Skin Corrections & The Film Look

Thanks guys, this and watching Dan’s two part insights on beauty grading, really have helped me. I am going to practice these techniques over the holidays while everyone is on vacation.

thanks for the hard work and dealing with me and all my question.

great to hear! Keep those great questions coming man!

What Robbie said! We love answering your questions and the questions of all our members.

Great podcasts gentlemen. Robbie the hands not matching comment on skin makeup had me talking to the podcast saying ‘amen brother’! I really love to use the Hue vs. Hue for moving green/yellow skin, its a quick subtlety but powerful, great tips guys.

LOL! The hands KILL me every time!

it would be cool to have an insight that explores Patricks comment about tweaking an image to to better generate a key then reversing the tweak after the fact. I can see a situation where you tweak and image pull a key , then export the mask and reapply it on the clean footage. I used to have to isolate a color channel, tweak it’s contrast use apply channels in after effects to make it a key of itself.

I appreciate your answers for the walking dead portion but it would have been interesting if you guys broke down the look and discussed the key elements the three of you believed the look consisted of

For us to do that, we’d all have to have watched the series and need references in front of us that we can share with you. For legal reasons we’ve been very conservative and have avoided displaying images from content which we haven’t been given explicit authority to share… and that’s why it’s tough for us to talk about specific Looks from specific properties if we can’t all see the images we’re breaking down.

Absolutely loved the beauty insight as well. Likely my favorite of the year, watched it twice. The fiance was in the room as I was watching them, and now she spots nose shadows EVERYWHERE haha. It really nailed a LOT of the work I’m dealing with at the moment, and helped me see where I can practice further. It also helped me see where things go horribly awry (keying eyes instead of mini windows), so HUGE thanks re the discussion w skin tones.

The “zombie” hand……haha

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question guys, I think you all totally nailed it and what you say makes a lot of sense and I do totally agree that simply steeling a look isn’t creatively gratifying 🙂 I had recently watched Kings of Summer which was absolutely beautiful and then got a music promo through the door which was all shot in a forest in summer so as it excited and inspired me I used Kings of Summer as a reference (mostly because I’ve always had a hard time with foliage and they did such a great job) but adapted it to what I felt fit the narrative and my own particular style. I do however admit to trying to replicate other peoples looks from time to time. I never to use on my work but because I find I learn an awful lot along the way. Almost like a dissection I guess. And it’s fun 🙂

One thing I will mention is that I did take on some of the advice and try again, particularly the advice on not over-grading had a surprisingly positive impact on getting closer to it looking more authentic so cheers guys!

Anyway, thanks again,

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Kraig.

Kraig – Just to be clear… seeing a Look and practicing replicating the Look is a time-honored tradition of artists that goes back hundreds of years. It’s a great way to hone your skill. Then – as you said – adapting those Looks to the project at hand becomes much easier and more creatively gratifying.

It’s important to know that not all emulation LUTs are created equal. I created my own photometric film negative emulation LUTs, sampling 1000s of patches on various formats and creating 3D LUTS that map 1000s of colours across the entire exposure range of the formats. I own all of my competitor LUT packages as well (mostly for comparison) and have come to the conclusion that a lot of these LUTs are quite conservative. There are reasons for this though, as a lot of people would be very surprised to see the huge change of a true emulation, some noise can be added from increasing colour contrast (especially in lower end formats) and some detail can be lost entirely, especially in the shadows. Film has quite a small shadow latitude compared to digital, and we we are now used to seeing that detail. Removing this shadow detail in a true emulation can be too shocking for many and so the companies making these emulations have eased this effect. Sadly it is these subjective adjustments by these lut companies that has resulted in LUTs that don’t truly work as advertised!

Next time you are looking at footage acquired on film, look at the density (not necessarily value/darkness) of the shadows. In normal conditions (not pull processed or overexposed film) the shadows will be far denser than digital. When applying that density to digital however, there will be a reaction to the loss of detail, where as on film it was never there so people didn’t get used to it!

There is also a fundamental flaw with film emulation, even on the higher end cameras, and that is the latitude distribution. Generally speaking film has 3-4 stops under exposure, and 6-8 stops overexposure (and one middle). The opposite is true with digital. This is a fundamental problem when mapping one to the other, and the only way to truly match them is to adjust the exposure and possibly lighting style, exposing and lighting for the emulation later down the line, ideally with on set emulation LUTS.

Having said all of that, the lighting and final grade will still have a much more significant effect on the look!!!

I only wanted to say this as I have invested a lot of time and money in my own film emulation and want to clarify that better results CAN be achieved with better LUTS!

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