From American Cinematographer, Still Lives, Distant Vistas by Andrew O. Thompson (Dec. 1998)
"There's something very compelling about the graphic quality of black-and-white photography. Color is very difficult to control and can be very distracting. Just look at great works of art that use color selectively. Accenting a huge canvas with a small piece of primary color-- like a red or blue-- against a field of pastels can exert an extraordinarily powerful pull on the eye. In cinema, you can control the palette with art direction, but there's no control over that in the real world for the documentarian and the still photographer. I have seen color photography that I love, but the idea of an image made up of silver on paper speaks more directly to me."
- Phil Parmet, Photographer
I read, discuss, and discover new things about cinematography everyday. Most of it, I consider incredibly interesting. Everyday I will share one of those things, maybe more if I have time.
Showing posts with label color. Show all posts
Showing posts with label color. Show all posts
28.5.09
Gary Ross: Color Manipulation & Meaning
From American Cinematographer, Black-and-White in Color by Bob Fisher (November 1998)
Ross believes the possibilities offered by color manipulation are virtually limitless. For example, early in Pleasantville, one of the characters wears an electric blue dress that draws the eyes of the audience like a magnet. That wasn't the result he wanted, so he toned down the blue. Technically, he says, there is no reason why the dress couldn't be red in China where that color has a different symbolic meaning than it does in Western countries.
Ross believes the possibilities offered by color manipulation are virtually limitless. For example, early in Pleasantville, one of the characters wears an electric blue dress that draws the eyes of the audience like a magnet. That wasn't the result he wanted, so he toned down the blue. Technically, he says, there is no reason why the dress couldn't be red in China where that color has a different symbolic meaning than it does in Western countries.
John Lindley: Shooting Color and B&W
From American Cinematographer, Black-and-White in Color by Bob Fisher (November 1998)
Lindley made several accommodations to shooting color film for conversion to black-and-white. He used hard light to get crisp separations in scenes with monochrome characters. He also used a dimmer control board for lighting transitions when a black-and-white person left an area and a color character moved in.
"The black-and-white characters would be hard-lit, even though they were occupying the same space where we had soft light on a color character. Almost every light was wired to a dimmer board. The operator watched a monitor with a live video feed from the tap on the camera. We did a lot of cues on the fly as people moved around sets.
Your eye naturally goes to color in a black-and-white world. If you pick up a newspaper that has one color photograph and a bunch of other black-and-white ones, everybody looks at the color one first. It's human nature."
- John Lindley, ASC
He further explains that the same dynamic applies when there are color and black-and-white characters in the same shot.
"That was great if [the black-and-white person] was the character Gary wanted to highlight. But if it was a two-shot and he wanted to feature both characters, I sometimes adjusted the composition to give the black-and-white person a little more prominence."
- John Lindley, ASCMaryse Alberti: Technique & Instinct
From American Cinematographer, Glitter Gulch by Chris Pizzello (November 1998)
"... Why these colors? They just felt right. I once went to see a talk by Vittorio Storaro [ASC, AIC] where a group of young-by-experience cinematographers were all trying to ask him, 'Which gel, which filter?' And Vittorio just started talking about the moon, the sun, the conscious, and the unconscious! The message I got from that was to learn your technique but don't let it be the driving force. Instead, trust your intuition and instincts."
- Maryse Alberti
"... Why these colors? They just felt right. I once went to see a talk by Vittorio Storaro [ASC, AIC] where a group of young-by-experience cinematographers were all trying to ask him, 'Which gel, which filter?' And Vittorio just started talking about the moon, the sun, the conscious, and the unconscious! The message I got from that was to learn your technique but don't let it be the driving force. Instead, trust your intuition and instincts."
- Maryse Alberti
25.5.09
Vittorio Storaro: Color and Meaning
From American Cinematographer, Master of Light and Motion interview by Bob Fisher (June 1998)
"Color is part of the language we speak with film. We use colors to articulate different feelings and moods. It is just like using light and darkness to symbolize the conflict between life and death. I believe the meanings of different colors are universal, but people in different cultures can interpret them in different ways. In the opening scene, the camera is motionless and there is an absence of color, which is black. During Bulworth's first campaign stop in Los Angeles, he visits a church in a black community, where the main color in costumes and props is red, a symbol of birth and life. From the church, he goes to a meeting with some Hollywood film producers in a private home. It is a rich setting, where he raises money. Orange symbolizes that feeling of comfort. When he visits an after-hours club, we used yellow, cyan and magenta, the opposites of the three primary colors [red, green and blue] that symbolize daylight. In this scene, Bulworth is considering his subconscious feelings.
