Jane Wick JR

I am now in preproduction on my action movie that is shockingly reminiscent of 2004's The Punisher.
Loved the editing in that movie. John travolta not so much.

I am all by myself planning and executing this lol. Filming starts december 12th.
Movie effects that i haven't done before:

Shooting someones head off with a shotgun.
Shooting a row of 10 aluminum cans with two pistols.
Shooting walls full of bullet holes and debris
Hand to hand fight with pencil stabbing (I hear john wick killed three guys with a pencil.. a fucking pencil!!)
Shooting a car full of bullet holes and blowing the windows out
Fake 3D bullet casings when the guns fire
Buy better prop guns that use co2 cartridges - there aren't any with fake casing ejection i can buy are there?
Get some kind of double barrel shotgun prop
Build a blood cannon for shotgun blasts
-------

My initial thoughts are...
For bullet holes my 2 choices are either create them entirely in post and apply tracking
or to create them IRL and then to cover them in post production until such time as i want them to appear

for shutgun head blast maybe I have to put a blue bag over someones head and then key out their head for a headless corpse ?
 
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Sorry, I slipped up and made a rookie mistake, reading the first page and answering without noticing that there were more pages, lol.
 
Nate North said:
Sorry, I slipped up and made a rookie mistake, reading the first page and answering without noticing that there were more pages, lol.
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Ah np, that first post was from a year ago lol. I took a 6 month hiatus on this project when everyone started getting vaccinated.
 
It's actually really cool! Though a little clunky with movement in the end.
 
Try a digital slo-mo to smooth out the last shot.
 
Big day tomorrow. Filming the first gunfight of my film - and my very first time ever filming an indoor gunfight.
The blood i thought wouldn't stain.... does stain wood. just not hair or clothes or skin. so i cant use it. what a mess.

Finally figured out what to do , idk how well it will look but ive got to compromise. Now trying to figure out all my shots. about halfway there.
 
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I felt really great last night at like 2:30 am lol
Felt great this morning.

Scheduled to film at 3pm i was STILL getting ready at 3:10 even after all this time prepping. omg it was so much work.
anyway today was a success!!

I attempted one amibitious shot in there that would require the actors to practice the timing and one of them to fall onto some cushions.
Took about 8 practice tries before everyone was in unison and the shot worked!
 
sfoster said:
Been working on the color grading, check out these two before / after

LilyGrade.jpg

drive.google.com drive.google.com

LilyGrade2.jpg

drive.google.com drive.google.com

I'm not sure what direction to take the color grade for these other shots in the front yard... maybe I will just leave them clean or cold idk.
Anyone have any ideas how to grade these?

drive.google.com

Yard2_2.43.1.jpg

drive.google.com drive.google.com

Yard1_1.28.1.jpg

drive.google.com drive.google.com
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no 1 is the best example I think

no 3 and 4 are kind of classic grading error. You might try using 3d LUT files, or or better yet 3d LUT creator, to shift individual sub hues. Basically desaturate some of the specific colors that provide that kind of grating combination you get from back yards in natural light. It can be hard to wrap you head around cartesian color space at first, but once you understand it, you can finesse your results much better.

I'm sure you already know what LUTs are, and how to use them, but learning to manipulate them yourself is a whole different thing, and you will get results that canned luts will never achieve.

Watch this demo

3D LUT Creator - official site

3dlutcreator.com 3dlutcreator.com

learn to use this program well, and it will really help you get past the ugly green brown yellow white combination that haunts indie filmmakers in certain seasons and locations. Once you've mastered it, you will have complete control over your color space, and the files can be applied drag and drop to projects. Think of it as a way to consolidate complex colorist formulas into a single portable file. If you have a cine camera, you can import these luts you create directly into your camera, and dial vs the lut in the field.

Just as an example for you, many of the scenes in this video looked much like your demo shots, before I customized the color space for each scene.

 
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Nate North said:
no 1 is the best example I think

no 3 and 4 are kind of classic grading error. You might try using 3d LUT files, or or better yet 3d LUT creator, to shift individual sub hues. Basically desaturate some of the specific colors that provide that kind of grating combination you get from back yards in natural light. It can be hard to wrap you head around cartesian color space at first, but once you understand it, you can finesse your results much better.

I'm sure you already know what LUTs are, and how to use them, but learning to manipulate them yourself is a whole different thing, and you will get results that canned luts will never achieve.

Watch this demo

3D LUT Creator - official site

3dlutcreator.com 3dlutcreator.com

learn to use this program well, and it will really help you get past the ugly green brown yellow white combination that haunts indie filmmakers in certain seasons and locations. Once you've mastered it, you will have complete control over your color space, and the files can be applied drag and drop to projects. Think of it as a way to consolidate complex colorist formulas into a single portable file. If you have a cine camera, you can import these luts you create directly into your camera, and dial vs the lut in the field.

Just as an example for you, many of the scenes in this video looked much like your demo shots, before I customized the color space for each scene.

Click to expand...
Thanks, it did make a huge difference for 1 although I need to go back and touch up that log in the foreground and the can on the right.

3 and 4 aren't graded yet so idk if i would call that a classic grading error. its just the natural image without a look applied.

I don't really believe in LUTs and I do everything manually in davinci resolve. Been studying it for a few years now so I know the program pretty well and I can shift or desaturate any hues but I don't have the plan of what hues to do that to or what I want my finished image to look like for 3 or 4.

your images look like fall but my yard sequence was shot in early spring.
 
sfoster said:
Thanks, it did make a huge difference for 1 although I need to go back and touch up that log in the foreground and the can on the right.

