The study of art, or more to it the history of art will give you a view into this world of analysis.

I was fortunate having had art tutelage from my earliest years through to being analytical with what I looked for in 3D ceramics and studying African and Japanese ceramics and doing a lot of gauche crayon and watercolour.

If you read her biog you will see how she also studied art, and it is in this process that much of understanding depth and layers and the importance of colourways and contrast and detail determine where our eye looks and more to the point in video where our eye would look next!!

Paul you are asking the most important question/s. Now get busy and read widely on art and art history. Better yet, get busy with some art courses of your own.

Grazie

An excellent response!
Im my younger years in school, art was never on the list of priorities. I missed out completely on art and the study of art due to fighting for survival and not being beaten up by skin heads, that was my priority. This is most likely the reason i am failing in the understanding of stylistic grading and colour decision. I can only do so much with grading, but after that i just dont 'get it'. Back then, I was more interested in engineering / electronics and music production. My ears do 'get it' where my eyes (and brain) just see the nuts and bolts of the image - not the beauty and the message of the colour.

cheers. Now thinking in another direction.

Paul.

It's never ever too late - good for you!!!

G

Not much with the colouring, but am pretty good at staying in the lines.

The shot at 1:02 is toast no matter what was done to it. Blown out skin is my biggest peeve.

The two landscapes left me stone cold. Just looked like bad composits and visually distracting. Sure, layers but not to the point where they're disconnected and flattened.

The others great, the last shot was a great shot to start with, it ticked all the boxes for me. The lighting and textures are what made it great and her little tweaks helped.

Bob.

Excellent points you raise.

G

Masterful.
I'm fearless as a color correcter; did it commercially for two decades, and followed the photog's wishes if they wanted a little tint or mood.

I guess I just don't have the b*lls to be a colorist. Always ends up looking "wrong" to my eyes. First time I saw orange and teal, I said "What the heck is that?"

I think I have to agree with farss on most of his points. The man's face was toast. If they were trying for a sun in your face shot it failed and not much could be done. On the river/mountain shot if she would have stopped at applying contrast I thought it would look great, but after that the cliff side was destroyed. And then the last shot was almost perfect and she went with the blue tone washout approach something I am beginning to hate because it is being so over used.

For me I approach it more from a matter of personal taste and that begins in the camera then to color correction/grading. I like the colors to pop with some contrast, but not to much.

In the last yr I have paid very close attention to movies I watch and they have taken the cookie cutter appraoch to grading. Sci fi blues. Drama/romance yellows. Confusion greens. It has become overused and sometimes way over done.

I recently came across a technique that works quite well and that is to scope it with the rgb parade and then pull the levels out to the full studio range. Possibly adjust the midtones and you're done. The contrast is there. It doesn't work everytime but it sure makes correcting a lot easier.

IMHO in the end it is really personal choice on what you are trying to convey which most people will never get :) They only sense if it is flat looking or alive.

My life is simple. I like Technicolor and that's the end of it.
JJK

Tim20, I agree with you on the Template approach - yes.

However, my motivation in getting this in front of our friends here was to invite editors to see how effective an analytical approach can be by creating those important layers, and consequently how layering can be to the narrative of what we are wanting to achieve. The coloured outcome of the choice of colours maybe questioned, but I still stand by my reasoning and motivation on wanting to bring the approach to the members of the Forum. I therefore have understood, from your responses, and Bob's, I've failed to convey that. Interesting.

Cheers

Grazie

Oh no Grazie I get it! I didn't mean to bash her. It was just for my taste some of it went a little too far.

My point was color should start the moment you plan a shot Which includes lighting and what you are trying to convey. Actually I stumble on it more than plan so I guess I have a natural knack for it. I only say this because of comments from others when I show them the work.

Of course I am the writer, director, editor, sound mixer, continuity, foley, adr, special fx etc etc etc.

"I still stand by my reasoning and motivation on wanting to bring the approach to the members of the Forum"

I appreciate the motivation but I would have tried for better examples.


"I therefore have understood, from your responses, and Bob's, I've failed to convey that. Interesting."

You certainly didn't fail to convey that to me however the examples with the most layering were, in my opinion, not good at all. Rather than being attracted to the approach I was put off it.

I've tried using this technique myself a couple of times and apart from the frustrating lack of tools to assist the mechanical side of the process in Vegas and a bug I stumbled upon last night, I abandoned the approach because I was getting the same kind of outcome, the layers became detached, flat planes.

About the only time I have used this technique I started with doing work before the camera rolled. I fudged a practical light, added two small lights off camera and then in post I had something to work with. The shot was deliberately static to avoid having to use tracking. It worked, the lighting was motivated, the eye was drawn to where it should have been. Without all the work upfront nothing I could have done in post would have produced the same outcome.