The next day, he goes to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where he tells people in his own party what he is thinking. It is the first time he speaks honestly about his feelings in front of the members of his party; they don't expect a politician to tell them exactly what he is thinking. The color yellow symbolizes that he consciously knows what he is doing. During a television debate, we used green to signify knowledge, because it is the first time he reveals his feeling in public. Later, one of his campaign workers brings him to her grandmother's house, where he feels safe, believing that the assassin won't find him there. We used blue to signify freedom. Next, he meets a drug dealer, who explains why he uses children to sell drugs. Indigo symbolizes material power. We don't use white in this film until he completes his journey and is a whole person.
...Each color has a specific wavelength of energy, which we perceive the same way that we feel vibrations. Even if they aren't consciously aware of it, the audience can feel a difference between high and low wavelengths of energy. They are reacting to that feeling in addition to what they see on the screen."
- Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC
Vittorio Storaro: Shooting Black-and-White
From American Cinematographer, Storaro and Bulworth by Garrett Brown (June 1998)
Regarding shooting black-and-white photography:
"It would be like having a piano with only three keys."
- Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC
Regarding shooting black-and-white photography:
"It would be like having a piano with only three keys."
- Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC
Vittorio Storaro: ENR and Color
From American Cinematographer, Storaro and Bulworth by Garrett Brown (June 1998)
"On Bulworth he used the ENR process. It makes the blacks blacker but it also desaturates color, which I didn't know until working on this film. So he overlights with color—he oversaturates. Rosco has made double CTOs and double CTBs, and they are working on a triple lavender that he particularly likes."
- Gary Tandrow, Gaffer for Storaro on Bulworth
Storaro saturated the back wall of one office set with a remarkable deep green, to the extent that the mountainous black bodyguard and the flowered sofa on which he is seated become so camouflaged against the wallpaper that he rivets your eye when he moves—an amazing shot. I am convinced that Vittorio perceives the color spectrum with much greater intimacy than I do.
"He's the only cameraman I've ever worked with who can tell perfect greens and magentas. He can walk into a place and say exactly what it needs. We had to shoot under fluorescent conditions and match it, and he knew we needed more green. I couldn't see it with my eye."
- Gary Tandrow, Gaffer for Storaro on Bulworth
Incidentally, Storaro says that Bulworth will be his last film shot for ENR. Kodak and Technicolor (which he humorously charactizes as his "mother and father in the creative world"), both have technology in the pipeline that could make ENR unnecessary. Kodak is developing a new print stock with blacks that are said to be as rich as those in an ENR print. Technicolor, however, is reviving a version of the inbibition three-strip process, which provides ultimate color and contrast control and ensures longevity for the original prints.
24.5.09
Steven Poster: Polarizers
From American Cinematographer, A Midwife's Tale, Now and Then by Brooke Comer (Jan. 1998)
"I've used one on everything since I was a teenager. I love the way it lets you see things that are normally invisible because of the reflective quality of light. It takes the glare off skin, too, and I like the way it works with greens and reds. It allows you to see more into the colors."
- Steven Poster, ASC
"I've used one on everything since I was a teenager. I love the way it lets you see things that are normally invisible because of the reflective quality of light. It takes the glare off skin, too, and I like the way it works with greens and reds. It allows you to see more into the colors."
- Steven Poster, ASC
14.5.09
Emmanuel Lubezki: The CCE Process
From American Cinematographer, Galloping Ghost, by Stephen Pizzello (December 1999)
The cinematographer opted to record the entire movie on one film stock: Kodak's Vision 200T 5274. He explains that this decision was based on the filmmakers' desire to enhance the look of the picture with Deluxe Laboratory's Color Contrast Enhancement (CCE) process.
