Most "Cinematic" Look Settings

[Jason Honeycutt]

With so many possibilities for a metadata look for clients, I was curious about how "cinematic" of a look they've achieved (outside of great glass) via the menu settings. I was mainly wondering about the settings under; Menu/Look/Curves/Luma or RGB;

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[Martin Stevens]

If the lighting or cinematography is of poor quality then the in-camera metadata settings
are not really going to give you a cinematic look.

For me Lighting and Camera Lens Filtration make the most Cinematic Imagery.

 

[Jason Honeycutt]

No doubt, that's always the key element.

What I was kinda getting at, though, is I've edited on some tv shows shot with great lighting, but bad glass (and camera) and settings and the footage looked awful. I've seen terrible lighting and great glass... terrible picture. I do so much color-correcting in post that I'm mainly curious about people's in-camera settings to help 'pop' the footage a little more. I've gotten Alexa and RED footage that I thought was pretty "idiot-proof" but somehow they had, shall we see, "challenging" footage where every shot was heavy-lifting to get it to a broadcast standard.

Or, for the client looking at the monitors, that kinda look. I still remember trying to explain what 'raw' meant and they didn't really understand, weren't too happy on-set... but were happy after they saw the color-corrected cut.

 

[Martin Stevens]

Since I shoot RedRaw on my Epic-X as if it were a Digital "Film" Negative, I use RedGamma 3, RedColor 3 AND RedlogFilm
for on set monitoring, and then later, in Post, I "develop" the look that I want, and since I generally find RedGamma 3
to be too contrasty I grade RedlogFilm to look like a lower contrast version of RedGamma 3.

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

With so many possibilities for a metadata look for clients, I was curious about how "cinematic" of a look they've achieved (outside of great glass) via the menu settings. I was mainly wondering about the settings under; Menu/Look/Curves/Luma or RGB;

Black#
Toe#
Center#
Knee#
White#

This really depends on what you mean by "cinematic." I'm guessing you mean contrasty/saturated/(neutral, warm, cool) with naturalistic skin tones, sort of like "a fim print from well exposed negative" look?

I tend to use: RC3/RG3, Saturation 1.2, WB and then RGB gain to fix any color bias. After that, I'll shoot a test clip and use the curves in RCX to pull up the mids, pull down highlights a bit to 90 IRE (provided they aren't clipped in the first place), and either pull blacks up or down depending on the look desired. I don't like to take a lot of time on set messing with Curve settings in camera, so I'll fine tune in RCX but you can prob get a similar look by manually inputting those values you mentioned.

If there's time to throw that look on a card and load it into the camera, I'll do that. There's usually no need to change settings until we move on to a new scene.

 

[Jason Honeycutt]

This really depends on what you mean by "cinematic." I'm guessing you mean contrasty/saturated/(neutral, warm, cool) with naturalistic skin tones, sort of like "a fim print from well exposed negative" look?

I tend to use: RC3/RG3, Saturation 1.2, WB and then RGB gain to fix any color bias. After that, I'll shoot a test clip and use the curves in RCX to pull up the mids, pull down highlights a bit to 90 IRE (provided they aren't clipped in the first place), and either pull blacks up or down depending on the look desired. I don't like to take a lot of time on set messing with Curve settings in camera, so I'll fine tune in RCX but you can prob get a similar look by manually inputting those values you mentioned.

If there's time to throw that look on a card and load it into the camera, I'll do that. There's usually no need to change settings until we move on to a new scene.

I've never tried pre-building a look, I'll definitely have to try that, probably a million times easier since you're kinda adjusting in the menu without seeing the result.

 

[Mike P.]

https://vimeo.com/42740405

There's that. Also, once the looks are saved to camera, they stay on the camera until you update the firmware. I tend to use that the Film10 present that comes with RCX, except I change it to RC3 (instead of RC2) and I have another variation where I use RG2 (instead of REDlogFilm) and make the curve less aggressive to compensate (otherwise it'd be like double s-curve.)

Film10 really mellows out the highlights though (I think it limits output to 80ire, as I've never seen anything higher than that with it applied). In any case it's worth taking a look at.

 

[Jason Honeycutt]

There's that. Also, once the looks are saved to camera, they stay on the camera until you update the firmware. I tend to use that the Film10 present that comes with RCX, except I change it to RC3 (instead of RC2) and I have another variation where I use RG2 (instead of REDlogFilm) and make the curve less aggressive to compensate (otherwise it'd be like double s-curve.)

Film10 really mellows out the highlights though (I think it limits output to 80ire, as I've never seen anything higher than that with it applied). In any case it's worth taking a look at.

Thanks for that tutorial man, I appreciate that. I don't think I ever saw that but it's definitely an easy process. I've much rather tweak in RCX than in the camera... I just never saw how it was done.