Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

Paint the room what colour you want, and promise to repaint it back at the end of the shoot - the location owner even gets a free makeover. A few tins of paint is probably cheaper in time and effort.

I'm not disputing it might be better if you could but this is an amateur production. Most people allowing free use of their office wouldn't want their walls painted. We're not talking about professionals who do a good job, they'd probably get paint everywhere, not properly cover back up the blue, and the smell of paint where you can't open the windows...

This is just another example of Ryan taking a technique and misusing it. All that is needed is a cooler grade of the scene. Grading isn't for painting walls.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay I see what you mean, but I don't like walls being just plain white. Is fixing it in post by using qualifers really so bad?

[Paul R Johnson]

It is when you can't make it work. when I'm faced with doing something badly, or having to spend hours on something like this, I usually find another way of doing it. Tomorrow I am shooting something that really should have a green screen, but I took it down Friday and put up a white one - so tomorrow As the lighting rig is still up, I'm going to see if I can get away with throwing loads of colour on the white - I'm just lazy and interested to see what will happen.

[Ryan Elder]

Well since I wanted to use the 3 color method, I could still do it, by having the actors wear clothes are not of those three colors only, and no other colors. If the DP I get does not have a 10 bit 4:2:2 camera, than I can get one then, to separate the skin tones successfully then in post, if that's best for post grading?

[Brian Drysdale]

You really seem to enjoy painting yourself into corners.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

You really seem to enjoy painting yourself into corners.

LOL. Too easy.

You could say we're painting Ryan with a broad brush.

[Ryan Elder]

How am I painting myself into a corner?

[Paul R Johnson]

I don't think we can explain this Ryan. I expect your wardrobe people might have issues here.

[Brian Drysdale]

You're getting obsessed with doing something for which there's a number of possible methods of achieving the same mood.

You're also applying restrictions upon your wardrobe department, which may involve them having to select costumes that may be inappropriate for the characters.

You may find that the final effect doesn't work out in practice because your shots are limited by your desire to have the walls look like they're painted blue.

[Patrick Tracy]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

Oh okay thanks. I know what you mean but the locations cannot be painted though. Plus in these tutorials they show clips from movies where the walls or backgrounds were a different color originally, so isn't it normal to color walls in post, if they cannot paint them since other movies do it in post?

At this point I would say that the solution is to go back a step or three in the process, identify what limitations you're presented with and figure out what kind of movie you can make within those limits. If you're good at making movies, your movie will be good in spite of them. You might even impress people more by doing good work under constraints. Think El Mariachi.

If you continue to obsess over peripheral details, you will fail to put proper focus on the core attributes of a good movie. The most likely result is a bad movie with nice colors.

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

You're getting obsessed with doing something for which there's a number of possible methods of achieving the same mood.

You're also applying restrictions upon your wardrobe department, which may involve them having to select costumes that may be inappropriate for the characters.

You may find that the final effect doesn't work out in practice because your shots are limited by your desire to have the walls look like they're painted blue.

But I've noticed that movies that do the 3 color rule will do this though and wardrobe will work within those certain colors. So that seems normal. Plus in the past, I was forced to be my own wardrobe department anyway, so if this is going to be no different than it's still me who has to make that decision then.

Originally Posted by Patrick Tracy

At this point I would say that the solution is to go back a step or three in the process, identify what limitations you're presented with and figure out what kind of movie you can make within those limits. If you're good at making movies, your movie will be good in spite of them. You might even impress people more by doing good work under constraints. Think El Mariachi.

If you continue to obsess over peripheral details, you will fail to put proper focus on the core attributes of a good movie. The most likely result is a bad movie with nice colors.

Well I can't really get a feel of what the look of El Mariachi was supposed to be in it's color scheme though. In fact, I could be wrong here, but I don't think it was even shot with one in mind.

[Patrick Tracy]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

Well I can't really get a feel of what the look of El Mariachi was supposed to be in it's color scheme though. In fact, I could be wrong here, but I don't think it was even shot with one in mind.

Exactly my point.

[Ryan Elder]

Well I feel like I can at least try. I mean how hard is it to have actors wear certain colors in their clothes like other movies do. I don't think that would be hard. Even if I cannot color the backgrounds, at least I have control over the clothes during shooting.

The actors need wardrobe anyway, so would clothes that are certain colors not really cost any different much? I guess I just felt that clothes will still cost the same and not add much more to the budget if I operate within a certain color scheme.

[Paul R Johnson]

You are becoming fixated on this rule following Ryan. I’ve been looking at the three Color rule, and come to the conclusion that it has no historic grounding at all, and is a rule developed once technology allowed modification of colour pallets. Once one movie swing to pushing orange, with the complimentary colour, everyone started doing it. It’s not a rule at all, it’s fashion, so suddenly we have tweaking to fit the feel of a movie, which is good, but why are people getting so obsessed by it as a tool to make people like a movie. If you make a movie on Mars, it will have a red tone. Underwater has blue, deserts are yellow or orange, Antarctica become steely blue, California beaches look like California beaches and England looks murky grey. I see your quest as misguided. You are putting frosting on a cake that doesn’t have good ingredients, and instead of sorting the recipe you are tweaking the frosting. You have no sense of priorities Ryan. You do not understand these rules you blindly follow. They are based on premises you have not understood. Your cinematography in production is enhanced by these colour shifts, but you have taken the least important component of the rule, and amplified it. Colourists are tinting subtly and you are using the rule to change the colour of a room, then fighting the artefacts it creates. It’s madness. Why can you not see you’ve just misunderstood the whole thing. You’ve totally rejected the art behind the rule in favour of the technology.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. So basically the color grade in movies is a lighter sheen rather than trying to change the color of a background entirely then, you are saying?