From American Cinematographer, Samurai Tactics by Ron Magid (October 1998)
"Since John didn't want any color, I suggested that we do a special process using Kodak's Vision 500T 5279. After rating the stock at 250 ASA, which overexposed it one stop, we then underdeveloped it, reducing the contrast and desaturating the colors. I also knew that we were going to shoot in France during the winter, when it gets dark at 5 o'clock. I needed to be able to shoot as late as possible, so I made the decision to use the 500 ASA stock for the whole movie. I generally use 5279 only for interiors on stages and on location, or when I shoot exterior night scenes. When I shoot outside, I use a slower stock. For instance, on Seven Years in Tibet, I shot all the exteriors with 5245, which is a very nice, very fine-grain stock. But I chose to shoot Ronin on the 500T stock because I knew that with the process we were using, the stock would be only 250 ASA, which is not a lot when it gets dark early and the weather is very gray during the day. Very often, I was shooting at almost full aperture — T2.3 or 2.5. At those moments, I thought I had been very wise to choose a fast stock that normally isn't used for daylight exterior scenes."
- Robert Fraisse
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 desaturation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label desaturation. Show all posts
11.7.09
Janusz Kaminski: ENR, Blood, Texture & Panaflasher
From American Cinematographer, The Last Great War by Christopher Probst (August '98)
"We also wanted to shoot this picture in color because there is some blood in the film and we wanted to play with the reds, even though we did desaturate the colors through the use of ENR. I knew the movie would have more of a bluish tone to it, and with 70 percent ENR, the color of the blood on the uniforms and the ground was a primary concern. For scenes in which the characters got wounded, we wanted to know how the blood would look on the uniforms and how it would look after they wore those uniforms for a couple of days. Because we were dealing with a World War II drama, the wardrobe was already muted, and since we were shooting in England and Ireland, we had day after day of foggy, rainy climate, which automatically made the light more diffused and the colors more pastel. We therefore compared various levels of ENR, and based on those tests, the special effects department mixed a certain amount of blue into the blood to make it a bit darker than they’d normally use... I think the biggest mis-conception about ENR that everyone talks about is what the process does to the shadows to make them deeper and richer. Yes, that is one aspect of the process, but the biggest thing about ENR that no one seems to be talking about is what it does to the highlights and colors. If you shoot a test and compare a shot with ENR and without, the clothing will look much sharper and you will see the texture and pattern of the fabric in the ENR print. This was especially true on Amistad, on which we used about 40 to 50 percent ENR. As a result, all of the Africans’ clothing had much more texture. On Saving Private Ryan, the uniforms benefited as well. The edges of the shirts and the helmets were sharper, and the process also worked magic on metallic surfaces and water reflections, which become like mercury. It’s so gorgeous... Additionally, I again used a Panaflasher in conjunction with the ENR process, as I had on Amistad. Because of the contrast that you get with the ENR, I was flashing at about 15 percent so that I didn’t get totally sharp blacks. I was looking for a slightly flatter look. The Panaflasher also contributed greatly to the color being more desaturated. You gain the contrast back with the ENR, but you’ve desaturated the color already with the Panaflasher."
- Janusz Kaminski
11.5.09
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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