"With the CCE process, you add a lot of grain, and I though the Vision 500T [5279] was just too grainy. I love the texture of grain, though, and I think the grain [that CCE added] works well, because the images have the quality of an old illustration. I don't like it when the grain starts to become obtrusive, and the audience begins to feel it. If someone who doesn't know much about photography mentions grain, it means they're perceiving it too much."
- Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC
Developed by Deluxe's vice president of technical services, Beverly Wood, and executive vice president of engineering Colin Mossman, CCE is one of three silver retention processes offered by the lab. According to Wood,
"CCE is a proprietary process that produces a much higher contrast and adds more grain. When you have more silver [in the print,] you get a grainier look and blacker blacks. However, your black [values] can also plug up more. The matter of getting the color, the balance and the contrast right comes from the standpoint of density. CCE is different that the ACE process, which is adjustable; with CCE, the distinguishing factor in the answer-print process is that you can't really adjust the blacks or the amount of desaturation. Our job at Deluxe is to get the look that Tim and Chivo want at the answer-print stage, and then maintain that same look when we make the dupe."
- Beverly Wood
"From the beginning, Tim said, 'If the studio would let me, I'd shoot this movie in black-and-white.' But then we talked about it and he said, 'You know, maybe not-- maybe it's better just to do it in color and keep everything very monochromatic, but still keep all of these shades of grey, dark blue, very dark brown and green. He asked me if there was anything I could do in the photography to get that look, so we began talking with Beverly about different processes that would enhance the film's contrast and desaturate the colors. We did a bunch of tests, like flashing and not flashing the film, and we decided to go with CCE, which was the process that would add the most contrast and desaturate the colors the most. Tim was always there when we did the process tests. It was a lot of fun to have him there, and we like the same things, so we went with the CCE process.
Once we decided on the look, we had a meeting with all of teh departments, because CCE really affects the contrast and blacks in the images. Ian Robinson was our contact at Deluxe London, and we consulted very closely with him. The costume designer, Colleen Atwood, was doing a lot of stuff in black, but after the tests she began adding bits of silver and other enhancements to the texture of the clothes so we wouldn't lose the details completely. With Rick Heinrichs, we would paint 8' by 4's with the colors he was planning to use for each set, and then shoot them, project the footage, discuss it and revise the colors. The color red was particularly affected by the process-- it became really dark, sometimes so dark that it was almost black. We had to be really careful in the way we lit things. If you went into one of our sets while we were shooting, you'd have though we were doing a soap opera, because everything looked really overlit. When we saw the dailies, though, everyone would say, 'Wow, this is really dark and moody.' You always have the factor in the effect that the process will have on the images. The first week of the show was miserable for me, and many many times I wanted to kill myself for deciding to work with the CCE process, but when you see the movie from start to finish, it looks really good.
... The thing that's really difficult about the process, which almost made me chicken out, is what it does to the actors' skin tones. Because there's so much contrast and the gamma curve is so steep, the skin tones can look blemished if you're not careful. I don't like to use much diffusion, and I usually don't mind when you can see some imperfections in the actors' faces-- as long as those imperfections don't take you out of the movie. On this picture, though, I wish I had used just a little more diffusion."
- Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC
The cinematographer opted to record the entire movie on one film stock: Kodak's Vision 200T 5274. He explains that this decision was based on the filmmakers' desire to enhance the look of the picture with Deluxe Laboratory's Color Contrast Enhancement (CCE) process.
"With the CCE process, you add a lot of grain, and I though the Vision 500T [5279] was just too grainy. I love the texture of grain, though, and I think the grain [that CCE added] works well, because the images have the quality of an old illustration. I don't like it when the grain starts to become obtrusive, and the audience begins to feel it. If someone who doesn't know much about photography mentions grain, it means they're perceiving it too much."
- Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC
Developed by Deluxe's vice president of technical services, Beverly Wood, and executive vice president of engineering Colin Mossman, CCE is one of three silver retention processes offered by the lab. According to Wood,
"CCE is a proprietary process that produces a much higher contrast and adds more grain. When you have more silver [in the print,] you get a grainier look and blacker blacks. However, your black [values] can also plug up more. The matter of getting the color, the balance and the contrast right comes from the standpoint of density. CCE is different that the ACE process, which is adjustable; with CCE, the distinguishing factor in the answer-print process is that you can't really adjust the blacks or the amount of desaturation. Our job at Deluxe is to get the look that Tim and Chivo want at the answer-print stage, and then maintain that same look when we make the dupe."
