How do you get this type of blue sunlight cinematography?

[Paul R Johnson]

Ryan, I'm old. I've spent my life thing to make cameras look the same. Making white white. Viewfinders can rarely tell you when you are out there shooting, so you stick something white in front of the lens and press a button. Most times the camera says something like 5500, and you look around and nod or shake your head.

Rarely, I'll drag out a Matt box and stick a blue grad in it on the spur of the moment, but that's it. Everything else is a non-destructive post decision. I'm not interested in huge colour shifts for effect, and I must admit that all those old film stock presets just make me wonder why anyone would have chosen them in the days they were available?

I think I'm just odd. I'm just totally disinterested in these treatments, and I bet I've watched some of the movies you'd be so inter eyed in for their looks. It means all this teal/orange thing just passes me by. When I was 17 I spent a year working with an art film maker. I simply didn't get it. I spent two months building a replica sopwith camel cockpit and making bullet holes and smoke and eventually setting it on fire. That I really enjoyed, but I have no memory of the arty-fatty movie it went into at all.

Colour wise, I've an app that tells me the rgb components of what you point the camera at and that's all I can offer for art descriptions of colour. There is probably a rosco or lee gel that matches what you think teal is. I suspect it's the video persons version of the sound persons words like dark, body, prescence, colour etc.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I’m becoming an expert at deciphering Ryan’s threads.
1. It always starts with copying a movie.
2. Asking how it was done. In this case color grading 10bit+ color video.
3. Then trying to find ways to achieve the same results without buying the needed equipment (cinema camera) and taking the time to follow the accepted process (color grading). So in this case he’s asking if using a blue filter on a 8 bit dslr will give the same results.

None of us know whether you can achieve good enough results using doggy cost saving methods. You’ll have to try it out for yourself.

How many pages do you think this one will be?

[Brian Drysdale]

Oh, it could ne endless, given that it's related to a similar question about blue walls on his interiors. The only difference seeming to be how orange the flesh tones are.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

You mean this one https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/open-dv...6=#post1956997
I skimmed through a few pages and smoke started coming out of my ears.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, I thought that they achieved this look for the movie while shooting with filters or shooting on a low color temperature, or something like that. I didn't know it was achieved in post, so I thought it was different from past threads, if they achieved it in camera.

But it seems I perhaps shouldn't go for this look because it was pointed out on here before that it's not very good, but what movie looks should I be inspired by that are good then, when it comes to a thriller tone?

[Brian Drysdale]

There are loads of looks used in thrillers, from glossy to gritty and dirty, It should come from the story and the world that your characters live in.

[Ryan Elder]

Yes that makes sense, but is it wrong to be inspired by other movies, though, or get ideas from?

[Brian Drysdale]

There's nothing wrong with that, assuming that it fits in with the world of your story.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. Actually I have another question about cinematography and color if that is okay.

For a script I want to plan out, there is a scene that takes place in between two other scenes. The first scene is daytime, and the third scene is night. But I can't go from one to the other, because the audiece will under, how is it all of a sudden night now, in just a matter of minutes.

So I thought it was best to have a dusk scene in between. But I don't want to actuall shoot during dusk, because you have less tahan an hour before the light changes, and the shoot could take a whole day.

So I was wondering, could I shoot for a whole day, during daytime, and use color grading to fake that it's dusk, by making the sun more warmer, or more orange? Or will the audience not see this as dusk, but just a really warm looking, middle of the day scene?

[Paul R Johnson]

If it's dark, and it was light before, time has passed. It's the oldest trick in the book to suggest time has passed. You often see it in a Sven where the sun is high. Then the sun is just above the horizon. The audience may well be totalled unskilled in moving making, but they immediately know it's later in the day. I cannot imagine why you'd even think this would be confusing. Continuity wise one of the easy errors is the Suns position changing the wrong way. It's a big jolt that the public notice. Going the other way is a subtle clue most pick up. The classic lengthening shadows to denote time passing. You cannot at your ability level you've explained before, fake a days shooting and make it look dusk. Dusk has a classic feel and I don't think I could make midday look dusk realistically I'd have to shoot very carefully so all the clues were missing. No bright sunlight, cloudy sky all day? Maybe then I could make it work.

It's like the 50s and 60s era when movies and film for to shot through blue gel to make it night time, but shot in bright sunshine and it just got accepted as what it really looked like at night. We'd never get away with that now.

[Brian Drysdale]

Yes, you can cut directly, it just needs setting up in the script. Quite a few films do direct cuts to night, if in doubt you can use a dissolve.

It's no different to this:

Lawrence of Arabia - match scene - the greatest editing cut ever HD - YouTube

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. Well in Lawrence of Arabia for example, a lot of time has passed between the two. Where as in mine, it all takes place in the same evening/night, so I don't think I can do a subtle cut from full daytime to full nighttime, without a dusk scene in between to bridge the two, I don't think, compared to the timeline of Larwrence of Arabia.

[Brian Drysdale]

It's basically a jump cut. If the audience is set up for a time change you can do it, e.g, looking at watch or the dialogue " tonight then".

It's not a subtle cut, it,s a dramatic cut which is driven by the story.

If it requires mood setting etc, that's another matter.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, I thought it was more of a smash cut. But if I do a jump cut, I feel that the audience would be thinking, why is it night of all a sudden, and why did even take so long, when it shouldn't have?

It's not the editing I feel that is the problem it's the wondering, if why the event took so long, when it should have only taken maybe a half hour. If I go from pure daylight, to pure night in a cut, then it's going to feel like more than a 30 minutes. went by, shouldn't it?

[Brian Drysdale]

As I intentioned before, it's how you set it up. A cut doesn't work in isolation, what happens before sets it up.

If the audience is left wondering or thinking, instead of following the story, you've done everything wrong. The reason is deeper than just a cut.