Tag Archive: Film

  1. Hoshino: Case Study

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    Our contribution to the recent Star Wars Fan Film: Hoshino (not affiliated with LucasFilm or Disney) involved helping design the overall look, integrating the visual effects, and performing the final color grading.

    We worked alongside director Stephen Vitale and cinematographers Ryan Broomberg and Alyssa Brocato to achieve the final result.

    Color Workflow

    Star Wars: Hoshino - Sunset Landscape

    Since the project pays homage to the original Star Wars trilogy, we decided to follow a traditional film post-production workflow, while still shooting on a digital format.

    Part of this process involved creating a Custom LUT for the production camera (RED Epic Dragon) which transformed the color to have a more organic feel. This was an early incarnation of our FilmMatrix LUT (part of the RED to Alexa LUT Package).

    Star Wars: Hoshino - RED Film Color LUT

    A customized Print Film Emulation LUT was also used at the end of the grade. This prevented saturated colors from becoming too bright and made the digital image behave more like film.

    Star Wars: Hoshino - JEDI Training

    VFX Integration

    When creating photo-realistic composites, it’s generally best to work with the camera’s raw scene-linear data (before any non-linear / destructive grading occurs). However, some elements (like lightsabers) need to be placed after the grade in order to maintain consistent colors throughout the film. Therefore, the visual effects were divided into two categories: Pre-Grade and Post-Grade.

    Pre-Grade VFX

    This category included things like adding CG elements, keying green-screen shots, and painting out objects.

    Star Wars: Hoshino - Force Push VFX

    To aid with integration, separate preview LUTs were also generated for each effect shot. This allowed for the VFX to be seen with the grade applied (before any rendering occurred), and the shots could be fine-tuned accordingly.

    Star Wars: Hoshino - Eye Replacement VFX

    Post-Grade VFX

    Other effects such as lightsabers, lasers, and text overlays were applied after the grade (though still before the Print Film Emulation LUT).

    Star Wars: Hoshino - Sith Light Saber VFX

    In some cases, if a shot had both pre-grade and post-grade VFX, we implemented the final grade as a LUT inside the effects pipeline – reducing the amount of rendering and storage space required.

    Star Wars: Hoshino - Background Replacement VFX

    Star Wars: Hoshino - Mynock Cave

    Attention was made to ensure the LUTs didn’t cause any banding or color artifacts. Learn more about Stress-Testing LUTs.

    Behind the Scenes

    Check out the making-of featurette:

    Contact

    For more information, please visit our services page. Or feel free to contact us with any post-production inquiries.

  2. REDcolor4 LUT

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    REDWideGamutRGB is the new standardized colorspace option for RED footage. It can reproduce a much larger range of colors than REDcolor4, which is very useful for shots that have high saturation levels. However, it will look desaturated on a Rec709 monitor.

    Our LUT converts REDWideGamutRGB to REDcolor4 using additional saturation mapping for out-of-gamut colors.

    Background

    Currently Rec709 is the colorspace standard for HDTVs and consumer displays. It is depicted as the triangle below, surrounded by all visible colors of light. If a color falls outside of the triangle, it is considered out-of-gamut and cannot be seen on the display.

    Rec709 Gamut

    Digital cinema cameras (like RED) capture a much wider gamut of color than Rec709 devices can reproduce. In order to view the image properly, some color transformations must take place.

    Example

    The REDWideGamutRGB colorspace encompasses every color the camera sees, but it appears desaturated on a normal Rec709 device:

    REDWideGamutRGB

    REDcolor4 scales up the saturation, but it is unable to reproduce all the colors that were captured by the camera. This eventually can result in clipping image data for out-of-gamut colors:

    REDcolor4

    Using REDWideGamutRGB combined with our REDcolor4 LUT, gamut mapping can be controlled while still achieving a decent level of saturation:

    REDcolor4 LUT

    The differences can also be seen on a color chart:

    REDcolor4 LUT Comparison

    The LUT does not merely increase saturation but instead matches REDWideGamutRGB to REDcolor4 – allowing for more consistency when intercutting footage using both colorspace settings. Learn more about the Camera Profiling process.

    Download

    You can download the free REDcolor4 LUT here:
    www.truecolor.us/downloads/redcolor4-lut/

    To work as intended, the source material needs to be set to REDWideGamutRGB / REDlogFilm. The suggested workflow is as follows:

    REDcolor4 LUT Workflow

    If you have any feedback regarding the LUT, please let us know.