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When Creating Technicolor, Start with the Camera?

Chris Wright said:
On the other hand, Film will keep on pushing all the colors up the maximum exposure and if you have a strong light source, the colors will push into solid red, green, blue and you will eventually lose color contrast. Technically speaking, if you capture a low noise signal, film emulation should be able to theoretically convert properly if you ignore spectral, lighting, art design considerations.
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That's not true, at least not in the D.I. world. If we pushed and pushed and pushed lots of saturation into the digital image in a D.I. projection room, what I saw the next day on the test answer print from the lab basically stopped getting more saturated after a certain point. I worked every day with staff color scientist Mitch Bogdanovicz, and he told me that there just weren't enough receptors in the emulsion to infinitely add more saturation, especially from a laser film recorder. So there were colors we could see in the D.I. room that we couldn't actually get from Kodak Vision 2383. We did get slightly better response from Vision Premiere 2393 print film, but not that much.

I still say that most of what people believe "looks like classic Technicolor" is a combination of tons of light, Nitrate film stock, great art direction, and the organic dyes used in Tech IB printing. I think you can imitate that look if you actually light it that way and have sets, makeup, and art direction that go in that direction. But it's not just a LUT or a grade or a plug-in.

Note that our office was in this Romain Street building in Hollywood for five years, so I'm keenly aware of the long history of Technicolor and what they stood for...

y7cLRJ4.jpeg


My joke always was, "the ghost of Natalie Kalmus walks the hallways..."
 
Rajneesh Kassin said:
That's not true, at least not in the D.I. world. If we pushed and pushed and pushed lots of saturation into the digital image in a D.I. projection room, what I saw the next day on the test answer print from the lab basically stopped getting more saturated after a certain point. I worked every day with staff color scientist Mitch Bogdanovicz, and he told me that there just weren't enough receptors in the emulsion to infinitely add more saturation, especially from a laser film recorder. So there were colors we could see in the D.I. room that we couldn't actually get from Kodak Vision 2383. We did get slightly better response from Vision Premiere 2393 print film, but not that much.

I still say that most of what people believe "looks like classic Technicolor" is a combination of tons of light, Nitrate film stock, great art direction, and the organic dyes used in Tech IB printing. I think you can imitate that look if you actually light it that way and have sets, makeup, and art direction that go in that direction. But it's not just a LUT or a grade or a plug-in.

Note that our office was in this Romain Street building in Hollywood for five years, so I'm keenly aware of the long history of Technicolor and what they stood for...

y7cLRJ4.jpeg


My joke always was, "the ghost of Natalie Kalmus walks the hallways..."
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I'm researching makeup right now. I happen to wear director and producer hats too when I'm not working at my day job as a colorist. Skin is just naturally too wild, but for much of my quick turnaround projects I have let it be just that.
 
Rajneesh Kassin said:
That's not true, at least not in the D.I. world. If we pushed and pushed and pushed lots of saturation into the digital image in a D.I. projection room, what I saw the next day on the test answer print from the lab basically stopped getting more saturated after a certain point. I worked every day with staff color scientist Mitch Bogdanovicz, and he told me that there just weren't enough receptors in the emulsion to infinitely add more saturation, especially from a laser film recorder. So there were colors we could see in the D.I. room that we couldn't actually get from Kodak Vision 2383. We did get slightly better response from Vision Premiere 2393 print film, but not that much.

I still say that most of what people believe "looks like classic Technicolor" is a combination of tons of light, Nitrate film stock, great art direction, and the organic dyes used in Tech IB printing. I think you can imitate that look if you actually light it that way and have sets, makeup, and art direction that go in that direction. But it's not just a LUT or a grade or a plug-in.

Note that our office was in this Romain Street building in Hollywood for five years, so I'm keenly aware of the long history of Technicolor and what they stood for...



My joke always was, "the ghost of Natalie Kalmus walks the hallways..."
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I was mostly referring to neon sources. They won't be accurately reflected in the medium. If you hit a ceiling of boosting saturation, then if everything else from the bottom comes up, you'll def lose relative color contrast (think of brick red colors with no detail). This is one major drawback to film, however it can be an artistic thing. What you said is also a very good example of why film doesn't hold the same values after leaving D.I.
 
Chris Wright said:
I was mostly referring to neon sources. They won't be accurately reflected in the medium. If you hit a ceiling of boosting saturation, then if everything else from the bottom comes up, you'll def lose relative color contrast (think of brick red colors with no detail). This is one major drawback to film, however it can be an artistic thing. What you said is also a very good example of why film doesn't hold the same values after leaving D.I.
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Yeah, I'm very aware of that. Strong chroma overshoots can be an absolute nightmare, both for broadcast and for theatrical.

The LUTs are much better now than they were 15-20 years ago, and now the film outs can be extremely close to the digital. I think the black levels can be better in digital than film, but it depends on the specific projector being used.
 
Rajneesh Kassin said:
I think you can imitate that look if you actually light it that way and have sets, makeup, and art direction that go in that direction. But it's not just a LUT or a grade or a plug-in.
Click to expand...
It's SO much this! So glad I only work with one older, experienced client now. I was so tired of inexperienced clients coming in and saying make it look like "X example" and I have walk them through the example pointing out how EVERY decision in EVERY department (except sound, haha) led to that look. You can't just shoot a poorly lit scene on a bland set with actors wearing muted wardrobe with a great camera and expect art.

IMO, some of the most regarded colorists got the reel they have because of the footage they grade is so well produced to begin with.

An old story I heard that has been repeated here before: Deep into an excruciating session with a demanding client that kept saying "how can we make this better" a highly respected colorist was heard to say "well, you can rent me some lights and a camera."

Can't make chicken salad out of chicken $hit...
 
Clark Bierbaum said:
An old story I heard that has been repeated here before: Deep into an excruciating session with a demanding client that kept saying "how can we make this better" a highly respected colorist was heard to say "well, you can rent me some lights and a camera."
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I have had to restrain myself from saying, "ya know, this would have looked even better if you had LIT it."
 
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