Day for Dusk Grade Advice

[Shane Taylor]

Hi,

I'm grading my short film and before I create a DCP and head to the theater to test, I'm hoping for some advice from those with more experience in such a grade, and what will translate well. I have two PDFs on Google Drive linked below, the first explains my intent, how the footage was shot, and on what, and the process I went through to get from the original to the graded footage. The second PDF contains additional graded frames from the movie to represent different lighting throughout. The entire short film (8 mins) has the same grade/look.

PDF1

PDF2

I've also included a short length of footage, both the original out of camera, and the graded version for visual comparison. They can be found below.

Original

Graded

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

Shane

[Abby Bader]

When working with night exteriors you need to evaluate the top level light and at the same time consider how much you want to stretch the black values to preserve a rich image with enough details.

The overall color cast is magenta and that's a pretty bold choice, but that could definitely work. Sometimes I throw in different reference images with different color palettes to see what works best on my footage. I often end up in a more blue direction for day-for-dusk.

When de-saturating the image so much that the flesh tones almost turns white you need to be careful not to loose too much facial details and texture.

Good luck!

[Jussi Rovanperä]

I'd pull down the yellow-green saturation first, as that is the dominant color now and not really wanted in the final image, and then cool the white balance and adjust the exposure/contrast. I'd avoid desaturating the whole image.  

[Shane Taylor]

14 hours ago, Abby Bader said:

When working with night exteriors you need to evaluate the top level light and at the same time consider how much you want to stretch the black values to preserve a rich image with enough details.

The overall color cast is magenta and that's a pretty bold choice, but that could definitely work. Sometimes I throw in different reference images with different color palettes to see what works best on my footage. I often end up in a more blue direction for day-for-dusk.

When de-saturating the image so much that the flesh tones almost turns white you need to be careful not to loose too much facial details and texture.

Good luck!

Abby, thank you for your review and advice. I did struggle with where exactly to put the highlights to look realistic. When I kept them 'white' or 100%, they appeared way too distracting, so I brought them down to range between 50-70%. I just don't know if that's reasonable for the screen. It looks 'believable' on my monitor, but I also don't want the whole movie to be nothing but moving shadows and lose all the detail either. I shot relatively flat knowing that I'd pull down the mids and shadows, to hold on to some detail in my 8-bit footage. That seemed to eliminate much of the noise. I felt having the sky and river in some shots, and striving for overall consistency shot-to-shot throughout, boxed me in a bit as to how wide I could go.

Magenta was definitely NOT what I was going for, so I need to look at that. Was it bad on your monitor? I will definitely pull up some images I like and throw them into the mix to test my color scheme and brightness. That should be helpful.

I also struggled with the skin tones. I wanted to keep a little more color in them, but had trouble getting the blue I wanted and not cooling them off as well (with my primary). I tried to keep the grade simple, but it looks like I may need to be a little bit more surgical in removing the magenta, maintaining the skin tones. On the other hand, I was also thinking that the cold skin tone added to the desperate feel of the character being chased through the woods at night, especially later when she impales herself in a fall. Would that play OK, or would it still just come off like a 'bad color job'?

Thanks again. Lots to consider and try. Cheers.

[Shane Taylor]

11 hours ago, Jussi Rovanperä said:

I'd pull down the yellow-green saturation first, as that is the dominant color now and not really wanted in the final image, and then cool the white balance and adjust the exposure/contrast. I'd avoid desaturating the whole image.  

Jussi,

Excellent advice, and your approach makes perfect sense for my footage! Can you offer any insight as to the brightness ranges I landed on in the final. The parade and histogram are shown with the images in the PDFs (the vectorscope in Sg CS6 is HSL so not very helpful). Given that I have the sky in a few shots (which blow out), and much of it in shadows of the woods, while a few have some hightlights from more open areas streaming in that I have to control, where would you typically place the highlights for dar4dusk for both an ominous, but clearly visible, look (if you wanted to maintain an overall consistent look throughout the 8 minute film). I've seen many day4night shots in movies that really are nothing but moving shadows with only very few highlights on faces, etc., but that wouldn't work for this film. There are too many details that need to be seen. That need may be making my grade a little too 'dark and flat' - that is a concern.

Thank you.

Shane

[Jussi Rovanperä]

12 hours ago, Shane Taylor said:

Can you offer any insight as to the brightness ranges I landed on in the final.

I think the contrast is fine, but the white balance is magentaish, like Abby stated. 

[Shane Taylor]

7 hours ago, Jussi Rovanperä said:

I think the contrast is fine, but the white balance is magentaish, like Abby stated. 

Thanks Jussi.

[Abby Bader]

On 12/7/2016 at 0:08 AM, Shane Taylor said:

On the other hand, I was also thinking that the cold skin tone added to the desperate feel of the character being chased through the woods at night, especially later when she impales herself in a fall. Would that play OK, or would it still just come off like a 'bad color job'?

Cold skin tone is perfectly fine, I just ment you need to be careful with texture and facial details. One of the shots was lit very flat, and it's rarely flattering with completely white and washed out skin tones in that context.