exist, among others.

Exchange of opinions and knowledge.

Well done mates! :) 

@mercerActually, if you open the mounted mlvfs folder the dngs are there!

Marina Foreground Graded V4.jpeg

Yeah these threads are fun. There used to be a bunch of “Guess the Camera” threads and “How would you grade this” threads. It can be fun in between GH5 posts... lol. 

Thanks for the heads up on the DNGs... didn’t know they were accessible in the MLVFS folder. 

And finally, Cool grade. 

5 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I had a good looking grade from hell LoL. I can't figure out how to export a single Tiff file in Resolve to save my Ass. It keeps wanting to make it a Movie which is sort of what Resolve is!

I’m sure there’s a way... if you can’t figure it out, do a screenshot, I’d like to see what you come up with. 

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1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

I had a good looking grade from hell LoL. I can't figure out how to export a single Tiff file in Resolve to save my Ass. It keeps wanting to make it a Movie which is sort of what Resolve is!

@webrunner5 Right click on Resolve's monitor --> Grab still, then in the gallery panel right click on saved still --> export.

1.png

2.png

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@mercer

This is an excellent exercise for this community. It gets us talking less about gear and getting more involved in the process of actual film making. There's a lot that we can teach one another here. 

One thing that I like to do in pre-production is pay very close attention to color harmony within the scene. I think a lot of inexperienced or less experienced cinematographers forget that this is definitely part of the cinematic equation.

It's good practice to come up with a harmonized color pallet/theme when thinking about your actors and the locations/set design and the narrative. This is usually thought of as the set designer's and wardrobe's responsibility, but there is cross over into the cinematographer's responsibility too. At the end of the day, the DP owns the image, and the director and producer is coming squarely for you when that image fails. :)  

The benefit of color harmony besides obvious resolve, attraction and readability, is there's going to be less grading and qualifying in post down the line. When one can, color is best to handle in pre-production. 

"Qualifying" means targeting portions of your image to grade independently. This can be done in several ways. In Lemetri, this is called "Secondary Color". 

Just some friendly suggestions. 

Personally, I'm favoring the more subtle grades. I think pushing too much contrast into this scene is equivalent of the narrative "trying too hard". 

6 hours ago, Geoff CB said:

Yes I do recommend practicing grading, especially masking, curves, and color wheels. Don't just throw a LUT on it. 

You'll never catch a colorist using pre-baked LUTS. Maybe as a starting point. The point being, OWN THE IMAGE. It is yours after all. 

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46 minutes ago, Matthew Hartman said:

@mercer

This is an excellent exercise for this community. It gets us talking less about gear and getting more involved in the process of actual film making. There's a lot that we can teach one another here. 

One thing that I like to do in pre-production is pay very close attention to color harmony within the scene. I think a lot of inexperienced or less experienced cinematographers forget that this is definitely part of the cinematic equation.

It's good practice to come up with a harmonized color pallet/theme when thinking about your actors and the locations/set design and the narrative. This is usually thought of as the set designer's and wardrobe's responsibility, but there is cross over into the cinematographer's responsibility too. At the end of the day, the DP owns the image, and the director and producer is coming squarely for you when that image fails. :)  

The benefit of color harmony besides obvious resolve, attraction and readability, is there's going to be less grading and qualifying in post down the line. When one can, color is best to handle in pre-production. 

"Qualifying" means targeting portions of your image to grade independently. This can be done in several ways. In Lemetri, this is called "Secondary Color". 

Just some friendly suggestions. 

Personally, I'm favoring the more subtle grades. I think pushing too much contrast into this scene is equivalent of the narrative "trying too hard". 

You'll never catch a colorist using pre-baked LUTS. Maybe as a starting point. The point being, OWN THE IMAGE. It is yours after all. 

Thank you for your suggestions and contribution to this exercise. Your “cool” version was amongst my favorites. 

I am a zero budget filmmaker, and wear all of the hats of my production. I started filmmaking in pursuit of another outlet for my screenplays. Meanwhile, while attempting to acquire a modicum of skill, I was bit by the filmmaking bug, but I would never consider myself a cinematographer or a DP.

I really have no interest in being one. I’m hoping to be a competent camera operator before my film is finished... But somebody needs to film my movies... so I guess it has to be me.

