Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?

[Brian Drysdale]

You're not just changing the colour of the background, you're affecting everything in the scene. The effect influences more than the wall, so once you've done it in one location, you may have carry it through in some form other throughout the film for constancy.

You've also ignored the Lighting in these shot examples, which is very different to the flat lighting in your own test

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. Yes I know I would have to have a consistent look but is that a problem?

And yes the DP would light it differently for the grading, or so I thought. I guess I just feel confused because I was advised before not to copy the color scheme of other movies and come up with my own, so I come up with my own, and now I am told it's too complicated and to forget it. It seems that no matter what I come up with, it's not worth it.

[Josh Bass]

Yes. Exactly.

[Brian Drysdale]

The thing is that you are just copying other movies.

You're going through all this because a wall in "Seven" is painted blue, however, you seem to have ignored that the wall is in an old, well used police station in city like NY that looks like it hasn't be repainted since the 1950s or 60s.. That's art direction, not colour correction.

[Ryan Elder]

Which wall in Seven was painted blue. I don't recall such a scene. But I wasn't going by Seven. I was advised to come up with a color scheme of my own and that is what I have done. So why do you say I am copying other movies when I came up with my own I am trying to apply?

[Josh Bass]

I think most here believe the color scheme you "came up with on your own" was heavily influenced/copied from scores of other films, i.e. you saw a cop movie with gritty blue everything and decided this was the way to go on your film.

[Paul R Johnson]

The snag is that I think many of us see something and think - that's really nice, at some stage, that will be appropriate for me to use, with some modifications, in a production. We all do this, but I suspect that because our circumstances are different, we modify it. I usually get inspired by things I see. a few years back I saw a live music production in Holland - they had a grid of 100 moving head lights pointing vertically down on an orchestra - then the things they did with them made me go wow! I pinched the idea with 49 lights in a 7 x 7 grid. Not the same ones, because theirs were 6 grand each and the hire fee corrspondingly huge, but I had 30 slightly less spec'd ones, and got another 20 in, within my budget and it looked damn good - but not the same as the one I'd seen, and I don't know if it was the type, the height, the spread or my control that made it less good.

You see things in movies and want the result without understanding the blend and combination of separate features. You want, for some reason blue walls where there are none. why, we don't know, but you have told us this and showed your attempt. Not once have you ever explained why.

You ask us to say yes or no to your understanding that colour gading is about sheen? You are using words that make no sense - sheen is usually a term reserved for reflectance conversations - some materials have a sheen, like silk - colour grading is an art, and it's normally subtle to give a shift to the balance of colour, or it's radical for effect. Maybe it's to make the foliage look autumnal (not sure what the north american version for fall colours would be), or make it look more arid, or romantic, or scary, or ........ Your version is because you like blue, so you want things not blue, to be blue. Clearly you don;t understand this Ryan. You are so wrapped up in copying everything, as if replicating components guarantees success. You want the music, the sets the costumes to all be different from what they are naturally. You want to set conventions aside, you want to be innovative, but your solution is to steal things from totally different genre movies. If I did this the result, I know would be terrible. I want a purple wall, yellow clothing, pink leaves on trees, trumpets in love scenes, slow strings in the battle scenes and grey text on a dark grey background in the credits. I'd want every actor to have strings on them so I could pull them around out of camera view and I'd want a mega bright lighting setup run off AA batteries.

This is not serious Ryan - just in case you think it is, but it is similar to the ridiculous things you sometimes come up with - and please if you have to say "so you are saying.." stop and think, because we never are.

Everything you do is mimicry. All your good ideas are stolen. Every bad idea revealed, is dismissed or ignored, and good ideas ignored.

A few months back, you'd not even tried grading. Now you speak about it like an expert, but struggle with the basics. Months ago, I pleaded with you to do a skills audit. To sit with pen and paper and list all the things you can do, and how good you are at them. This is what we always did in college when students had ideas way above their current performance ability, and seeing it on paper really focussed their minds. They could see their strengths and they could see where they were weak, and work on it. You clearly never did it, because you have not progressed it seems. You are still blundering around, unable to make decisions based on what you really can do well, fixated on things totally outside your sphere of competence.