3 and 4 aren't graded yet so idk if i would call that a classic grading error. its just the natural image without a look applied.

I don't really believe in LUTs and I do everything manually in davinci resolve. Been studying it for a few years now so I know the program pretty well and I can shift or desaturate any hues but I don't have the plan of what hues to do that to or what I want my finished image to look like for 3 or 4.

your images look like fall but my yard sequence was shot in early spring.
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I guess when I see ungraded footage, I recognize that as what indie filmmakers call "graded footage" lol. Meaning they shot a scene and turned up the contrast and brightness.

I know a lot of people that don't believe in luts, and I totally get why. Because you shouldn't be using presets, as each and every scene is slightly different And I also do manually grade everything in Resolve. My point is that when you create your own LUT files, all they really are is a way to store all the settings that you are doing manually in resolve into a portable preset. There is no actual difference between what a lut is doing to your image vs a majority of Davinchi's settings. It's just a packaged preset file that consolidates all those settings into one action. I hope you do at least give LUT creator a whirl, it's actually a very powerful and precise custom tool that works miracles on certain scenes. I know people that try to grade a feature film with Magic Bullet Looks, and this is something on a completely different level.

It took me a while to wrap my head around it, but at the end of the day, every bit of grading work I do on any platform can be reduced to a single set of color space modifiers, which can be mathematically represented by a cube of values. This is why they are calling it a "3d LUT"

Not sure if I'm remembering this correctly, but I believe the new version of davinchi actually lets you dial in a colorist node, and then convert that dial to a lut for portability into other programs.

Anyway, no offense intended about shots 3 and 4, I guess I failed to pick up on the fact that they were ungraded. As far as the seasons, you are correct of course, but you still get those same dull colorscapes with ungraded footage in whatever season. Winter snowscapes can look terrible raw, but just drop out the yellow saturation a bit and balance the rest, and you can get something awesome. Sorry about the rant, I tend to geek out about colorist work, lol.

111798556-565x376_1.jpg
 
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Nate North said:
I guess when I see ungraded footage, I recognize that as what indie filmmakers call "graded footage" lol. Meaning they shot a scene and turned up the contrast and brightness.

I know a lot of people that don't believe in luts, and I totally get why. Because you shouldn't be using presets, as each and every scene is slightly different And I also do manually grade everything in Resolve. My point is that when you create your own LUT files, all they really are is a way to store all the settings that you are doing manually in resolve into a portable preset. There is no actual difference between what a lut is doing to your image vs a majority of Davinchi's settings. It's just a packaged preset file that consolidates all those settings into one action. I hope you do at least give LUT creator a whirl, it's actually a very powerful and precise custom tool that works miracles on certain scenes. I know people that try to grade a feature film with Magic Bullet Looks, and this is something on a completely different level.

It took me a while to wrap my head around it, but at the end of the day, every bit of grading work I do on any platform can be reduced to a single set of color space modifiers, which can be mathematically represented by a cube of values. This is why they are calling it a "3d LUT"

Not sure if I'm remembering this correctly, but I believe the new version of davinchi actually lets you dial in a colorist node, and then convert that dial to a lut for portability into other programs.

Anyway, no offense intended about shots 3 and 4, I guess I failed to pick up on the fact that they were ungraded. As far as the seasons, you are correct of course, but you still get those same dull colorscapes with ungraded footage in whatever season. Winter snowscapes can look terrible raw, but just drop out the yellow saturation a bit and balance the rest, and you can get something awesome. Sorry about the rant, I tend to geek out about colorist work, lol.

111798556-565x376_1.jpg
Click to expand...

Everything can be reduced to something... for example did you ever consider every invididual computer program is just a number.
its just a string of 0's and 1s that can be added up, weird to think about. I guess our DNA can be reduced to a single number to.

One unique number to define and represent you.

Anyway back to color. In resolve 17 there is an RBG mixer that sounds like it does what the 3d lut creator does

but I'll check out the tool sometime or at least watch a youtube video of someone using it and see if it does anything i cant accomplish in resolve
 
I think youre right that its a palette issue
Resolve has a feature to analyze the color palette, not quite what I expected in terms of green.

LilyPalette.jpg

drive.google.com drive.google.com

One problem I see is that the top 3 groups (shadows, mids, highs) all have heavy brown and so there isnt much color separation.
maybe i could pull brown out of the shadow and highs.

if you have the time would you mind dropping your lut from that autumn footage onto the front yard in spring and see what it does?
 
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sure, I'll try it. This scene could have used some on set lighting mixed with the daylight, but that's a different topic. There are 2 issues, it you can fix I'll be glad to try generating a lut for these.

1. the pic you uploaded has a digital error, if you take a look, it's totally glitched out, or is this intentional to try and give me palette samples? Those look like palettes. I standard image would actually be more helpful.

LilyPalette.jpg


2. could you send me a camera RAW frame? If not, it isn't the end of the world, it's just that I can provide you a better result, which is why people use raw of course. If you don't have a RAW, png or bmp is next best, and if niether then just a jpeg without the errors

from your question I feel like I may have explained poorly. There is no one LUT I used for that video. I made a custom one to fit each shot. I'm just using the LUT format as a tool, to achieve the same thing you can do with davinchis controls. There are just some adjustments that are easier or work better in the other program. Specifically the way LUT creator can "stretch" colors very intuitively.

anyway, once you send another one, I'll create some color profiles for it, and you can use it if you like

Here's a guy that made a quick and direct 3 minute video showing you how this works. It's super powerful.

 
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