- Beverly Wood
"From the beginning, Tim said, 'If the studio would let me, I'd shoot this movie in black-and-white.' But then we talked about it and he said, 'You know, maybe not-- maybe it's better just to do it in color and keep everything very monochromatic, but still keep all of these shades of grey, dark blue, very dark brown and green. He asked me if there was anything I could do in the photography to get that look, so we began talking with Beverly about different processes that would enhance the film's contrast and desaturate the colors. We did a bunch of tests, like flashing and not flashing the film, and we decided to go with CCE, which was the process that would add the most contrast and desaturate the colors the most. Tim was always there when we did the process tests. It was a lot of fun to have him there, and we like the same things, so we went with the CCE process.
Once we decided on the look, we had a meeting with all of teh departments, because CCE really affects the contrast and blacks in the images. Ian Robinson was our contact at Deluxe London, and we consulted very closely with him. The costume designer, Colleen Atwood, was doing a lot of stuff in black, but after the tests she began adding bits of silver and other enhancements to the texture of the clothes so we wouldn't lose the details completely. With Rick Heinrichs, we would paint 8' by 4's with the colors he was planning to use for each set, and then shoot them, project the footage, discuss it and revise the colors. The color red was particularly affected by the process-- it became really dark, sometimes so dark that it was almost black. We had to be really careful in the way we lit things. If you went into one of our sets while we were shooting, you'd have though we were doing a soap opera, because everything looked really overlit. When we saw the dailies, though, everyone would say, 'Wow, this is really dark and moody.' You always have the factor in the effect that the process will have on the images. The first week of the show was miserable for me, and many many times I wanted to kill myself for deciding to work with the CCE process, but when you see the movie from start to finish, it looks really good.
... The thing that's really difficult about the process, which almost made me chicken out, is what it does to the actors' skin tones. Because there's so much contrast and the gamma curve is so steep, the skin tones can look blemished if you're not careful. I don't like to use much diffusion, and I usually don't mind when you can see some imperfections in the actors' faces-- as long as those imperfections don't take you out of the movie. On this picture, though, I wish I had used just a little more diffusion."
- Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC
12.5.09
Wexler & Hall: Overcast Weather and Contrast
From American Cinematographer, Island of Lost Souls interview by Conrad Hall, ASC (July 1999)
Hall: "I actually didn't realize the effect that the overall look of Limbo had on me until I was walking out of the theater and thought about how nice it was to finally feel sunshine. The film had a kind of pervasively claustrophobic gloom that lent to the quality of the character's lives. There's something about the sun hitting your face that makes the you feel wonderful. As you said, though, that feeling wasn't something you waited for-- it was created by the 'gaffer in the sky.' Did you shoot when the sun was out too?"
Wexler: "As you know Conrad, in a way it can be easier to have overcast light for exteriors..."
Hall: "I'm not sure if I agree with that, actually. I think it's harder to get contrast in overcast conditions, and I'm always interested in contrast. The only contrast you do get on an overcast day is color contrast-- blue against green, for example. If I had a day like that, I'd throw a large black over the actors and put them in a darker silhouette against the brighter background in order to change the almost pervasive beauty of the situation, because the [natural scenery] is so colorful. In a way, the colors can be more saturated in that even, overcast light-- unless, of course, one overexposes the way you did."
- Haskel Wexler, ASC & Conrad Hall, ASC
Hall: "I actually didn't realize the effect that the overall look of Limbo had on me until I was walking out of the theater and thought about how nice it was to finally feel sunshine. The film had a kind of pervasively claustrophobic gloom that lent to the quality of the character's lives. There's something about the sun hitting your face that makes the you feel wonderful. As you said, though, that feeling wasn't something you waited for-- it was created by the 'gaffer in the sky.' Did you shoot when the sun was out too?"
Wexler: "As you know Conrad, in a way it can be easier to have overcast light for exteriors..."
