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Replicating Color Pallete

eraserhead_in_time

eraserhead_in_time

Hi Folks,
Is there anyway to replicate or achieve the "the book of eli" washed away kinda look without using any fancy plugins like Red Giant or something?
I really love the color pallete used in that movie.

Thanks
 
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yup, you can do a prety good approximation with just the built in After effects..

Start with effect ->color correct -> tint
which will make your footage black and white.. dial down the tint so you have SOME color
add effects -> color correct - > curves. Adjust the RGB curve.. push a little in the middle, and pull a little down low.. this will sorta crush your blacks and give you more contrast..

fiddle with the RED and Blue curves to get what your after..
 
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@knightly.. PC...AE CS 4 at the moment

@Wheatgrinder.. thanks a lot man...tried it and i get how it can be acheived.. ofcourse one has to be smart about the clothing and locations as well..as they were in that movie to pull off the look but i think its a great look to convey drearyness of the future..
 
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one thing about that movie is the sky.. it had a LOT to do with most the shots.. check out the ADVANCED SKY REPLACEMENT tutorial on videocopilot.net

Try getting that sorta bluish\borwnish cast.. you know what I mean.. thats tough.. you can use a "solid" masked out like a graduated sky filter, lower the opacity.. etc..
 
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cheers for the link knightly...i learnt so much in 30mins!! :)

@wheatgrinder.. cheers for the tips..actually the reason why i asked about eli's look was cz i have been planning to shoot a zombie movie..well not undead zombie but infected humans who develop hive tendency with a queen and all...so i was wondering if you think this "look" in terms of bleach bypassed with blue-ish shadows like this movie would be suitable for a horror zombie flick??? it vl b filmed in drought ridden villages of india... *think resident evil 5 that takes places in africa*

http://www.indiamike.com/photopost/data/504/bihar_village2.jpg

maybe even cow zombies :P
 
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oh, your in pre production? Thats good because you can now PLAN for the look you want. You'll want to play with still images etc, to decided your color pallet in advance. Sure you could go with a book of eli look, which I think would look better with what I imagine your locations look like. Can you post some photos, that are representative of what your locations will be?

I googled some images, but India is a very diverse climate so I may be looking at the wrong types..

images
Drought-in-India-005.jpg
lake-hume-drought.jpg



(i see lots of blues and orange .. )
 
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haha yea man..india is hugeee and very diverse in topography...
m in pre production both technically (like figuring out what equip to use,computer workflow and specs,color grading etc etc) and also creatively in terms of screenplay and stryboarding etc..
its all fun and i really really love learning new stuff everyday...that just makes me happy so pre prod has been fun...
m gonna be shooting in eastern part of india near nepal in a state called bihar...it has just been declared drought hit as well...
here are few pics of this region-

http://www.mickcanning.com/sujata 2 thumb.JPG

http://video.ilovekolkata.in/seyretfiles/uploads/thumbnails/user_62/galli_21.jpg

http://idsn.org/typo3temp/pics/174822f680.jpg

thank you
 
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sorry abt that..i shall embed pics from now on..
i'll b going for principal photography by nxt week so ill take some recent pics...these are what i could find from google..
also, im not really going for dry look as its more of a zombie movie set in isolated rural area...rather than apocalyptic world..i just thought the same color pallete would look for this kinda movie too..like
<a target='_blank' title='ImageShack - Image And Video Hosting' href='http://img836.imageshack.us/i/sujata2thumb.jpg/'><img src='http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/4945/sujata2thumb.jpg' border='0'/></a>

Uploaded with <a target='_blank' href='http://imageshack.us'>ImageShack.us</a>

The drought area scenes would be used in the story as people running outta water and diggin deeper till they found a water source that looked like it just saved their lives..but......
 
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ah, its not you,its imageshack I think.. dont sweat it, the links are fine..

anyway, I see your example, looks a bit overdone.. try some other looks though, that seems pretty typical... with such a lovely exotic (at least to me) location, don't be afraid to go for rich color, might be refreshing to see...
 
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No, it's you. What you wanna do is upload your image to imageshack. Then, copy the "direct link".

On this page, press the "insert image" button. Paste the direct link into the popup, and you're ready to rock.

internetexplorerwallpapv.jpg
 
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I see magenta shadows and cyan highlights... a good chunk of the shots in the trailer have a cyan gradient applied to the top of the image. The image of the gas mask close up shows this color scheme in an extreme way.

Density wise, the blacks to mid gradient is nearly non existant, while the mid to highs contains most of the image data.

So, In the darks, reduce til the bottom hits 0 on your scopes... push the color toward magenta.
In the mids, reduce to taste, leave the color for now...
In the Highlights, push these up a bit 'til they start to blow out, then color them toward cyan.
Drop the saturation to ~ 50%.

Go back with the color and tweak until happy.

Bloom the highlights by either applying a bloom filter, or by using a higher contrast version of the footage as a luma mask and blurring another copy... this way, just the highlights contain the blur.
 

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OK, I ran some tests... I've included the 3-way correctors in the shot so you can see what I'm doing. The only inobvious things here is the gradient overlays are set to multiply as the composite mode and have a desaturation filter on them at about 50%.

This sequence of screen grabs from the trailer shows the extremes of the color correction, but all have red darks, green mids and cyan highlights... just in varying saturations:
Picture 2.png Picture 4.png Picture 3.png

These are done just with the 3-way color corrector, nothing else applied:
Screen1.jpg Screen2.jpg
 
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