David Fincher Colours at DVinfo.net

I J Walton · May 12th, 2007, 06:57 AM

Howdy,
Does anyone know of any good ways of getting that green/blue look that David Fincher films always seem to have (Fight Club, Panic Room....). I also see it in other films but I am using his as a reference.

I have Magic Bullet 2 for AE but it renders far too slow on my P4 with 2 gig of RAM. I am looking for maybe a colour correction plugin that has presets. Except Film Magic Pro, that is good, but the presets are a little over the top and complicated to manualy change.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Chris Leong · May 15th, 2007, 02:46 PM

IJ

You're right up against processor power and RAM vs. rendering time, I'm afraid.

I've tried it on P4s before, and since that time have had to switch to dual cores with more than 5GB RAM, etc., due to deadline issues.

Still not fast (need 8-cores for that) but hey, the rendering times before now used to be in weeks, not in days, so maybe you just render while you're sleeping and live with it until you can move up?

I think that most of the programs/plugins will work much the same way - in the end you're processing a bunch of frames and storing them someplace else, and the raw processing time on a P4 would seem to be the bottleneck here.

HTH, YMMV etc.

Marcus Marchesseault · May 15th, 2007, 10:12 PM

Doesn't Magic Bullet use the video card for rendering? If so, the pathetic VPU that comes with most computers is less than worthless.

Also, what sort of OS can use 5Gig of RAM? The hardware you guys are using sounds like it runs Windows.

Chris Leong · May 16th, 2007, 02:41 AM

There's a processor sharing program called QMaster that Compressor and other programs running under OSX can use, and when you have a multiple core or duo processor you can set up an internal rendering farm. When you do this, RAM and HD space can affect the issue.

Steve Benn · May 27th, 2007, 08:53 AM

Halide should run at a pretty fast speed on a P4.

Kris Bird · May 28th, 2007, 04:37 AM

Learn to use basic correction tools.. anything that can be done with magic bullet can be done by hand/eye. There are glow/diffusion looks which require you composit layers, but in terms of COLOUR there is absolutely nothing you can do with magic bullet that you can't do by hand

For reference, all of our videos on www.thehold.co.uk were graded in vegas. typically with a Colour Curves effect which tones the colour (red/green/blue curves tweaked by hand, probably a dozen points). Note that stopping one or more curves from reaching their max (ie top-right of the graph) is an important tool... then a HSL (hue/sat/lum) to get the overall saturation where I want it, then another Curves but this time altering the luminance (rgb combined), to get the contrast where I want it.... (important that the contrast/gamma is altered after the colour, otherwise the colours will shift as you alter the contrast)..

Hope that helps a bit- really, learn the basics, 3-way colour corrector is industry standard and works for a lot of people too (personally I use it less than I used to, but it's entirely valid).

Cole McDonald · May 28th, 2007, 12:09 PM

check out the site http://www.marlathemovie.com They white balanced to orange cards to get a green/blue color cast in camera and then adjusted the levels to get that look which is quite close to what you're looking for...and it was shot on a GL2 with a 35mm adapter made from an old camera with the eye piece reticle screen replaced with Ground glass and a goofy camera mount that placed the GL2 vertically in relation to the 35mm camera.

Creativity at its' best!

May 12th, 2007, 06:57 AM	#1
I J Walton Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 40	David Fincher Colours Howdy, Does anyone know of any good ways of getting that green/blue look that David Fincher films always seem to have (Fight Club, Panic Room....). I also see it in other films but I am using his as a reference. I have Magic Bullet 2 for AE but it renders far too slow on my P4 with 2 gig of RAM. I am looking for maybe a colour correction plugin that has presets. Except Film Magic Pro, that is good, but the presets are a little over the top and complicated to manualy change. Any ideas? Thanks.

May 28th, 2007, 12:09 PM	#7
Cole McDonald Trustee Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Sauk Rapids, MN, USA Posts: 1,675	check out the site http://www.marlathemovie.com They white balanced to orange cards to get a green/blue color cast in camera and then adjusted the levels to get that look which is quite close to what you're looking for...and it was shot on a GL2 with a 35mm adapter made from an old camera with the eye piece reticle screen replaced with Ground glass and a goofy camera mount that placed the GL2 vertically in relation to the 35mm camera. Creativity at its' best! __________________ Web Youtube Facebook Last edited by Cole McDonald; May 28th, 2007 at 12:10 PM. Reason: making the link a link.

May 15th, 2007, 02:46 PM	#2
Chris Leong Major Player Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Los Angeles CA USA Posts: 507	IJ You're right up against processor power and RAM vs. rendering time, I'm afraid. I've tried it on P4s before, and since that time have had to switch to dual cores with more than 5GB RAM, etc., due to deadline issues. Still not fast (need 8-cores for that) but hey, the rendering times before now used to be in weeks, not in days, so maybe you just render while you're sleeping and live with it until you can move up? I think that most of the programs/plugins will work much the same way - in the end you're processing a bunch of frames and storing them someplace else, and the raw processing time on a P4 would seem to be the bottleneck here. HTH, YMMV etc.

May 15th, 2007, 10:12 PM	#3
Marcus Marchesseault Trustee Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Honolulu, HI Posts: 1,961	Doesn't Magic Bullet use the video card for rendering? If so, the pathetic VPU that comes with most computers is less than worthless. Also, what sort of OS can use 5Gig of RAM? The hardware you guys are using sounds like it runs Windows.

May 16th, 2007, 02:41 AM	#4
Chris Leong Major Player Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Los Angeles CA USA Posts: 507	There's a processor sharing program called QMaster that Compressor and other programs running under OSX can use, and when you have a multiple core or duo processor you can set up an internal rendering farm. When you do this, RAM and HD space can affect the issue.

May 27th, 2007, 08:53 AM	#5
Steve Benn New Boot Join Date: May 2006 Location: London Posts: 14	Halide should run at a pretty fast speed on a P4.

May 28th, 2007, 04:37 AM	#6
Kris Bird Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: UK Posts: 173	Learn to use basic correction tools.. anything that can be done with magic bullet can be done by hand/eye. There are glow/diffusion looks which require you composit layers, but in terms of COLOUR there is absolutely nothing you can do with magic bullet that you can't do by hand For reference, all of our videos on www.thehold.co.uk were graded in vegas. typically with a Colour Curves effect which tones the colour (red/green/blue curves tweaked by hand, probably a dozen points). Note that stopping one or more curves from reaching their max (ie top-right of the graph) is an important tool... then a HSL (hue/sat/lum) to get the overall saturation where I want it, then another Curves but this time altering the luminance (rgb combined), to get the contrast where I want it.... (important that the contrast/gamma is altered after the colour, otherwise the colours will shift as you alter the contrast).. Hope that helps a bit- really, learn the basics, 3-way colour corrector is industry standard and works for a lot of people too (personally I use it less than I used to, but it's entirely valid).