Colours in FREE4ALL

[Cameron]

Can anyone tell me possibly how they managed to get such bright and vivid colours in the Free4All DVD. I am almost sure that they have been edited in as they frequently change the video to just orange/black throughout the DVD. How is this achieved and can you do it with digital video?

Would really like to use this technique, thanks for any help.

Cameron
(From Down Under)

[RD]

Most of F4A was shot on film so the colors are going to be more vivid by nature over DV video (especially video from 1 chip cams) There are a number of different ways to create those effects you mentioned ranging from the type of film used and how it was developed to digital enhancement. My suspicion, since it was never meant to be released as an actual film, is that it was digitally enhanced during editing (after it was telecined over from the raw film footage). This work is usually done on a higher end video format like D1, D5 or digibeta after the telecine. Any NLE (even the basic ones) will have a number of ways of doing this, the simplest being the hue/saturation command. Colors can be replaced with others, colors can be masked or adjusted in layers - it's endless.

Color mgt and enhancement (as done by a colorist) is a complete art in and of itself and you'd be amazed at what those major motion pictures look like before that work is done. As far as doing it on your own it's all a matter of learning the tools and how they affect your images, but yes, those tools are there for all of us to use too.

Mark Bame from Bump posts here occasionally, possibly he will share some of their actual editing techniques with regards to the above.

[Cameron]

Cheers, thanks for the information. I would like to be able to edit it to bring out the more vivid colours once the raw footage has been edited. Just out of curiosity, do you need to change each individual frame like still pictures, or can you edit larger pieces of footage together to save time. Otherwise it may take quite a while, (but probably still worth the effort).

Cameron

[JamesWatts]

when you digitize your footage, each clip is represented in your timeline as a colored bar. you can apply color changes to each clip or bar. this is done many differnet ways depending on which program you are using to edit your video. changing colors is easy, and can be done quickly depending how powerfull of a machine you are working on.

Most of the vivid colors you see in Free 4 All are from the stock of film it was shot on and how it was teleninied, telecineing is when the raw shot film is put onto a digital format that can but put onto a computer for editing. during this process the colors of the film can be bumped up or tweaked ie: the greenish tint of the matrix. but most of the times this color is done in post. becuase if you decide you want to change it. its harder or almost impossible to go back.

If you tell us what type of editing program you are using. im sure someone here can tell you excactly how to do it. or what effects to play around with.

-James

[RD]

I think the feature film post houses still do all the color tweaks on the actual film itself since the final result will be shown on film. However they do make duplicates of all the original raw footage for obvious reasons because, as you point out, it's a little hard to go back. In the near future all major features will be shown on DLP's and the post houses will be handling the actuall film stock less and less. In fact I think these new 4:4:4 RGB cams like the viper are capable of pretty close to a true film look right now.

[89comp]

RD-
Something interesting I found out while checking of the University of Southern California Film School this week: They only own 1 35mm cam that is only used by professors for "tests". When I asked them what students use to shoot on, they simply said, "HD"...

They still had plenty of 16mm cams around, but they were big HD fans. Interesting considering USC is the #1 film school in the country.

[JamesWatts]

Panavision is comming out with a new camera that has CCD's the same size as a 35mm frame of film, which will give us the first non-film camera with depth of feild.

film schools all use 16mm because the films are usualy shown on a small screen format...aka televison/projector. the only reason to shoot 35mm is if you are going to be showing the film in devine format(theater) 1:1.85

what HD camera's are they using?

the school itslef might not own the camera's but sometimes you get connections threw your teachers. like one of my teachers is hooking me up with Panavision and Kodak. Panavison will let me take out any 16mm or 35mm camera and lens's package as long as I show them my spect script. If I buy one can of any stock of Kodak 16mm or 35mm film, I get 9 Cans free. I also get 50% off at the film telecinie labs.

connections like that make film school priceless.

-James

[89comp]

James-
you bring up another interesting point. Another film school I visted, the American Film Institute (AFI) said that Kodak and Panavision gives them free film and telecining with the hopes that future filmmakers get hooked on film and insit on it. Sounds to me like the film companies are feeling the heat.

Not sure which HD cam USC is using, but I can find out.

good work on your connection...being in LA helps with those too.

[Josh R]

The most important thing to learn in life, at least from my experience:

Who you know - not what you know.

[JamesWatts]

comp89...I think they feeling the heat a bit right now.but even if they are really not. it is a good marketing tactic. HD is "the new hottness" and is making a dent in there sales. but film is deffinatly here to stay. film has an organic, realistic, beautiful human feel that HD and DV have a way to go before matching up with film.



joshR...sadly that is true...that is why we are getting wonderfull movies like tripple X state of the union.

most of the "new hot" directors you hear about in hollywood right now are just rich kids from BH thats daddy got them hooked up becuase they wanted to make movies. the truth is that they are not "hot" they just have the money and the PR to make themsleves appear that..

the film industry is a upstream battle untill you die. and most of the time you have to slave to people that just have more money, know more people, and have better connections than you.

ITS SO MUCH FUN!!!

-James

[als132]

ONE WORD: 16mm

actually i suppose thats not a word but you get the point. If its shot on film like that its going to pic up the REAL colors not the pixelizzed shizzat you get with the digi's.

[JamesWatts]

you can get rich colors on D-Beta or HD.

Digital cameras actualy pic up more of the "true" color's. if you look around you. the 'real world" color actualy sucks. we exaggerate it with differnet stocks of film. colorization and saturation. because it makes it more pleasing to view.

so really. "digis" pick up more "real" color

-James

[RD]

Film is a look, it's not automatically better. There are complete books on the psychology of this (as James just touches upon above). Digital has all but wiped out film for photography and it's making major in roads into motion picture industry as well. As the mfg'rs slowly get the high-end formats to do a better job of mimicing film and viewers keep getting bigger doses of digitally originated content film wil slowly be phased out. I still don't believe your average WB video buyer cares if your project is shot on 16mm or DV provided the content is there.