If you've paid for the location, it's less likely that the A location is going to drop out. You will have looked at B & C, but don't book them, If A does break their contract with you, demand a refund and get the production people to book either B or C fire fighting like this happens during a production.

Just don't lie to them about what you're going to be filming at location A, so they don't have a reason to ask you to go.

If you've paid rent to B & C I doubt they'd worry about you not using them, they've got their money and don't have an emotional attachment to your film

Yeah that makes sense. Do you think it would be weird if I wanted that brown wall look for some scenes like in Seven?

I mean I don't think you can even light walls, brown, cause I don't think there are brown gels, unless I need to look harder.

You should check the lighting filter links given earlier: https://www.leefilters.com/lighting/colour-details.html#746&filter=cf

Brown only works if it's an old building, modern police stations tend to have different colour schemes.

Brown gel is available, BUT Lee 746, Brown - is a terrible colour, as only 1.5% of the light actually makes it out the other side, so to colour something like a wall brown will take some very high intensity lights - Forget LED sources, we're talking large discharge lights and probably lots of them.

I think you don't meanbrown at all - you'r thinking nicotine stain colour? Maybe?

Oh yes, I just checked it. So those filters are gels then?

Yeah the two police stations I've been in both had white walls, in the rooms I was in.

I think he's looking for something that doesn't exist, a gel that will make a white wall look like a dingy brown wall like in Seven.

Yes, the brown gel would give a grimy light. If you're telling a story set in a modern town/city and not the rundown part of a city, why would there be brown walls in the police station offices? Quite a few locations in "Seven" are seedy, so the brown walls fit in.

Unless you can write a paragraph on why these walls should be brown and how it fits into your story, forget about it.

Oh yeah I would definitely have to match the look with other locations, and not just have one scene lit brown, and not the rest, right?

I just thought I would use light to give the scenes a seedy atmosphere, rather than have the locations come off as realistic modern color,if that makes sense?

Surely 'seedy' is the kind of lighting that comes from limited light sources in real life? So not just the dirt, but the single light in the centre off the room, casting shadows everywhere? Add one 4-6 for fluorescent fixture and seedy vanishes to reveal just dirty - which isn't the same.

Oh okay. I can talk to a DP about all that. I just like knowing as much as I can to get the look I want on my budget as well. Perhaps what we could do is have brown gels on some lights, and blue on others.

You can make white walled rooms look pretty seedy, just as you can make brown walled rooms look plush with the lighting.

Okay sure. As long as I am not doing anything that the audience won't accept, since I am so use to seeing locations painted instead of lit certain colors.

This is NOT what we're saying. If you have white walls, you can wash them any colour. They will then look like coloured white walls. Washing a perfectly flat, white wall is possible, with enough appropriate kit, and the equipment to get the lights in the right position. What you can't do is put actors close to them because they will then be lit by the wash colour, which doesn't happen with a white wall. Their shadow then to the audience screams 'lighting' not real. They also pick up the colour, which is costume and skin tone dependent on how weird it looks. You can downlight a white wall from close in, but then surface blemishes create shadows that emphasise the roughness, and make small bumps into mountains.

The audience will accept anything for what it appears to be. They will spot picture elements that look fake, and yet again we're seeing you try to emulate elements for your movie that are new to you, there's no budget for and you don't have people who understand lighting to do it. You are fixated with the issue of the walls, and are determined to solved them with no understanding of how to do it. For instance, have you considered the inverse square law? It dictates that for even brightness, the light sources MUST be at right angles to the plane of the wall to let the light level left to right match. If the wall is lit from a distance with a medium angle, then the distance between light sources will be quite small, creating a no entry zone for your actors. Wide angle sources have hot spots, which the viewer sees as 'lighting' not reality. A continuous line of wash lights enables blended even lighting, but is a considerable weight to suspend up in the air in a real building, and won't it have a low ceiling so the lights will be in vision?

I'm throwing in problems here. If you have a real building, where on earth will the lighting fixtures go? O n a set, you hang them in the position that looks right to the camera - you just cannot do this with a few stands with lights on top. At the first meeting where lights and camera people are present, hands will go up immediately when you announce the plain white walls need to be evenly lit to look like it's been painted.