A couple of months ago I did watch a great tutorial on color grading, wish I could find ti agait. The action takes place on the sidewalk of a busy street with lots of iconic colours and lots of visual clutter to distract the eye. By very careful manipulation the colorist gets the eye to where it belongs and keeps it there as the scene unfolds but at the same time doesn't pull the scene apart. The lady in a couple of her shots in the showreel does much the same or enhances a good shot into a great shot. On the other hand the two landscape shots seemed to me more an example of too much in an attempt to rescue poor shots from the camera, less might have been better.

Bob.

however the examples with the most layering were, in my opinion, not good at all

I eagerly await your alternatives. Always willing to learn.

G

Found it, phew.
From Stu Maschwitz, duh!

https://vimeo.com/13271908

I do like the comment at around 11:00 about how a lot of tutorials end with the "you get the idea" and when you actually try it the idea is easy, implementing it through the whole shot can be another matter.

He's got quite few good tutorials where he talks as much about the why as the how e.g . setting the "tone" of a scene, not just fixing a single shot. That appealed to me because I've seen a few efforts where each shot is great but the sum of the parts is a mess.

I do appreciate this isn't strictly about "layers" as such though.

Bob.

Bob, good tute -- thanks. In terms of mechanics (rather than artistry) Den Lennie has made 4 videos of his exploring DaVinci Light (in connection with the BlackMagic camera). Looks like a good tool. http://www.fstopacademy.com/blog/color-grading-101-with-davinci-resolve-9/Davinci Resolve 9[/link]

Yes, I've seen Stu's work, it's great.

And again, my original wish and invitation was to members here to embrace the analytical value of observing and recogniding layers and the use that the same is used in video. This approach has been used in the composition of artwork for centuries.

Great discussion, keep it going.

Grazie

I still insist on "the best color grading is no color grading at all"

Get it right when shooting and don't touch it ever again.

Her examples mostly confirm that, as none of her coloring examples add anything of value to the original footage. A few, very few look fine, but most just add fake and unrealistic color. Turn a regular kid with a kid possibly affected by hepatitis.

Color grading should be eliminated as a job, maybe then we won't have everything look blue and orange. To me color grading is right up there with sound people who like to fix it in the mix, word delusional comes to mind.

Get it right the first time and don't mess with it after that. And in case you don't ,re-recording it or re-shooting a scene is still a better option than trying to fix it in the mix or coloring it.

Well, that's certainly thrown the felines amongst the columbidae.

While I most certainly can't disagree with your observations on the over use of colourizing of video to death, I'd really would further invite you to look at the post work done on the "Pirates of the Caribbean", and more importantly the "before" dailies and the "after" final DVD. When I saw this my respect for the art and science of the colourist shot up.

I understand that work is shot "flat", but then handed-off to the post labs to workup. Isn't that correct?

I think we need to be careful to ascertain whether we are referring to remedial - colour correction - and rather than the colourisation of media for the "effect" leading to narrative improvement.

Good points.

Grazie

I kind of agree with you, I understand where Grazie is coming from but the concept falls apart in my head when I start thinking about the moving image.
Obviously "layers" have been used for centuries in art works. Around a century ago though we introduced a way more complex art form, the moving image. A painting isn't reality, it is a perception, an interpretation that can convey enough for it to take hours to ponder.

A shot in a movie is quite a different beast. Sure we use layers (zones would seem more apt). We use light, selective focus, we move the camera, we use focal length to shift perspective. If we split the frame up into hard layers what happens when we push into the scene or an actor moves towards the camera.

I'm just lost here with this layers concept in a moving image. That's why I went back to Stu's tutorial, he's dealing with a moving image, all the time checking how what he's doing is working when things move, not just the masks etc but how it's affecting how the shot feels.

I'm still trying, not giving up but I really want to see this in a moving image at work.

Bob.

"I understand that work is shot "flat", but then handed-off to the post labs to workup. Isn't that correct?"

No, pretty well everything that comes out of a high end camera will look "flat" today, welcome to S-Log, C-Log and RAW. This gives the colorist way more to work with OR the final look is dialled in during the shoot as metadata, even the preview monitors have the Look applied for the director / client.

Bob.

Eh? So what does your "No" refer to?

G

Any layers that have "moving" images, or rather images that cross the boundary from front to back ain't what I'm referring to, nor those that the colourist has put forward here. But I'm guessing you knew that anyway(?). It was the use of and analytical approach to the areas of activity that remained in a layer - the sewing machinist and the use of the analysis of the contrast and desat that appeals to me and it was that that I was placing before people here. What you are talking about is the movement of actors or vehicles that cross the boundaries. I wasn't, nor I feel was the colourist showing in the examples. But I'm guessing you knew that too(?).

My original wish was to place before friends here that analytical use of the concept of layers now used in the production of video, here brought forward through the centuries, from humans getting their heads around depth and colour.

Grazie