Annihilation

[Christoffer Glans]

Just saw Annihilation and it's a true Sci-Fi masterpiece in my opinion. I also liked the look for the most part, but mostly because of the art direction. The cinematography was however a bit weird. Some shots are really good, but there are a lot of very blown out highlights and not in the nice roll-off kind-a-way. I'm curious to why it's been color graded like this? The highlights should have been an easy fix with some curving of the highlight curves and many shots are VFX shots so I don't understand why they chose this look for the highlights? With the anamorphic lenses and blown out look I understand them maybe want the old school look, but with these blown out digital highlights it just comes off as weird.

Thoughts?

 

[Misha Engel]

Just saw Annihilation and it's a true Sci-Fi masterpiece in my opinion. I also liked the look for the most part, but mostly because of the art direction. The cinematography was however a bit weird. Some shots are really good, but there are a lot of very blown out highlights and not in the nice roll-off kind-a-way. I'm curious to why it's been color graded like this? The highlights should have been an easy fix with some curving of the highlight curves and many shots are VFX shots so I don't understand why they chose this look for the highlights? With the anamorphic lenses and blown out look I understand them maybe want the old school look, but with these blown out digital highlights it just comes off as weird.

Thoughts?

Area X is pretty weird, so I kind of get the choices they made.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Area X is pretty weird, so I kind of get the choices they made.

The choices I get, but the cinematography with blown out highlights are everywhere, even in act 1. And my point is that the blown out highlights aren't good looking. They could have blown them out but have a better roll-off, now it just looks clipped and ugly.

 

[AndreeMarkefors]

Thoughts?

Did you watch it properly in Dolby Vision, or in a SDR version?

I saw over on LGG that other people were complaining about the SDR version, but the HDR is supposed to be good. I'm watching it tonight in Dolby Vision and I'll chime in later...

 

[Misha Engel]

And my point is that the blown out highlights aren't good looking. They could have blown them out but have a better roll-off, now it just looks clipped and ugly.

As mentioned in the movie, some parts of area x are very nice some are very ugly. It kind of fits the story.

 

[Max Brandhorst-Satzkorn]

I was thinking the exact same thing when I saw it. I can understand going for high contrast and the colorful blooming but the blown-out highlights that even were there before they enter Area X was kind of weird.

Not my taste, but I guess the crew liked this look for some reason.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

Disclaimer: I have not see the movie. Opinion: if they had better treatment of the highlights, somebody on REDUSER.net would start a thread saying "Area-X is too nicely graded" and complain that cameras and grading systems are providing too much dynamic range compared to "true" sci-fi cameras like the DVX-100. :mad2:

 

[BrendanLeahy]

Disclaimer: I have not see the movie. Opinion: if they had better treatment of the highlights, somebody on REDUSER.net would start a thread saying "Area-X is too nicely graded" and complain that cameras and grading systems are providing too much dynamic range compared to "true" sci-fi cameras like the DVX-100. :mad2:

Nahhh, the film was gorgeously done and the story was incredibly engaging throughout :001_tongue:

You should see it in theaters if you get a chance (unlike our counterparts abroad that had it straight to Netflix!)

Christoffer - maybe the blown-out highlights were meant to add to the "unknowable" or "mysterious" aspects of The Shimmer?

Edit: I now recall Lena's opening classroom scene has the windows a bit blown out, but I can't say I felt overly distracted by that. Did you feel taken out of the scenes with blown highlights?

 

[Shaeden Gallegos]

BTS Article...

https://ascmag.com/articles/annihilation-expedition-unknown

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Christoffer - maybe the blown-out highlights were meant to add to the "unknowable" or "mysterious" aspects of The Shimmer?

Yes, but that's not what I was criticising. You can have blown out highlights that doesn't look like it was over exposed and then tried to be saved in the grading. These aren't good highlights, they are digital looking like crap.

Look at these images.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I did an easy fix in photoshop on these low quality shots. I cannot believe they didn't do any kind of rolloff, looks better in an instant with a minimal tweak of the curves.

 

[Sabovic Adis]

Yes, but that's not what I was criticising. You can have blown out highlights that doesn't look like it was over exposed and then tried to be saved in the grading. These aren't good highlights, they are digital looking like crap.

Look at these images.

Huh? What do you mean by blown out highlights? :rofl:

:thumbsup:

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Huh? What do you mean by blown out highlights? :rofl:

:thumbsup:

Hahahahaha :tongue_smilie:


But seriously, what the fuck? We do simple retouches on grabs from netflix on chrome and it looks better than in the movie.

 

[Misha Engel]

Maybe it was just a new netflix guy who didn't know how to work with Staxrip.

 

[Jordan Beard]

I saw the film in theaters and I remember the sky in Area X often looking blown out and blooming a lot, but it wasn't distracting and definitely didn't have such intense highlight clipping. Curious if the version on netflix has a slightly different grade.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Hat off to that DP. He uses a camera and a lenses as a brush to get a look.

 

[Sabovic Adis]

Hahahahaha :tongue_smilie:


But seriously, what the fuck? We do simple retouches on grabs from netflix on chrome and it looks better than in the movie.

I don't know man... could be the 235 vs 255 thing too, who knows. :smile5:

 

[AndreeMarkefors]

Just watched the Dolby Vision version. That looked great.

Christoffer's grabs clearly has some sort of misinterpretation going on. Looks a bit like an HDR file that got mis-transformed into SDR.

How did you see it Christoffer?

This is just a mobile phone shot of the screen, but there's quite a bit of difference to what you have in your grab. If those grabs are representative, we weren't watching the same movie.

Checking on my computer now, if I watch from there from the same Netflix account I also get the shitty version. It would be a bummer to watch it like that for the first time.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Just watched the Dolby Vision version. That looked great.

Christoffer's grabs clearly has some sort of misinterpretation going on. Looks a bit like an HDR file that got mis-transformed into SDR.

How did you see it Christoffer?

This is just a mobile phone shot of the screen, but there's quite a bit of difference to what you have in your grab. If those grabs are representative, we weren't watching the same movie.

Checking on my computer now, if I watch from there from the same Netflix account I also get the shitty version. It would be a bummer to watch it like that for the first time.

Hmm, I watched in regular 1080p on Netflix, on both a computer screen and on my Benq W1700 projector. I just checked out the trailer and it looks totally different. What is going on at Netflix? An intern handling their big releases?

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Look at the trailer. It's clearly a fuckup by the Netflix staff or someone in charge of converting to 1080p. I don't know what they did, but it's not even close to the highlight rolloff in the trailers. That no one is reporting this is remarkable. It's like night and day.

Compare to the screen grabs.