I just see no way to make this idea fly. It's going to look like a light coloured room, splurged with brownish/nicotine flavoured projected light. It could be cheaper to hire the space, paint it, then repaint it back to white!

Every time I post a long reply I realize it’s a wasted effort. Ryan lacks the experience, knowledge, ability, equipment and money to produce a professional film. I see us spending months on how to color walls much the same way we spent on crash zooms. I have a feeling there are many other things that are far more important than the color of the walls. Don’t get me wrong in a professional movie color is important it sets the mood but were talking an amateur production where he’s struggling to even find a location.

I agree it’s difficult enough to properly light a room let alone trying to also color the walls in a way that looks natural. Come on do you think Ryan could afford the necessary lighting let alone properly use them? But like wise can you imagine the work to paint a room then repaint it to return it to it’s original color?

This is yet another crazy exercise trying to master an aspect of making a feature film.

I still think we were onto something making a simpler, more personal film that probably wouldn't have crazy locations or special FX but that seems to have been quickly dropped.

For some reason, Ryan seems to be obsessing about the colour of the walls. Any modern police station I've been in (or even older ones) don't have brown walls, they have been white or magnolia, some older ones used to have a very light green.

Useless the building hasn't been repainted since the 1940s the walls are unlikely to be deep colours. One factor is cost, the white or magnolia cost less. .

So far, the only reason given for the colour brown, is that it's used in "Seven" I don't know where the blue comes from and the reason for using that in a police station. There's good use of it in "The Passenger", where Jack Nicholson's character comes out of the hot desert into his hotel and the blue walls come as a relief from the heat.

I only know of one office in the real world painted blue, and it's pretty oppressive. It's an unlikely colour in a police station unless it's the Stasi.

When you've got limited resources, keeping it simple is the usually best way, don't get involved in repainting interiors, dress the rooms with the colours you want.

I don't think he wants BLUE blue, he wants bluish white, as if graded in that gritty blue desaturated style that was so popular a while a back. White walls that would be pushed slightly blue in a grade. Or as if the white balance were slightly off or the ceiling lights were the "wrong" color temp. I believe that's what he's after.

I'm a long term fan of the series NCIS, and the colour of their walls is the topic of hot conversation. Two tones of orange, and I quite like it.

If we collated all the answers to Ryan's questions on here - we'd have the entire content of a book on how to make movies on the cheap for beginners. We could all be co-authors? It could be called "How not to make a movie"

I've shot with mixed colour temperatures, however, I suspect Ryan won't have the resources to do this on his budget. You can do it in the grade, but you do need to know what you're doing with the colour correction software.

NCIS has experienced people who what they're doing, plus the budget to do it. Ryan has neither, if he was shooting a 10 to 15 minute short it would be a possibility on his budget, although, I was involved in a very low budget horror film, but I suspect the budget was higher than Ryan's when the final numbers were crunched.

I wouldn’t be surprised Ryan is reading some material on color in cinema that you would see in film school like this
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-use-color-in-film-50-examples-of-movie-color-palettes/
There nothing wrong with it, just that in general film study doesn’t concerned it self with the how or it’s proper application especially to an amateur film.

This article is far more useful because it’s directed specifically at the amateur filmmaker.
https://noamkroll.com/how-to-make-video-footage-look-like-film/
Ryan would do well to read the color grading section.

“A big mistake that I see often is amateur filmmakers will over-do the color on their film. They will go in and apply a heavily stylized look to every shot in the film, making it look more like a music video than a feature. A good starting point when coloring is to make your footage look as natural as possible.
... feel free to add warmth or cool down your footage as needed to suit the mood of the film, just don’t go overboard”.

It’s uncanny how dead on this is. It’s as if it was written directly to Ryan. I guess most amateur fall pray to the same pit falls. Concentrating too much on style and not enough on substance.

To be fair there was a period when everything was heavily stylized...anyone remember Man on Fire, Domino, Underworld, etc.? Lots of high contrast, desaturation, blue, green, etc. Doesn't seem to be very popular any more.

