What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading?

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, and yes that's a good point as I never attempted to light an entire background wall a certain color before.

As for shadows, what if I just let the shadows remain there? I mean since my next short film is a crime thriller script anyway, maybe shadows are okay, especially since a lot of old crime film noir movies have shadows all over the walls? I watched Mildred Pierce (1945), and it's loaded with shadows. So I wonder, maybe that's okay for a crime genre, and I can just let the shadows be therefore?

[Brian Drysdale]

I would test all this out before doing it on a film. It's probably the best way for you to see what happens to shadows etc when using different colours on lights. Plus the limitations that you'll have doing this on real locations and how long it'll take to get the look you want.

[Paul R Johnson]

Shadows are good - they create suspense, add to mood and often look good. Alien would not have been so scary if you could see everything. Then of course you get the kinds of shadows that happen when you have bad lighting, or not enough lighting. One is good lighting and one is bad. One old lighting designer told me that he'd made his career in lighting people, not scenery. If you light the people properly, wherever they are on the set, that will always light the scenery in interesting ways.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, thanks. Let's say the background is too much to light blue and I should grade the background separate from the skin in post, like in the color grading tutorials.

So it was said before that in order to do this to make sure that the wall is a neutral color so it could be separated correctly. Now I read that white counts as a neutral color. However, even when I tried separating on white walls before, the skin still did not separate successfully. So in order to do this, do the walls have to be really really white?

[John Nantz]

Ryan - how many different walls will there be in this script that need to be colored in order to get this background teal look?

Will some have to be painted then re-painted to match pre-existing conditions (color match)?

And there is one more thing ... have you started to put together a budget for this movie?
One can spreadsheet it out scene-by-scene with materials, equipment, staffing. man-hours, rental, etc.

[Ryan Elder]

I have budgeted some of it so far, but trying to keep it from going. I am assuming I won't be allowed to paint the locations at least not without tempting the owner with a lot of money... more than it would cost to paint it back, which is why I was asking if these alternative solutions would work.

[Brian Drysdale]

You really need to budget the entire film, otherwise you can get into fantasy land.

A building with painted blue walls is different to you applying an orange and teal colour correction, because the latter is a "look" that has to be applied to the entire film and it affects more than just the walls.

Using lighting can give blue walls, but it may not give the feel of a real police station if overused.

On a very low budget film you have to keep things simple. If you wish to change the colour of the walls, ask the owner, the worst he'll say is no, however, he may insist on professional painters doing the work, You need to cover all the bases and you haven't covered this one. You can't make assumptions.

Blue walls aren't going to change the dramatic content in the film, so you have to be prepared to drop things that aren't proving practical within your budget. Not doing so can involve losing something that's key,

The audience don't know what the director would've liked to have in the film, they only see what is actually in the film and react accordingly.

[Paul R Johnson]

Unless the script and the acting are really, really good - do not waste money on small things most viewers would not notice. What I mean is that if they spot bad acting, or unrealistic dialogue, or poor characterisation there is no point even thinking about grading and painting things. You have priorities all wrong.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh yeah, I know, it's just I was told in the past that my locations sucked and the walls were to white, in past projects, so I wanted to improve that, even if it's through lighting.

[Brian Drysdale]

I don't know who commented on your locations, but you don't need to have blue coloured lighting on the walls to make them better. Keeping the lighting off the white walls can make a big difference.

Throw this at the art director and the DP, tell them you don't want flat lighting on the walls and you want interesting dressing on the sets. It's not your job to work these things out, it's their job to come up with proposals.

[Paul R Johnson]

Well, the locations do suck to be honest, but the colour of the walls is not a problem to me. The acting was the real killer. When actors 'act', you're supposed to believe they are a real person, and real people don't behave like they do in your movies? If the actors are doing their critical role right, then there will be no need to even think about the walls, unless you want to use them as reflectors and bounce light off them. I'd produce a priority list - and we'd perhaps all have things in different orders, but most would be pretty fixed.

1. Script. Is it interesting and does it really have a plot and stand up on it's own, without actors.
2. Actors. When they play the character, do you recognise what they are doing as what real people do and say?
3. Sound. Natural capture of what people sound like - OK on a laptop and a fully featured home cinema.
4. Music. Appropriate and mood evoking music.
5. Image. Appropriate to the genre in quality, format and frame rate. Composition following established norms. Movement planned and performed.
6. Lighting. Suitable and appropriate to the image.
7. Costume. Fitting, colour, material, period, style
8. Scenery/set. Appropriate to the locations in the screenplay.

Then you should have something you can edit.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks. I can concentrate on the script and actors as well, but that doesn't mean I should throw the look of the locations out the window entirely though, does it? I also didn't think that music was above cinematography, but I will keep that in mind. I as also told my sound and music has been good so far, so I felt I should pay more attention to the other areas, if that's true...

[Brian Drysdale]

A good art director and DP can transform very ordinary locations for not very much. On screen, they can look totally unlike the way they appear in their normal life.

[Paul R Johnson]

The idea was that you could justify how YOU would rank them Ryan, so some of them are misplaced. However, once you get your order right, the things lower in the list become the ones that can be allowed to be weak, but it's unforgivable to mess up the higher ones.

The music v image one is tricky. I suspect that an audience would notice music before cinematographic tricks. So depth of field, aspect ratio, grading, LUT tweaks and other clever stuff may simply not be noticed if the important thing in the frame is sharp and doesn't wobble.If the actors are poor, then everyone notices.

Movies that few have seen, and are in a foreign language can win Oscars. Some poor devil spent ages getting the audio sorted for that movie, and everybody reads the captions!

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, I thought that people of course would still pay attention to the audio while reading the captions.

I've been told my the cinematography was bad in mine so far, but not the music. So I thought maybe it was easier for a composer to make music, compared to a DP having to work with not that good of real life locations. But I can work with a DP, and production designer and see what happens.