Sorry I have had problems getting screenshots out of his latest draft. I think there might be some sort of protection on it, which is understandable, since he is not done the final yet. Or it's just the format he gave me. I am devoting my free time to helping him through it though, and he really wants to get it right.
Basically here's the problem. When I shot the movie I only used two cameras for one scene. If those cannot be matched, that's fine. However, all the other scenes do not match, cause the contrast is higher and lower from shot to shot. Here's an example. A scene with two close ups cutting back and forth. Actor A and Actor B. Actor A has a lot of contrast in his shots. Actor B, has the contrast sucked out of her shots. Then it cuts back and forth between both of their shots, and thereby cutting back forth between contrasty shots, and shots with the contrast taken out too much.
When I shot the movie, I did not change the contrast in camera, and left it were it was the whole shoot. Not just that one scene example, but every scene. I left the contrast at the same place, in camera. So why is it that the colorist, would color so many shots, where the contrast is at different levels? Shouldn't he all do it the same level, so the movie has the same consistent look?
I realize I probably did something that is my fault, that would cause him to do that, but what could it have been since the contrast, was in the same in the camera originally?
He said he is having trouble with the contrast, and that the reason why in shots with too much contrast added, where you black jackets and black hair show up pitch black, the problem is, is that I shot with a Canon T2i which is H.264, and not RAW, so I loose detail. It's for this reason that the contrast has to be different from shot to shot, to preserve detail, depending on the shot.
But I do not get why the contrast has to be different from shot to shot. Couldn't he just pick a happy medium level of contrast that work for the whole movie, that is the same level throughout, rather than shots where it is sucked out, intercutting with shots, where it's too black? Is the Canon T2i's codec really so bad, that shots have to be so mismatched like that after grading? I realize it is my fault, I just didn't realize the footage had to be butchered after, just because of the codec, especially when it was shot with the same settings throughout originally.