How do they get the movie look?

#1

Hello everybody,

I was watching the making of Lord of the rings in the extended DVD release, and they were shooting in many locations ( indoor/outdoor/green and blue background )

after the footage is shot, they take it to the editorial department where they start cutting the movie and take the peice they are interested in.

They don’t look good, or at least, they don’t look like they are in the movie. I know tha they do color grading/correction afterward. But still, the outcome we see in the DVD is so sharp, clear and vivid.

is there something else invloved in the process? or it’s the Camera they are using that bring out that image, and with a bit of color grading and it’s done?

#2

The devil is in the details. There are a number of visual clues that give that amatuer, “shot on video”, look You can normally (after a bit of practice) pick the direct from video stuff out even when everything is reduced to broadcast TV.
Color correction (and consistency between shots in a scene and even staying within a “look” across the entire film)
Motion blur (film uses a relatively slow shutter (a 180° shutter would stay open 1/48th of a second) this gives a natural blur to moving objects or pans (that mimics the way the eye perceives things)
Proper framing and blocking and lighting. Why do amatur snapshots (photos) look like snapshots and professionally shot photographs look like photographs? (framing blocking and lighting)
Depth of field. A director uses the relatively short depth of field of the large imaging plate (in 35mm MP cameras and the newest digital cinema cameras) to push the viewers attention where he wants and it also gives the scene real depth (video images tend to look flat by comparison) This kind of depth of field requires precise focusing (and a dedicated focus puller on a large number of shots, manual focus on a 1/3" sensor video camera is a piece of cake by comparison)

So… basically there is no magic bullet. The big budget motion picture “look” is the result of careful control of a large number of factors.

Shoot in 24 frame progressive mode with a slow shutter speed. A high shutter (in 24fps) will just make pans stutter and fast moving objects strobe.
Carefully balance color across entire scenes (sequences of shots) to eliminate jarring shifts on the cuts.
Study lighting and think about your shots. you need to do far more than just keeping your subject lit and in the frame.
Stabilize your shots, use tripod, steadycam (these can even be homemade) or post stabilize. A shaky camera can be used for artistic effect in some cases, but generally it screams “home video” to the audience.

#3

they use … eum … a professional crew ? that usualy helps in creating a good product :slight_smile:

but seriously, i don’t realy understand your question, what is it that you don’t understant?

a “bit” of colourgrading isnt realy something that exists in big production, that “bit” is a process that can take weeks (in a production like this where there’s a budget for that) where they not only decide the mood and the continuity, but also shot per shot where the focusarea of your eye should be by making some areas brighter then the others and so forth.

#4

This could also be because when DVDs show WIP scenes or outtakes, those non-color or exposure corrected scenes may not be scanned on the same high quality tele-cine or printer equipment as the final release cut of the movie. Or maybe they are low quality scans of workprints and not the original negative film (if it’s shot on film).

#5

While editing or colorgrading they often use a low resolution version just for the reference, because the hi-def-hi-def files are to heavy and making it to slow for them to work with. But with nowadays hardware its almost possible to do corrections or post on full resolution.

#6

because it is a movie…thats why it looks like movie…
but color correction and editing is doing the magic…

#7

Two main reasons, film and color timing or grading. Thats it. There are many methods to cheat at this for amatuers but and video users but the bottom line its the two things that are out of the budget at first. What you saw I would guess would be a film scan with a rough lookup for the color slapped on it so it didnt look washed out. When a film is scanned its in Log colour space which is very washed out. You can see a example cineon image without a lookup table here
This image is very flat but it contains a ton of color data. Thats why a single image is 12mb. In order for this image to look right it needs to be converted to Linear color space which is what TV and Computers use. If you convert the image you can see how much more color the image has. So I believe that the source footage either was a low quality as menitoned above or the image had a really basic log converions on it. Either way the film would recieve a massive colour overhaul before its printed and released for theatres, and another before its mastered to DVD.

But as already stated if you want the film look, shoot 24p at 1/48th shutter and color grade your images with primary and secondary color corrections with vignettes and such. If you want some insight to the color grading process you can head over to the apple support discussions and go through the color forum. There is guy in there doing weekly video podcast about grading in color. Basic but you get and understanding of it. The last thing that screams film is shallow depth of field which is doable in video as well with adaptors and full size CCDs.

#8

If you cant open Cineon files in your system then here are JPG examples of linear and log colour of the Kodak Dlad.
Log Colour


Linear Colour

#9

And the Color tutorial link

#10

Its just like someone said, the edit footage is not the raw footage, they use a proxy. A lot of the deleted scenes and other “raw” footage is done using the proxy, faster and cheaper then having to go through the raw footage.

D.

#11

Great stuff, Cliff. Thnaks for all the info.

#12

Thank you all for the great info, that was really educational :slight_smile:

Tagger, what i meant is that when i watch the making of movies in DVDs, they show sometimes a footage before it goes to the final release, and they don’t look that good at all ( i mean not as good as the release, but they are great compared to beginner’s work) so that’s why i asked what happens there to get that sharp vivid look :slight_smile:

thanks for passing by mate !

#13

This is just great!!! thanks for sharing and certainly many thanks to him!

#14

ok, i get it now :wink:

the stuff you usualy as the “worst” version is the onelight transfer, that’s just a very quick (and lesser quality) scan from film to video purely for editingpurposes because in that stage they just need to see what’s going on. once the edit is done and they know what shots that are gonne make the movie they rescan those parts (in film the footage is acompanied by various metadata like timecode, footage numbers etc etc which allows people to know exacly what frame on the computer corresponds with the frame on the physical film) in higher quality to do all the stuff that other people already explained in this thread. and putting those early versions next to the finished ones usualy does bring out the “wow” effect in making offs :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

Just for the record, this process is called Offline Editing and usually suits the needs as the negative copy is cut by an EDL(edit decision list - a list containg all data like where to cut in which reel on which feet+frame) directly on a film negative.

The EDL is the direct result of the offline edit.

Of course zthere are a variety of other workflows which differ in details, but this is a very common way.

#16

Thanks everybody, very helpful replies!

I was searching/reading about the subject and I came cross this site which was great knowledge for me, it simply the process from the start till the end mentioning what software they use for each step.

Highly recommended
http://www.linuxmovies.org/software.html

#17

Ahh ha… ahh ha ha… ahh ha ha ha ha ha… actually there is, and it’s called Magic Bullet!!! I’m coming into this conversation from a slightly different angle as my main interest here is CG. The question is why do the rushes look rough compared to the final production, and that’s already been answered well in this thread. It’s the same footage, but one moment it looks like a home movie, and the next it looks like, well, wow! As has already been said, lighting, film stock, and the fact that it is film in the first place has a lot to do with it, but also post production, colour correction, levels etc.

But what about where you have film and CG combined in one production. CG doesn’t use film stock, yet it blends seamlessly with the film shot in the real world. It’s post worked to blend the CG with the real film. Video can also be post worked in a similar way to get a film feel, although I must stress, it can’t be made to be film. Magic Bullet Suit is a great way of doing this with CGI, or making your video production look more cinematic on TV. OR!!! using it to post process real film or add mood to a scene! What it is is a suit of tools, the main one being called “Looks” that allow you to process your footage to simulate different film stocks, processes, lens filters, colour corrections and so on. They reffer to it as being like a digital dark room, which is about right. I use it on pretty much everything now. It obviously won’t make up for any short fall in video or filming technique or lighting, but it does allow you to simulate any type of film process (or create your own unique process) on any digital media.

So actually you see there is a magic bullet! :rolleyes: lol

#18

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