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How to mimic style in post - "SinCity" and "The Spirit"
- Thread starter Graeme
- Start date
A year later, my awnser to you is this lol:
yes, I think I remember seing some making-of of Sincity. Rodrigues works a lot with green screens it's true. The background and actors/close elements come from different footage most of the time. A LOT of the background is CG too. The rare colored elements must be painted with rotoscoping and masks in a compositing software. The rest is simple black and white I guess, but from the hand of a master!
links to making-of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3csUQI8tGJU&playnext=1&list=PLCB0B7A95C1422270&index=53
The color is definitly painted over monochrome material, instead of cut from the footage.
yes, I think I remember seing some making-of of Sincity. Rodrigues works a lot with green screens it's true. The background and actors/close elements come from different footage most of the time. A LOT of the background is CG too. The rare colored elements must be painted with rotoscoping and masks in a compositing software. The rest is simple black and white I guess, but from the hand of a master!
links to making-of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3csUQI8tGJU&playnext=1&list=PLCB0B7A95C1422270&index=53
The color is definitly painted over monochrome material, instead of cut from the footage.
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There are several effects at play in Sin City. Are you referring to the BLACK & WHITE with a single color in some frames?
Most of the backgrounds (with an exception of the stripper club) were CGI, and shot with green screen, but that did nothing for the color effects per se. The greenscreen allowed them to create ultra contrast backgrounds that were not possible in the real world lighting.
The color effects tended to be something where you deal with turning off all the color channels except 1 (IE making everything black and white except the color red) which is a simple thing to do... if you planned the shoot and art directed everything that was that single color to be colorized and nothing else. No need to rotoscope or trace around things that way (saves a TON of time).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXRTnUdey0g
or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rrYW1z53Fw
Most of the backgrounds (with an exception of the stripper club) were CGI, and shot with green screen, but that did nothing for the color effects per se. The greenscreen allowed them to create ultra contrast backgrounds that were not possible in the real world lighting.
The color effects tended to be something where you deal with turning off all the color channels except 1 (IE making everything black and white except the color red) which is a simple thing to do... if you planned the shoot and art directed everything that was that single color to be colorized and nothing else. No need to rotoscope or trace around things that way (saves a TON of time).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXRTnUdey0g
or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rrYW1z53Fw
I'm really not a pro in color correction (I'm more a painter I think XD) and my experience is limited, but this is what I thought while reading the first post...
I first thought they would let the color spill by some color correction tools (I did not think of keying though). If you plan for it and shoot with post in mind, I guess it is simple to do with the keying techniques like in the second tutorial with the sea (like you wear a blue tie -being the only blue element in the shot-, key that out and tint it the color you want).
I thought they were painting it though (yes the very long way with animated masks/selections) because sometimes, parts of the shirt you're wearing or elements of the background you want to tint are darkened, they are not entirely lit as they move so they lack of constant (value of) color for the keying to output a perfect constant mask. So in these case I think you need to draw masks/selections, which is the longest part of painting colors on parts of the image. Also, I remember having a real hard time keying objects (ehmmm... ok I was the object) out from anything else than a green screen. Also the over-saturated and super lighten look of the colored objects in those two movies brings me to think that color values were added (with painting) to the keyed/masked elements.
I remember trying this kind of effect once with a color corrector in combustion that allowed me to cut specific colors from the RGB, but it removed completely those pixels and I ended with an image with dark spots, I was unable to find a way to just remap those colors to simple black/grey/white.
(That's it. Vegas has let me down today. It's almost over. After 10 years of joys and happiness. It's gonna be 50/50. Vegas keeps all the audio, and I have to bring the video elsewhere. My friends tell me it's a new start, but all I can think of is those tiny buttons I use to push and pull when we were playing the tracks together.)
I first thought they would let the color spill by some color correction tools (I did not think of keying though). If you plan for it and shoot with post in mind, I guess it is simple to do with the keying techniques like in the second tutorial with the sea (like you wear a blue tie -being the only blue element in the shot-, key that out and tint it the color you want).