But yes, I remember with my own shorts when I used to be very aggressive with the "looks" and spend a lot of time worrying about the cinematography/visuals, and would fart out the script as quickly as possible.

I haven't done anything in quite a while but thankfully those two have flip-flopped on more recent projects.

I knew it would end badly when the first thing you MUST do is your mood board. Every time I have heard them talked about I have ended up cringing at something designed to replace good old intuition and common sense with a cunning plan that will miraculously turn garbage into gold. Then it gets worse - the top Moodboard Apps?? Seriously? It drifts into red causes blood pressure increases, and blue is calming (when the lighting people have always termed red as warm and blue as cold when it comes to generating mood and emotion)

Then comes more educationalist clap-trap In The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan uses the color red to represent fear, dread and foreshadowing whereas in Pleasantville, Gary Ross uses red to represent hope, love and sensuality.

That's somebodies opinion, not mine. Then it even says

Red creates an experience in the viewer

Really?

They drift into monochromatic and some how get into shades of pink and red and their example looks totally and utterly different to the classic implementations.

Then they hijack triadic. Coloraturas discordance made me quiver - a new term to describe something I've known about and used without having to even think about - for effect. That's all it is, just another effect, like the often used colour item in a monochrome image, just an effect.

Then I realised that the writers are just taking their favourite movies and attributing pseudo-science to them. Sometimes a colour is just a colour. No hidden meanings or attempts to make it something it isn't. Darth Vader and Luke had different colour beams on their light sabre - red for bad and blue for good. Just historic good vs evil colours, not describing blue as comforting or rubbish like that.

Looks like people have collated movies and ascribed decisions to them that may, or may not have been voiced by the creative team. In British pantomime, the goodie comes on stage right, the baddie comes on stage left. It's tradition. There's no science behind it.

I couldn't read further - it just made me sad and angry somebody has broken good movies down and their analysis is so flawed. I'd bet most older directors if asked did not make decisions this way at all - they just did what felt best! the costume designer produced a sketch - the direct said yes or no.

Some of that was a little...um...abstract for me to follow, but as a guy who had a subscription to American Cinematographer for a few years I can absolutely tell you DPs and Directors, at least some of the time, choose colors and lighting styles etc. to subtly convey moods etc. Having scenes have a bluer look as when the main character is down, and then warmer as the character triumphs late in a film is simple example. The DP for an indie Im failing to remember the name of used little pink areas in some shots to represent hope, love, etc. In “The Cooler” William H Macy’s keylight is very toppy with deep eye shadows earlier in the film when his character is miserable and achieves a more flattering angle as his situation improves later. This is all per interviews in that magazine with the DPs and Directors.

Of course it isnt consistent and one color in one movie can mean the complete opposite in another and we the viewers arent TOLD any of this, and we’re really not supposed to notice it at all, but rather “feel” it on an unconscious level. So there’s all that to consider.

That's what worries me - somebody has taken the mood indicators of one movie and done a Ryan - created a rule, when there isn't a rule. Happy/Sad/Angry/Emotional/scared - all these things now have colour prescribed. So a new 'cinematographer' reads this stuff and runs with it - so all scenes with X in them must be Z colour. Educationalists are always doing this. So and so director did this, and they go on about why it was done, when often it was just how it happened - happy accidents or an experiment that worked. Things that don't work get cut, so nobody knows. I'm very happy with their colour choices in the main. After all, selecting the emulsion to use when picking the film stock was very important and needed a decision early on. Now they can experiment in post it encourages fiddling, which can be good - but I just don't believe in hard rules, just guidelines and suggestions. The bit where they looked at the superman costume with blue, yellow and red. In print they're spaced out evenly, but in video, they're not because video primary colours are different, like light - so I think I might take that reading of the choice made with a pinch of salt. Did the people who designed the superman costume really do it that way, or did they just pick a blue costume then find things that worked with the cape and boots, then add a yellow for contrast in the stylised logo? I bet they never considered a colour wheel!

