Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Oh okay I see. But I didn't think I was going for a look that was out ot style. I was just wanting to learn how to recolor the walls, and color them blue perhaps, with red as the accent color for some things, if I choose a 3 color method. But is blue or red, really that much of a fad now?

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

The purpose of color grading is to create mood not color walls. If you were serious about film making you should have long ago purchased an entry level cinema camera like the Pocket 4k and tested all this out for yourself. I'm not sure what you're asking because you were told you could use 8 bit but wouldn't get optimal results, you were shown a tutorial on how to improve qualifications... Like most things it's easy to learn the steps, the hard part is putting it into practice. If this wasn't the case we would become experts after watching a Youtube video. Heavy grading is fraught with all these issues you've run into. You'd be better off sticking to the most basic grades.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Do what you want, no one is stopping you. Just be aware that you may run into limitations and issues that prevent you from having a consistent look.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Oh okay, how would the look be inconsistent, if I use the grading to try to make it consistent, such as coloring the walls the same color from shot to shot, for example?

But wouldn't coloring the walls a certain color create mood though? Everything I want to to do in the color grading is about creating mood.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Because it's demanding to keep things consistent as the lighting varies and the characters move around a location.

There are lots of ways to create mood and there are colours other than blue that carry the mood of a seedy police station.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Oh okay, I was thinking blue or green, but blue has this cold gritty feel, and thought maybe it would be better. What color were you thinking?

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

In audio, there's a principle where you address problems as early in the chain as possible. Don't depend on mastering to fix things that can be fixed in mixing. Don't expect mixing to solve problems with tracking or arrangement. It's preferable to use a better guitar than to expect an expensive mic or aggressive processing to fix a cheap guitar's sound. Fix acoustic issues acoustically before the sound hits the mic rather than electronically. Get as much sorted out in pre-production as possible so you don't have to write and arrange in the studio or fix things in post. Preparing usually takes less effort than repairing.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Oh okay thanks. I know what you mean but the locations cannot be painted though. Plus in these tutorials they show clips from movies where the walls or backgrounds were a different color originally, so isn't it normal to color walls in post, if they cannot paint them since other movies do it in post?

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

You can if you want, but it depends on how stylized your story is to be told.

The final season of the French TV cop series "Spiral" has a fair amount of colour correction.

.

However, the earlier seasons, with a lighter touch on the colours, look a lot gritter.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Oh okay, thanks, I don't think I would have a grade that is heavy beyond that I don't think. I just want to be able to control the colors of things like walls in post, if possible.

They say it's good to separate the skin tones to give the audience separation from the background. But some movies color grade the skin so it's more blue or cold looking, along with the background. Here is a clip from The French Connection for example:


They give it a more blue look, but they do not bother to separate the skin tones. They own it. Unless seperating the skin tones to create contrast from the background is still better? But I thought I would try the 3 color rule as demonstrated in the OP, but if I choose brown, blue, and red as my colors, is it really that much of a fad now? I mean what colors aren't fads to choose?

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Ryan, you know that movie is so old that it was way before digital color correction, right? They only had much simpler photochemical timing, which makes much broader adjustments on the entire image. No qualifiers, masks etc. There was no way TO separate the skin tones back then unless you hand colored it frame by frame or something.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

You had to do it with the lighting in those days.

The "French Connection" is more realistic than the look that Ryan is going after.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Patrick’s analogy with audio is my favourite comment. If the original is poor a grade wont make it better. Surely it’s polish and feel, not an excuse for not being able to paint a wall. Big budget movies could have painted their sets properly, surely grading is supposed to be subtle or a special effect, not an excuse for a poor location.

Amateur productions always seem to put time and effort into the wrong areas. Surely the story and the actors are critical to success. Rotten Tomatos don’t base their opinions on a movies grade fir goodness sake. People don’t care about grading, and if they do notice it, it was done badly.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

A competent art director will come up with a solution if you can't paint the original walls.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

We should have copy/paste jar that Ryan needs to forfeit a quarter every time he references a movie he wants to copy despite not knowing how it was done or having the means to do it.