I thought they were painting it though (yes the very long way with animated masks/selections) because sometimes, parts of the shirt you're wearing or elements of the background you want to tint are darkened, they are not entirely lit as they move so they lack of constant (value of) color for the keying to output a perfect constant mask. So in these case I think you need to draw masks/selections, which is the longest part of painting colors on parts of the image. Also, I remember having a real hard time keying objects (ehmmm... ok I was the object) out from anything else than a green screen. Also the over-saturated and super lighten look of the colored objects in those two movies brings me to think that color values were added (with painting) to the keyed/masked elements.
I remember trying this kind of effect once with a color corrector in combustion that allowed me to cut specific colors from the RGB, but it removed completely those pixels and I ended with an image with dark spots, I was unable to find a way to just remap those colors to simple black/grey/white.
(That's it. Vegas has let me down today. It's almost over. After 10 years of joys and happiness. It's gonna be 50/50. Vegas keeps all the audio, and I have to bring the video elsewhere. My friends tell me it's a new start, but all I can think of is those tiny buttons I use to push and pull when we were playing the tracks together.)
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Another example of the pleasantville effect:
http://www.geniusdv.com/weblog/archives/pleasantville_effect_for_final_cut_pro.php
I had not watched Sonnyboo's first video completely at first (the guitar player)...
The guy is painting an alpha channel of what he wants to (de)saturate on the guitarist, I thought at first this kind of alpha painting was called rotoscoping! But I think rotoscoping is more painting what you see live on the screen, not really alpha masks/selections.
That being said, when you paint masks over time frames, you have to "animate" your selection over time to keep up with the movement (what Sonnyboo said you would spend TONS of time doing), and then you can apply any transformation to your mask, color, opacity... By painting alpha channel I also mean to include drawing polygonal masks in compositing softwares.
But if you plan well your shooting, you key out elements of the image and leave them saturated instead of post-painting colors on moving selections...
In order to achieve the pleasantville effect, everything must be planned before you film I guess. So that the elements that you want to isolate with the software's keyer receive enough light, and the keying will be easy set up. If a pixel is too dark or too bright (black and white selection), you won't be able to select it from a RGB value (chroma selection). So if you want to extract a color from the image, your need enough lighting in your image and also good color contrast between your keyed objects and the rest of the image.
Isn't the pleasantville effect warmer and smoother than selections because the pixel selection over time is based on color (it kind of behave like a wave), instead of angles like painting and masks. Ok ok I need to go to sleep hahaha...
http://www.geniusdv.com/weblog/archives/pleasantville_effect_for_final_cut_pro.php
I had not watched Sonnyboo's first video completely at first (the guitar player)...
The guy is painting an alpha channel of what he wants to (de)saturate on the guitarist, I thought at first this kind of alpha painting was called rotoscoping! But I think rotoscoping is more painting what you see live on the screen, not really alpha masks/selections.
That being said, when you paint masks over time frames, you have to "animate" your selection over time to keep up with the movement (what Sonnyboo said you would spend TONS of time doing), and then you can apply any transformation to your mask, color, opacity... By painting alpha channel I also mean to include drawing polygonal masks in compositing softwares.
But if you plan well your shooting, you key out elements of the image and leave them saturated instead of post-painting colors on moving selections...
In order to achieve the pleasantville effect, everything must be planned before you film I guess. So that the elements that you want to isolate with the software's keyer receive enough light, and the keying will be easy set up. If a pixel is too dark or too bright (black and white selection), you won't be able to select it from a RGB value (chroma selection). So if you want to extract a color from the image, your need enough lighting in your image and also good color contrast between your keyed objects and the rest of the image.
Isn't the pleasantville effect warmer and smoother than selections because the pixel selection over time is based on color (it kind of behave like a wave), instead of angles like painting and masks. Ok ok I need to go to sleep hahaha...
He SonnyBoo I've been working with Avid for a week now, and I must say that I did not know the keyers were that precise and powerful. I'm creating a pleasantville effect right now and I must say that it is pretty staightforward with the spectramatte in Avid. Very usefull effect...