With that being said, I appreciate every bit of info I learn from you guys on this site.

To add, I tend to think of cinematography more like Kubrick or Polanski would (obviously not nearly as talented) from a director and writer’s view. I respect the traditional role of the cinematographer but the film is the director’s... visuals and all. Just my opinion. 

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7 minutes ago, mercer said:

Thank you for your suggestions and contribution to this exercise. Your “cool” version was amongst my favorites. 

I am a zero budget filmmaker, and wear all of the hats of my production. I started filmmaking in pursuit of another outlet for my screenplays. Meanwhile, while attempting to acquire a modicum of skill, I was bit by the filmmaking bug, but I would never consider myself a cinematographer or a DP.

I really have no interest in being one. I’m hoping to be a competent camera operator before my film is finished... But somebody needs to film my movies... so I guess it has to be me.

With that being said, I appreciate every bit of info I learn from you guys on this site.

For sure my man. We all want something different out of this filmmaking business. But even at your "level", I still would recommend finding a good book or online tutorial on color theory or harmony. It will propel your captures 10-fold at whatever purpose you're after. 

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5 minutes ago, Matthew Hartman said:

For sure my man. We all want something different out of this filmmaking business. But even at your "level", I still would recommend finding a good book or online tutorial on color theory or harmony. It will propel your captures 10-fold at whatever purpose you're after. 

Definitely a good idea, thanks. I’ll look into it. 

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@Gregormannschaft thanks, the background is challenging in this shot. I really didn’t want to give away too much about the story, but I also don’t want to seem too willy-nilly about it either, so I will say that the cluttered bokeh fits with the character’s state of mind in that scene.

With that being said, I will probably reshoot that shot, I was hoping to get away using a lens I already own, but I think I need a longer, newer lens to get the full benefit of the effect I’m going for.

But I really like your take on it... the tones pulled out the inherent separation.

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11 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

One thing that I like to do in pre-production is pay very close attention to color harmony within the scene. I think a lot of inexperienced or less experienced cinematographers forget that this is definitely part of the cinematic equation.

It's good practice to come up with a harmonized color pallet/theme when thinking about your actors and the locations/set design and the narrative. This is usually thought of as the set designer's and wardrobe's responsibility, but there is cross over into the cinematographer's responsibility too. At the end of the day, the DP owns the image, and the director and producer is coming squarely for you when that image fails. :)  

The benefit of color harmony besides obvious resolve, attraction and readability, is there's going to be less grading and qualifying in post down the line. When one can, color is best to handle in pre-production. 

This x1000. I'm trying to put more thought into the color of clothing, sets, and lighting more. Just watch a Wes Anderson movie, or Breaking Bad for great use of color in storytelling. Of course there are a million other examples, but those two are my favorites, and probably the easiest to notice and understand. Punch-Drunk Love is another one of my favorites.

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5 minutes ago, Matt Kieley said:

This x1000. I'm trying to put more thought into the color of clothing, sets, and lighting more. Just watch a Wes Anderson movie, or Breaking Bad for great use of color in storytelling. Of course there are a million other examples, but those two are my favorites, and probably the easiest to notice and understand. Punch-Drunk Love is another one of my favorites.

Good on you. On professional sets everything is curated and that's why successful images pop the way they do. If you learn any color theory learn basic complimentary and split complimentary, and that get you to gold 99% of the time.

Here's an Adobe smartphone app that can help big time in this regard:

https://itunes.apple.com/mt/app/adobe-color-cc-capture-color/id632313714?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adobe.creativeapps.gather

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14 hours ago, mercer said:

@Gregormannschaft thanks, the background is challenging in this shot. I really didn’t want to give away too much about the story, but I also don’t want to seem too willy-nilly about it either, so I will say that the cluttered bokeh fits with the character’s state of mind in that scene.

With that being said, I will probably reshoot that shot, I was hoping to get away using a lens I already own, but I think I need a longer, newer lens to get the full benefit of the effect I’m going for.

But I really like your take on it... the tones pulled out the inherent separation.

I thought that must have been what you were going for with the lens character and to be honest it works really well. Especially as the actors face seems to be saying, 'I am freaking the f– out'.

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