Hall: "I'm not sure if I agree with that, actually. I think it's harder to get contrast in overcast conditions, and I'm always interested in contrast. The only contrast you do get on an overcast day is color contrast-- blue against green, for example. If I had a day like that, I'd throw a large black over the actors and put them in a darker silhouette against the brighter background in order to change the almost pervasive beauty of the situation, because the [natural scenery] is so colorful. In a way, the colors can be more saturated in that even, overcast light-- unless, of course, one overexposes the way you did."
- Haskel Wexler, ASC & Conrad Hall, ASC
James L. Carter: Color Temperature
From American Cinematographer, Tuned In Talents by Christopher Probst (May 1999)
"I'm a heavy mixer of color temperatures. I truly believe in letting things go. If the outside was slightly blue and the inside was really warm, that was great. When I did daylight scenes, I'd make the sunlight slightly warm. When we'd go out on the streets at night, every so often I'd let things in the backgrounds go that fluorescent blue-green. I felt that made things look a little more real, a little more like New York, instead of always trying to correct everything out. I have a gel pack for a sodium-vapor effect that I call 'moldy pumpkin.' Depending on how I feel on the day I'm shooting, it consists of 1/2 CTO and pale or light salmon. I like that weird orangy-pink color. I remember reading a study about streetlight colors, and it said that there is more crime in areas lit by sodium-vapor lights. With that in mind, whenever things got really gritty, or we were in a scuzzy area, I would use those sodium-vapor colors. I think it's an oppressive look."
- James L. Carter, ASC
"I'm a heavy mixer of color temperatures. I truly believe in letting things go. If the outside was slightly blue and the inside was really warm, that was great. When I did daylight scenes, I'd make the sunlight slightly warm. When we'd go out on the streets at night, every so often I'd let things in the backgrounds go that fluorescent blue-green. I felt that made things look a little more real, a little more like New York, instead of always trying to correct everything out. I have a gel pack for a sodium-vapor effect that I call 'moldy pumpkin.' Depending on how I feel on the day I'm shooting, it consists of 1/2 CTO and pale or light salmon. I like that weird orangy-pink color. I remember reading a study about streetlight colors, and it said that there is more crime in areas lit by sodium-vapor lights. With that in mind, whenever things got really gritty, or we were in a scuzzy area, I would use those sodium-vapor colors. I think it's an oppressive look."
- James L. Carter, ASC
Vittorio Storaro: On Visual Effects Artists
From American Cinematographer, Storaro Advises Digital Artists by Jay Holben (May 1999)
"On the whole, visual effects artists can do a little more to bring cinematographers into the fold. It's rare to find a visual effects artist that actually has an appreciation for cinematography-- that's another reason why I wanted to bring in Vittorio. I often hear visual effects artists say, 'Well, why can't we just have them lock down the camera?' When you hear Vittorio speak, you understand why. It's not just a technical matter-- it's about the emotion, pacing and life of the film. It's very important for effects artists to hear the passion and motivation that everyone else on a film has for their area of responsibility. Vittorio really exudes a passion and love for cinema that, frankly, some digital technicians lack. Educating visual effects artists is a great step toward keeping our doors open to cinematographers by saying, "We're not here to supplant you, we're only here to help create the same vision. We're no different that any other creative department."
- SPI Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Scott E. Anderson
"In cinema, you are selecting the piece of reality to show the audience. Through the camera angle, lens choices and framing, you are using one very important tool: composition. I don't know how conscious you are of composition in your work, but it is one of the most important elements. Without composition, it is difficult to put one element in relation to another. As they took me around the facility this morning, I saw a lot of you studying your screens on how to animate a creature. If you moved that creature from the center of the screen-- perhaps off to the side and slightly higher-- the [resulting] difference in perspective would totally change the character. Composition is a form of writing. You use the composition to say 'Look over here!' or 'Look this way and you are going to have this reaction, and afterwards you will have this information.' Color is also incredibly important to composition. Once you start to know the meaning of color, then you start to know who to write and compose with color. Using either a warm or cold color can completely change the perspective. Take one creature in the foreground and put the other in the background. By putting a red light on the front creature, and a green or a cyan light on the creature in the background, and you can force the perspective: the one in the foreground comes closer, and the one in the background moves further away. Now try the opposite-- put the green or cyan light in the foreground and the red light in the background-- and you will become confused. The distance between the them will become compressed as the warm color 'moves' forward and the cool color 'moves' backward. You can use this type of information to tell the story. The more you know about these tools, the more you can create meaningful compositions. The more concerned you are with composition, the better you can express yourself to an audience."
- Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC
"On the whole, visual effects artists can do a little more to bring cinematographers into the fold. It's rare to find a visual effects artist that actually has an appreciation for cinematography-- that's another reason why I wanted to bring in Vittorio. I often hear visual effects artists say, 'Well, why can't we just have them lock down the camera?' When you hear Vittorio speak, you understand why. It's not just a technical matter-- it's about the emotion, pacing and life of the film. It's very important for effects artists to hear the passion and motivation that everyone else on a film has for their area of responsibility. Vittorio really exudes a passion and love for cinema that, frankly, some digital technicians lack. Educating visual effects artists is a great step toward keeping our doors open to cinematographers by saying, "We're not here to supplant you, we're only here to help create the same vision. We're no different that any other creative department."
- SPI Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Scott E. Anderson
"In cinema, you are selecting the piece of reality to show the audience. Through the camera angle, lens choices and framing, you are using one very important tool: composition. I don't know how conscious you are of composition in your work, but it is one of the most important elements. Without composition, it is difficult to put one element in relation to another. As they took me around the facility this morning, I saw a lot of you studying your screens on how to animate a creature. If you moved that creature from the center of the screen-- perhaps off to the side and slightly higher-- the [resulting] difference in perspective would totally change the character. Composition is a form of writing. You use the composition to say 'Look over here!' or 'Look this way and you are going to have this reaction, and afterwards you will have this information.' Color is also incredibly important to composition. Once you start to know the meaning of color, then you start to know who to write and compose with color. Using either a warm or cold color can completely change the perspective. Take one creature in the foreground and put the other in the background. By putting a red light on the front creature, and a green or a cyan light on the creature in the background, and you can force the perspective: the one in the foreground comes closer, and the one in the background moves further away. Now try the opposite-- put the green or cyan light in the foreground and the red light in the background-- and you will become confused. The distance between the them will become compressed as the warm color 'moves' forward and the cool color 'moves' backward. You can use this type of information to tell the story. The more you know about these tools, the more you can create meaningful compositions. The more concerned you are with composition, the better you can express yourself to an audience."
- Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC
11.5.09
Robert Surtees: Color vs. Black & White
From American Cinematographer, Photography for The Last Picture Show interview by Herb A. Lightman (Jan. 1972)
From the cinematographer's standpoint, which do you think is more difficult to shoot, black-and-white or color?
"From a technical standpoint, I still insist that black and-white is more difficult. For example, while shooting an actual interior in color, if you pan from a well-lighted figure to an area that is dark but too cramped to place lights where you really like them, you can just flatten that area out and get by. But in black-and-white, if you want shadow, you've got to put it in there, man. You can't depend on fill light to take care of it. You really have to model the subject with light instead of counting on the colors for separation. Of course, the right makeup, wardrobe and sets become more important in color photography. You can sometimes get by with the wrong makeup in black-and-white, and you can help a bad set. You can use smaller lamps, get in behind chairs, and break up walls by putting shadows on them. But on the other hand, in shooting black-and-white, you have to do it. You can't count on the process you're using to do it for you."
- Robert Surtees, ASC
From the cinematographer's standpoint, which do you think is more difficult to shoot, black-and-white or color?
"From a technical standpoint, I still insist that black and-white is more difficult. For example, while shooting an actual interior in color, if you pan from a well-lighted figure to an area that is dark but too cramped to place lights where you really like them, you can just flatten that area out and get by. But in black-and-white, if you want shadow, you've got to put it in there, man. You can't depend on fill light to take care of it. You really have to model the subject with light instead of counting on the colors for separation. Of course, the right makeup, wardrobe and sets become more important in color photography. You can sometimes get by with the wrong makeup in black-and-white, and you can help a bad set. You can use smaller lamps, get in behind chairs, and break up walls by putting shadows on them. But on the other hand, in shooting black-and-white, you have to do it. You can't count on the process you're using to do it for you."