This is NOT what we're saying. If you have white walls, you can wash them any colour. They will then look like coloured white walls. Washing a perfectly flat, white wall is possible, with enough appropriate kit, and the equipment to get the lights in the right position. What you can't do is put actors close to them because they will then be lit by the wash colour, which doesn't happen with a white wall. Their shadow then to the audience screams 'lighting' not real. They also pick up the colour, which is costume and skin tone dependent on how weird it looks. You can downlight a white wall from close in, but then surface blemishes create shadows that emphasise the roughness, and make small bumps into mountains.

The audience will accept anything for what it appears to be. They will spot picture elements that look fake, and yet again we're seeing you try to emulate elements for your movie that are new to you, there's no budget for and you don't have people who understand lighting to do it. You are fixated with the issue of the walls, and are determined to solved them with no understanding of how to do it. For instance, have you considered the inverse square law? It dictates that for even brightness, the light sources MUST be at right angles to the plane of the wall to let the light level left to right match. If the wall is lit from a distance with a medium angle, then the distance between light sources will be quite small, creating a no entry zone for your actors. Wide angle sources have hot spots, which the viewer sees as 'lighting' not reality. A continuous line of wash lights enables blended even lighting, but is a considerable weight to suspend up in the air in a real building, and won't it have a low ceiling so the lights will be in vision?

I'm throwing in problems here. If you have a real building, where on earth will the lighting fixtures go? O n a set, you hang them in the position that looks right to the camera - you just cannot do this with a few stands with lights on top. At the first meeting where lights and camera people are present, hands will go up immediately when you announce the plain white walls need to be evenly lit to look like it's been painted.

I just see no way to make this idea fly. It's going to look like a light coloured room, splurged with brownish/nicotine flavoured projected light. It could be cheaper to hire the space, paint it, then repaint it back to white!


The problem with painting the walls, and then painting them back is, is that no location so far has been okay with that idea. They do not want their places painted, even if you agree to have them painted back after. However, the Blade Runner Bradbury building was used as an example before with it's lighting, so couldn't I light a scene to be certain colors, like they did there?


For some reason, Ryan seems to be obsessing about the colour of the walls. Any modern police station I've been in (or even older ones) don't have brown walls, they have been white or magnolia, some older ones used to have a very light green.

Useless the building hasn't been repainted since the 1940s the walls are unlikely to be deep colours. One factor is cost, the white or magnolia cost less. .

So far, the only reason given for the colour brown, is that it's used in "Seven" I don't know where the blue comes from and the reason for using that in a police station. There's good use of it in "The Passenger", where Jack Nicholson's character comes out of the hot desert into his hotel and the blue walls come as a relief from the heat.

I only know of one office in the real world painted blue, and it's pretty oppressive. It's an unlikely colour in a police station unless it's the Stasi.

When you've got limited resources, keeping it simple is the usually best way, don't get involved in repainting interiors, dress the rooms with the colours you want.

Yeah I know a lot of buildings in real life are painted white, including police stations, but this is not real life, this is a movie, and I want to create a particular atmosphere of course.

That's what worries me - somebody has taken the mood indicators of one movie and done a Ryan - created a rule, when there isn't a rule. Happy/Sad/Angry/Emotional/scared - all these things now have colour prescribed. So a new 'cinematographer' reads this stuff and runs with it - so all scenes with X in them must be Z colour. Educationalists are always doing this. So and so director did this, and they go on about why it was done, when often it was just how it happened - happy accidents or an experiment that worked. Things that don't work get cut, so nobody knows. I'm very happy with their colour choices in the main. After all, selecting the emulsion to use when picking the film stock was very important and needed a decision early on. Now they can experiment in post it encourages fiddling, which can be good - but I just don't believe in hard rules, just guidelines and suggestions. The bit where they looked at the superman costume with blue, yellow and red. In print they're spaced out evenly, but in video, they're not because video primary colours are different, like light - so I think I might take that reading of the choice made with a pinch of salt. Did the people who designed the superman costume really do it that way, or did they just pick a blue costume then find things that worked with the cape and boots, then add a yellow for contrast in the stylised logo? I bet they never considered a colour wheel!

What rule are you saying I created though, that a location has to be painted instead of lit the color?

Use low key lighting if you want atmosphere, unless you've in a period building your art direction is totally wrong and will take the audience out of the story, New York and other US cities have some older buildings, which wouldn't look out place in the1940s when you go inside.