This topic looks to be a continuation of a thread he started May of 2019! Spoiler alert he wants to color the walls at locations won’t allow him to paint them.
https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/open-dv...5=#post1950529
Can you believe obsessing over the color of walls for two years!

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

at this point i can

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Yes I know The French Connection came out at a time when you couldn't separate the skin tones, I was just using it as an example, of a movie with blu-ish color grading, without skin tone separation.

But as for coloring walls in locations, the tutorials show this being done as if it's normal to color the walls in post, if you can't during shooting. Is it not normal then?

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

No they don't! They show it can be done, they show you how to do it, but it is NOT normal. Normal is proper planning so9 you don't have to fix things - like was explained in the audio analogy.

If you want blue walls, it's part of the planning. Grading in the really detailed examples on Youtube often takes two or three views because it is subtle - it's artistic and it's totally transparent. You wish to use the technology to change fundamentals, and the more change you put in, the more chance of revealing it and of course your expertise really defines the limits.

Just because something is possible does not mean it is a standard procedure to use every time. Maybe you should tint all the lights towards your wanted colour and then repair the blue flesh tone - that could be simpler. It does occur to me that the cost of paint could be cheaper. Paint the room what colour you want, and promise to repaint it back at the end of the shoot - the location owner even gets a free makeover. A few tins of paint is probably cheaper in time and effort.

Do not watch things on Youtube and take them as fact. So much is distorted or somebody's own slightly skewed perspective of our industry. Sometimes, they are clever people but out of touch.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Oh okay, but I did offer to pain locations before, and they said no. But in this tutorial, they show what the color looks like in Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol, at 1:20 into the clip:


Ghost Protocol was actually graded blue/teal, in post, with the skin tones separated. Not even they chose to have the actors wear blue clothes, or color the street they are walking on blue, during production. This was all done in post, so I thought it was normal, since a movie like that even does it in post, at least according to the tutorial.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

What is "normal" (and it isn't, really) for a film with a $140 million budget and the best Hollywood crew that money can buy is of virtually no relevance to what you or I can accomplish working independently.

Focus, man. Know and respect your limits. Get the story right, work with the actors to make it feel sincere and convincing, and shoot it so you have enough coverage of each scene. Aim for realism but don't obsess over the colors of the walls or the tone of the flutes at this point. Keep special effects to a minimum.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

I'm not disputing it might be better if you could but this is an amateur production. Most people allowing free use of their office wouldn't want their walls painted. We're not talking about professionals who do a good job, they'd probably get paint everywhere, not properly cover back up the blue, and the smell of paint where you can't open the windows...

This is just another example of Ryan taking a technique and misusing it. All that is needed is a cooler grade of the scene. Grading isn't for painting walls.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Oh okay I see what you mean, but I don't like walls being just plain white. Is fixing it in post by using qualifers really so bad?

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

It is when you can't make it work. when I'm faced with doing something badly, or having to spend hours on something like this, I usually find another way of doing it. Tomorrow I am shooting something that really should have a green screen, but I took it down Friday and put up a white one - so tomorrow As the lighting rig is still up, I'm going to see if I can get away with throwing loads of colour on the white - I'm just lazy and interested to see what will happen.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Well since I wanted to use the 3 color method, I could still do it, by having the actors wear clothes are not of those three colors only, and no other colors. If the DP I get does not have a 10 bit 4:2:2 camera, than I can get one then, to separate the skin tones successfully then in post, if that's best for post grading?

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

You really seem to enjoy painting yourself into corners.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

LOL. Too easy.

You could say we're painting Ryan with a broad brush.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

How am I painting myself into a corner?

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

I don't think we can explain this Ryan. I expect your wardrobe people might have issues here.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

You're getting obsessed with doing something for which there's a number of possible methods of achieving the same mood.

