Help! - White-ish film tone settings for 251 - impossible ?

[Claude Mangold]

Hello all
Will be shooting a short film picturing a distopian present where the light has changed. Sunlight is "formatted" by the authorities, whitish, making all humans look pale but emphasizing the attractiveness of bright, shiny, new, expensive consumer goods.

With DP Cedric Russo, we're trying to find appropriate settings and/or filters so that the image will:
- have a kind of lush opalescent whiteness
- will stay (very) well contrasted
- will have lower saturation
- can retain brilliant, even gaudy highlights on chromes, jewellery, etc.
- can show beautiful smooth silky reds and blues while de-emphasizing greens, yellows and of course skin tones
- can successfully show cinema d-o-f-characterstics
- will NOT look overexposed
- will NOT look washed out.

In addition, we should ideally be able to work out an "emotional curve" where the setting can be varied in intensity but retain the crucial characteristics. And work indoors and outdoors.

Lighting is daylight and HMI, where we can add gels as well.

We're trying to vary from Tim Dashwood's Bleach bypass and Film vert settings. We've also looked at chocolate filters to de-saturate while keeping contrast, which works fine, but doesn't give a lush white-ish look.

All suggestions highly appreciated. We're probably looking for something impossible but would like to try for it anyway.
Many thanks !!

[Claude Mangold]

small addendum: will beusing fixed-focus Nikons with PS mini-35.

[Marc Colemont]

My 5 cents...
For those highly specified needs, to me it looks something that you need to do in post. I would start-off with the True-color settings and do some tryouts in post before shooting. In this case I would take my DSC-chart with me and line up the chart before each shot in a different environment. That way you have a comparison in post to edit the values of each shot

[Claude Mangold]

Thanks, Marc !