Is the exterior of your police station post 1960s? If so, you will need a modern office look, unless you're going for a Soviet or East German look.

There are lots of movies which have modern police stations and don't have deep brown or blue painted walls and they have extremely tense scenes.

The only brown in this film set in the 1940s is the woodwork

L.A. Confidential - YouTube

The rules being referred to are those in colour mood indicators, painting or lighting walls is entirely another matter.

I see the problem with discussions like this, deriving rules from films to apply rigorously to one’s own film, as completely off the mark.

Only one question needs to be asked and answered: Does this support my story? The answer is frequently: It’s not bad, but it doesn’t do much for story.

How much does it cost in hours or money? Save resources for the things that really make a difference. This is where producing and directing meet.

“How do I do this” isn’t the same as “Should I do this?”

Well it's just that other movies are set in modern times, yet they do not have a normal modern look. Seven for example, has brown walls in the police station, as well as other buildings such as the attorney's office, but the movie is set in modern times, cause they have modern cars, helicopters, etc.

So I thought that just because a movie is set in modern times, does not mean it needs normal modern colors, since movies like Seven get away with it, and it's the tone and style they are going for, especially if the normal modern colors, are not as photogenic or atmospheric such as white. I thought that cinematic atmosphere, was more important than total realism.

In "Seven" it's an old building, not a modern police station, with the rest of the action often taking place in the seedy parts of an American city (originally inspired by NYC, which had a surprising number of unrenovated older buildings in the 1990s and certainly in the 1980s). There's a consistency to everything.

You're creating a world, so if your film is set in seedy city, with public buildings that haven't changed in years, that's fine. However, this seems to be part of your copy and paste approach to film making.

Well as far as having a copy and paste approach is being inspired by other movies a bad thing though?

inspired = good. Taking something someone else did and basically just copying = no good.

Inspiration would be taking the thing someone else did, using it as a starting point, but then changing it and making it your own.

Oasis was sometimes called the “Beatles of the 90s”. They did not sound exactly like the Beatles. They took their ideas and made them into something new (some people said they stole...I dont hear it).

Greta Van Fleet? Those guys are quite literally copying Led Zeppelin. Guy sings like Plant, music is same style, even kind of have a hippie/60s way of dressing. Total rip off.

Well as far as having a copy and paste approach is being inspired by other movies a bad thing though?
Does it support your story? The text and subtext? The portrayal of characters by actors?

Copy and paste is neither good nor bad in itself, and can be a valuable and productive inquiry for learning. But should you actually use it in a film? Does it support your story?

If you spend your resources and time on brown walls, does it actually contribute to story, or would your focus be more valuable elsewhere?

If you really need dingy for a police station, put a desk in a closet - give your characters a challenge to overcome or to resign themselves to. How would you feel if the higher ups put your desk in a janitor's closet?

The way you do it isn't. You need to make the films your own, just because something is used in another film doesn't mean it's right for your film. Unless everything is taken back to the first principles of your characters, the story they're living through and their world, plus a personal take on all this, you won't come up with anything more than a knowing pastiche. Anything from another film needs moulded into your vision, not a straight lift, otherwise the audience will be playing guessing games about your references and not emoting and you'll be limited as a film maker.

If you want to make the film you seem to be talking about, you'll need to shift up a few gears.

Oh okay I thought I was still making it my own though, cause for example, unlike Seven, I am mixing brown with blue, instead of just brown. So I thought I was still doing other things to make it my own, whilst still getting inspiration from a combination of other movies.

It’s pointless to try to shake Ryan from his copy/paste approach.

Get out your lights and camera, film yourself in a similar room. Try to color grade it in Davinci to look like Seven. Likewise you also can experiment with gelling your lights. It’s a common technique in interviews to light the background with a different color or temperature for effect or to create separation. Naturally it would be easiest to grade everything the same color in this instance sepia.

Well I could do the whole make a completely original looking movie from my imagination, I was just afraid the audience will not accept it maybe. I've tried original ideas for shots before, and people say I did them wrong or incorrectly, so not sure, how far I can go with that.