- Robert Surtees, ASC
Douglas Koch: Last Night, Lab Techniques
From American Cinematographer, An Elegy for the Earth by Mark Dillon, March 1999
Regarding the film, Last Night
The filmmakers initially considered using reversal film, with either standard or cross-processing but Koch notes, "That seemed fairly risky, and getting local labs to work that way, especially in terms of the cross-processing, was a bit of a problem. Cross-processing gives a nice contrasty image, but the color saturation also seems to increase quite a bit; Don was interested in a more desaturated look." The duo also contemplated shooting color stock, making black-and-white and color inter positives and then re-registering them for desaturation. "By doing that, you can control every shot and every scene precisely," the cinematographer expounds." You can have a higher-contrast black-and-white version and just mix the color in. It was a very exciting idea, but on a film of this scale, we estimated that it would cost an extra $100,000-- the whole film would have become a giant optical."
The technique that seemed most promising during their tests, which were performed at Deluxe in Toronto, was the bleach-bypass process, which Koch tried first on an original negative. "They can do what they call a 'partial' or 'complete' bypass," he elaborates. "The partial seemed virtually invisible-- you couldn't really see any effect from it-0- whereas the full one was quite striking." However, the cameraman decided that applying the process to the original negative would be too much of a gamble. When bleach-bypass was administered at the printing stage, he found the results to be "quite nice, although it created more of a lush look which resembled that of the ENR-type processes." Furthermore, no one in production wanted the film's look to depend so heavily in the printing stage, which could not be controlled outside of North America. Inthe end, bleach-bypass was added at the interpositive stage. Since the process substantially increases contrast, Koch had to light his images flatter than usual and over expose them. According to McKellar, if bleach-bypassing became unworkable, the resulting footage would be "quite garish and flat, because everything-- the characters' clothes and all the walls would be very brightly colored."
Koch shot Last Night on Kodak's Vision 250D 5246 stock. His deliberately over-lit negative was pull-processed two-thirds of a stop in the lab and then underdeveloped slightly to help lower contrast and color saturation. To produce a dense negative with a suppressed grain structure that would allow for greater flexability, he pushed his photography by one stop and then went over by an additional two-thirds-- exposing mostly at a T2 or T2.8.
Regarding the film, Last Night
The filmmakers initially considered using reversal film, with either standard or cross-processing but Koch notes, "That seemed fairly risky, and getting local labs to work that way, especially in terms of the cross-processing, was a bit of a problem. Cross-processing gives a nice contrasty image, but the color saturation also seems to increase quite a bit; Don was interested in a more desaturated look." The duo also contemplated shooting color stock, making black-and-white and color inter positives and then re-registering them for desaturation. "By doing that, you can control every shot and every scene precisely," the cinematographer expounds." You can have a higher-contrast black-and-white version and just mix the color in. It was a very exciting idea, but on a film of this scale, we estimated that it would cost an extra $100,000-- the whole film would have become a giant optical."
The technique that seemed most promising during their tests, which were performed at Deluxe in Toronto, was the bleach-bypass process, which Koch tried first on an original negative. "They can do what they call a 'partial' or 'complete' bypass," he elaborates. "The partial seemed virtually invisible-- you couldn't really see any effect from it-0- whereas the full one was quite striking." However, the cameraman decided that applying the process to the original negative would be too much of a gamble. When bleach-bypass was administered at the printing stage, he found the results to be "quite nice, although it created more of a lush look which resembled that of the ENR-type processes." Furthermore, no one in production wanted the film's look to depend so heavily in the printing stage, which could not be controlled outside of North America. Inthe end, bleach-bypass was added at the interpositive stage. Since the process substantially increases contrast, Koch had to light his images flatter than usual and over expose them. According to McKellar, if bleach-bypassing became unworkable, the resulting footage would be "quite garish and flat, because everything-- the characters' clothes and all the walls would be very brightly colored."
Koch shot Last Night on Kodak's Vision 250D 5246 stock. His deliberately over-lit negative was pull-processed two-thirds of a stop in the lab and then underdeveloped slightly to help lower contrast and color saturation. To produce a dense negative with a suppressed grain structure that would allow for greater flexability, he pushed his photography by one stop and then went over by an additional two-thirds-- exposing mostly at a T2 or T2.8.
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