You're also applying restrictions upon your wardrobe department, which may involve them having to select costumes that may be inappropriate for the characters.

You may find that the final effect doesn't work out in practice because your shots are limited by your desire to have the walls look like they're painted blue.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

At this point I would say that the solution is to go back a step or three in the process, identify what limitations you're presented with and figure out what kind of movie you can make within those limits. If you're good at making movies, your movie will be good in spite of them. You might even impress people more by doing good work under constraints. Think El Mariachi.

If you continue to obsess over peripheral details, you will fail to put proper focus on the core attributes of a good movie. The most likely result is a bad movie with nice colors.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

But I've noticed that movies that do the 3 color rule will do this though and wardrobe will work within those certain colors. So that seems normal. Plus in the past, I was forced to be my own wardrobe department anyway, so if this is going to be no different than it's still me who has to make that decision then.

Well I can't really get a feel of what the look of El Mariachi was supposed to be in it's color scheme though. In fact, I could be wrong here, but I don't think it was even shot with one in mind.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Exactly my point.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Well I feel like I can at least try. I mean how hard is it to have actors wear certain colors in their clothes like other movies do. I don't think that would be hard. Even if I cannot color the backgrounds, at least I have control over the clothes during shooting.

The actors need wardrobe anyway, so would clothes that are certain colors not really cost any different much? I guess I just felt that clothes will still cost the same and not add much more to the budget if I operate within a certain color scheme.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

You are becoming fixated on this rule following Ryan. I’ve been looking at the three Color rule, and come to the conclusion that it has no historic grounding at all, and is a rule developed once technology allowed modification of colour pallets. Once one movie swing to pushing orange, with the complimentary colour, everyone started doing it. It’s not a rule at all, it’s fashion, so suddenly we have tweaking to fit the feel of a movie, which is good, but why are people getting so obsessed by it as a tool to make people like a movie. If you make a movie on Mars, it will have a red tone. Underwater has blue, deserts are yellow or orange, Antarctica become steely blue, California beaches look like California beaches and England looks murky grey. I see your quest as misguided. You are putting frosting on a cake that doesn’t have good ingredients, and instead of sorting the recipe you are tweaking the frosting. You have no sense of priorities Ryan. You do not understand these rules you blindly follow. They are based on premises you have not understood. Your cinematography in production is enhanced by these colour shifts, but you have taken the least important component of the rule, and amplified it. Colourists are tinting subtly and you are using the rule to change the colour of a room, then fighting the artefacts it creates. It’s madness. Why can you not see you’ve just misunderstood the whole thing. You’ve totally rejected the art behind the rule in favour of the technology.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Oh okay. So basically the color grade in movies is a lighter sheen rather than trying to change the color of a background entirely then, you are saying?

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

You're not just changing the colour of the background, you're affecting everything in the scene. The effect influences more than the wall, so once you've done it in one location, you may have carry it through in some form other throughout the film for constancy.

You've also ignored the Lighting in these shot examples, which is very different to the flat lighting in your own test

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Oh okay. Yes I know I would have to have a consistent look but is that a problem?

And yes the DP would light it differently for the grading, or so I thought. I guess I just feel confused because I was advised before not to copy the color scheme of other movies and come up with my own, so I come up with my own, and now I am told it's too complicated and to forget it. It seems that no matter what I come up with, it's not worth it.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Yes. Exactly.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

The thing is that you are just copying other movies.

You're going through all this because a wall in "Seven" is painted blue, however, you seem to have ignored that the wall is in an old, well used police station in city like NY that looks like it hasn't be repainted since the 1950s or 60s.. That's art direction, not colour correction.

Re: Do a lot of movies use this 3 color rule?
 

Which wall in Seven was painted blue. I don't recall such a scene. But I wasn't going by Seven. I was advised to come up with a color scheme of my own and that is what I have done. So why do you say I am copying other movies when I came up with my own I am trying to apply?