You seem to be using these other films as crutches, several people have told me that something won't be truly creative unless you're afraid when making it. You don't know if it's any good or if it's going to work, you're walking along the cliff edge between failure and success,

Perhaps your judgment isn't developed sufficiently yet, working with experienced people who share your vision can be useful. They've already made the mistakes. However, you do need to be willing to go along for the ride.

Oh okay. So it's natural to be afraid when making it then, in order for it to be truly creative, you are saying?

Both from a learning or workflow standpoint when your decision come from you instead of from movies you’ve seen everything is more straight forward. Either your instincts and decisions will work or they won’t. Either way you will know if your cut out for it. If your movie is a success you’ll have earned the confidence you can do what you want. Otherwise you’ll be dependent on other people’s ideas and vision.

Well I guess I am cautious of going outside the box, cause when I do, it hasn't turned out well. Even with that script, I want to do, people said it was unconventional and I should direct something more mainstream instead for my career, so I guess I feel pressured not to go outside the box therefore.

Either you believe in the script or you don't. Time needs to be spent writing it and rewriting it, you can easily spend a year doing this on a feature film, quite a few scripts take longer, some take years If you have a script editor/doctor any flaws can be worked out, but you do need to have the confidence to take on board what is being said and making it your own. You need to sense that the suggested change required may not directly what's they say, but some missing element is required as a set up. The good ones don't give direct suggestions, they ask questions.

I wouldn't confuse crossing the line or shaky crane shot, with thinking outside the box, that's not a mechanical thing.

Yeah that'st true. I've rewritten the script over the years, and kept applying changes and suggestions from people. But still people are not interested in doing it. I believe in the script, just got to persuade others to be in the rewrites.

Lack of interest in a script is more common than people wanting to get involved in a project. The person in charge of a big script development agency in the UK said that out of 200 well written, professional feature film scripts only one had what it takes to go all the way.

Yep that makes sense. I'll keep plugging away it.

Get a professional script reader's report, they;re basic, but not hugely expensive, just be aware that they can be brutal affairs. However, they can be better than what friends tell you. For example, Euroscript runs a barometer service http://www.euroscript.co.uk/feedback-services.html , but you can find others online.

Beware thar all reports are subjective (they can vary from reader to reader), but they are good indicators

My Director this week has taken numerous scenes and rewritten almost every line in some, because he couldn't make the written words work with real people - perhaps they worked with the writer's imagination of the casting, but with the real people it was like they were speaking French - just sounded wrong. It's made a huge improvement and as it's better, the writer is actually happy, when hardly any line is left untouched.

Just how it is. The Director just stepped up, and did it. No asking "is it possible" or "could we consider..." He just said this is wrong and sorted it. Wide shoulders. Cast and crew all thought the same - much better. Only a stupid production company would put it back!

Get a professional script reader's report, they;re basic, but not hugely expensive, just be aware that they can be brutal affairs. However, they can be better than what friends tell you. For example, Euroscript runs a barometer service FEEDBACK SERVICES - Euroscript (http://www.euroscript.co.uk/feedback-services.html) , but you can find others online.

Beware thar all reports are subjective (they can vary from reader to reader), but they are good indicators

Okay thanks, I already did that by having other pro writers read it on sites. Opinions were very mixed. I can try this site too, after making some changes. Thanks! I think the biggest problem with the script, is that I find it difficult to create suspension of disbelief for readers, and need to work on that.

As for dialogue, I agree it's best to change the dialogue, once the actors are casted. I did that with some of my past projects, and the dialogue sounded better. One director I worked under, his scripts have very poetic dialogue, and the actors just can't recite it the way he wants in my opinion, but he still keeps the dialogue as is, and is not very open to changing it.

All fiction films are about the suspension of disbelief. You usually need to add a bit more narrative detail to the sales script than you would in the shooting script, they are different animals. Opinions in script reports can vary.

Going back to this topic title, I had to smile a bit when yesterday I had a two camera crew in from the BBC here and their complaint was that they WANTED deep focus and couldn't get it, so I suspect maybe, just maybe, this quest for deep focus is only in a small subset of cinematographer and video people.