It also seems that your friends are also fed up with you not taking their advice - how many times have you said "I've been told" and fed total rubbish, or taken solid advice totally the wrong way. To be able to move forward, you must develop understanding, and clearly you have a long way to go. Once you appreciate your limits you can stretch them - but you believe you can do everything, and we are all wrong. I think everyone on this quest with you is trying so hard to make you understand, we're honest and in the main, patient - but you really stretch it so often.

Write the script, find the actors and shoot it. Stop messing around with the silly things. I spoke to a camerman friend. He works mainly in natural history. He says he never sees the grade until the audience do. Nothing to do with him. His job is to get the best pictures he can so people can work with them. He has lots of discussion about content, style, quality, technical requirements, but if the sky looks different, or the plumage more vivid, that's not his role. Invariably, he says, the colourist made his work look better, and he gets the credit - which is unfair, but how it is. He also said that if the audience ever spot the grading as unreal - everyone has failed, and he would also get the blame for that.

[Josh Bass]

Actually I used to have a subscription to american cinematographer and it is not uncommon (or wasnt, back in the mid 2000s when I was reading it) for a dp to sit in with colorist for the sessions.

Ryan said he did the skills audit some ago and that it said he was good at planning, and Ryan didnt really know what to do with that info.

[Brian Drysdale]

The DP being with the colourist during colour correction does vary, the lack of input by the DP has been a matter of concern in recent years for them. High end feature films, as covered in American Cinematographer with A list DPs, can be different to other sectors. The 2000s would be before this became more common, although in say the BBC the editor tended to be involved in the grading more than the camera people for many years..

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Josh Bass

Ryan said he did the skills audit some ago and that it said he was good at planning, and Ryan didnt really know what to do with that info.

The audit results explains why he spends almost all his time planning. Unfortunately these plans aren't backed up with the ability and experience to execute them, they're based on a patch work of ideas from feature films. It's like looking at beautifully iced cakes in a bakery window and concluding icing is the most part of baking. Making independent movies is an expensive hobby, sounds like all you can afford is sitting at home and planning out the perfect movie.

[Josh Bass]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

The DP being with the colourist during colour correction does vary, the lack of input by the DP has been a matter of concern in recent years for them. High end feature films, as covered in American Cinematographer with A list DPs, can be different to other sectors. The 2000s would be before this became more common, although in say the BBC the editor tended to be involved in the grading more than the camera people for many years..

That seems crazy to me since the cinematographer is hugely responsible for the look and it seems like part of that would be seeing it through the grade to complete his/her vision.

Let me ask this: back in the day they used to do all sorts of tests, for weeks, all the way through the post process, before shooting a single frame, right? So you'd test makeup, lighting, wardrobe etc., try out different film stocks and processing methods (probably camera profiles and grading styles these days), and you would basically know, before even shooting, what anything in front of the lens was going to look like when the movie was finalized ("that red robe won't work," "those shadows will be too dark"). Is that not done any more?

[Brian Drysdale]

They will still do tests, but you should separate high end feature films from a lot of TV work, where the DP may be way off on another job. How much testing will depend on the budget and the nature of the production.

[Ryan Elder]

Well when you say everything I do is a mimicry and I've ignored good ideas which good ideas did I ignore?

I talked to one DP so far and he said since I'm on a low budget the best way to hide unwanted colors is to shoot in black and white. But does he have a point, because I thought black and white was not the way to go personally.

and you say the look I came up with is not original because I've combined different ideas. But hasn't every look been done before and there is no original looks anymore since every look for a movie is just a combination of ideas that have been done before?

[Brian Drysdale]

It's interesting that you don't seem to be taking account of the characters' world and their psychology in all this, it's just various colour grading effects rather than it being part of the journey you're taking the audience. That's what I suspect people are getting at.

You're busy thinking about "original" colour effects etc, rather than taking everyone into the world of your story. .

[Ryan Elder]

Oh but I thought I was using the color to take people into the world of my story, or that was my intention.