How not to use a DRAGON

[John Hope]

I respect your sense of taste.
Michael Bay is my favorite director, and this is why i'm disappointed. I don't know why some people don't actually see the difference between ugly skin tones and great skin tones.
Maybe it's just me.... or maybe it's a question of culture.

 

[Tom C. Hall]

lipstick, pig, etc

 

[Saumene Mehrdady]

Please show some respect.

The artists who made that film are part of this community.

If you don't like the aesthetic - fine. But please choose other words than "shit" "horrible" and "awful" to elucidate your opinions.

LOL "artists"

 

[Will Keir]

Certainly I was able to see the different levels of quality in footage between scenes/cuts. There was one or two shots that especially stuck out as very poor. The scenic shot of the farm after father/daughter talk. I believe it had the sun setting in the background.

Transformers 1 + 2: keystones of look

Transformers 4, DRAGON: they just forgot the color correction, skin is horrible, despite the dynamic range, i could see in almost every shot, DV like overexposures.
Totally disappointed by the new Michael Bay's DOP

No, it's not you. You are being honest. Which can be even harder for some people once you get to know and like an artist.

I respect your sense of taste.
Michael Bay is my favorite director, and this is why i'm disappointed. I don't know why some people don't actually see the difference between ugly skin tones and great skin tones.
Maybe it's just me.... or maybe it's a question of culture.

 

[Mike Garrick]

Whilst you might not agree with creative choices, it doesn't change the success.

The marketplace has spoken.....we would be negligent to ignore it.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Yeah - fair enough.

I am discovering the rules of shooting with the Dragon daily - today's lesson: Respect the Black Shade Alerts. If it is yellow - you need a black shade...

FWIW the color in T4 shots above look like MX to me, as well. But Toia's point is very valid - the look of Bay's films is made in the grade.

Or just change the target temp by 2 degrees.

 

[John Hope]

Whilst you might not agree with creative choices, it doesn't change the success.

The marketplace has spoken.....we would be negligent to ignore it.

Sure. We all went to the theaters because we love Transormers, at any price. But this is not an excuse...

 

[Mark Wilkinson]

Or just change the target temp by 2 degrees.

That might make the little light change color, but I doubt noise is an on/off-either/or issue and so it will only change the noise slightly.

I'm finding it is an elastic kind of response - since the "negative is thick" the image is quite elastic, too. But there is definitely a moving sweet spot to this camera.

 

[Jack Allred]

I respect your sense of taste.
Michael Bay is my favorite director, and this is why i'm disappointed. I don't know why some people don't actually see the difference between ugly skin tones and great skin tones.
Maybe it's just me.... or maybe it's a question of culture.

I was willing to entertain your perspective unit you said Michael bay is your favorite director.
Interesting subtext in this thread that nobody has pushed: why wasn't Dragon preferred over mx? I'm certain a few thread participants know, but "sensor" their knowledge here...

 

[Nick Morrison]

Interesting subtext in this thread that nobody has pushed: why wasn't Dragon preferred over mx? I'm certain a few thread participants know, but "sensor" their knowledge here...

I think "preferred" assumes a choice. I believe they used MX until Dragon was available.

 

[Jack Allred]

I think "preferred" assumes a choice. I believe they used MX until Dragon was available.

Yes, they had dragons and chose/had to stop using them.

 

[Matt W.]

I respect your sense of taste.
Michael Bay is my favorite director, and this is why i'm disappointed. I don't know why some people don't actually see the difference between ugly skin tones and great skin tones.
Maybe it's just me.... or maybe it's a question of culture.

I like Michael Bay a lot. His technique is a lot sloppier lately. Lots of go pro, blown highlights, poor stabilization, etc. Garish color.

For someone whose only differentiating strength is amazing imagery it's a shame to see his work get less and less polished with time, but his action is still way better than the imitations of it (Battleship, etc.).

 

[Mark Pedersen]

you won't like the Liam Neeson movie 'Non-Stop'.
It only has two colours.

Or "Hugo" which was totally orange/teal. Though mostly driven by the art direction! I never understand that level of simplicity and dogged repetition. Give a look yes, but not something that calls attention to itself.

I personally dislike (not using the work "hate") that look as well.

M

 

[Matt Ryan]

Yes, they had dragons and chose/had to stop using them.

They didn't have to stop and unless you worked on the film I doubt you know anything about it. Their main cameras were Epic MX's, then film, Imax, and Dragon. Dragon came to them late in the game...

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Please show some respect.

The artists who made that film are part of this community.

If you don't like the aesthetic - fine. But please choose other words than "shit" "horrible" and "awful" to elucidate your opinions.

As you might have read, I was referring to the teal/orange grade-style that is a widespread phenomena and regarded by many colorists to be a lazy way to get more depth in an image.
Many don't like it and I think it looks like shit.
It's most common way of screwing up skin colors. I would not even call it an "aesthetic" because that grade is used as a form of LUT; apply to the whole film, tweak and your done. There's no thought gone into the process because the process is the same as every other teal/orange film... so if I were those artists I wouldn't really feel I really created something when it's the most widespread look around.

 

[Dominik Muench]

For someone whose only differentiating strength is amazing imagery it's a shame to see his work get less and less polished with time, but his action is still way better than the imitations of it (Battleship, etc.).

I wouldn't say its just imagery, Bay understands how to produce...and how to produce big...just look at what the guy has on its plate this year alone...just as a producer:

- Black Sails
- Transformers 4 (with a 5th already in Pre, so people obviously liked what they saw)
- The Purge
- Ninja Turtles
- The Last Ship
- Ouija

and on top of that working on another Bad Boys film as a director....this guy is a machine.

 

[John Hope]

Teal-orange is not actually a "fantasy look". By some degrees it's present in Kodak stocks. Bay has just pushed it to the extreme in T1, T2, The island, etc. but there are tons of movies produced since the mid century that have a degree of teal-orange.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Teal-orange is not actually a "fantasy look". By some degrees it's present in Kodak stocks. Bay has just pushed it to the extreme in T1, T2, The island, etc. but there are tons of movies produced since the mid century that have a degree of teal-orange.

Yeah, I know it's existing throughout the industry in more ways than this. I use it many times just to get a starting point, but I do it slightly and that is I believe the difference. Most colorists use it slightly for adding more color contrast, but it's more of a pre-balancing before setting the actual look or tonality of the images. But the concept of "Teal/Orange" with capital T, the grading technique that this over saturated and super pushed look has and what is regarded as the more common look when mentioning "teal/orange" today is the "fantasy look". When mentioning "teal/orange" today, this is what people thinks about...

Plastic, unnatural and extreme in the worst way.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Some reading on the "sickness"

http://notonbluray.com/blog/orange-and-teal/
http://dev.null.org/blog/item/201003201350_orange_teal_age_holl
http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.se/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html

As one of them puts it: Thus, grading films to an orange-on-teal palette is a cinematic equivalent of compressing the dynamic range of recorded music for extra kick-ass loudness; both add extra zing, producing a product that's superficially exciting, at the cost of subtlety. Though who goes to see Transformers for subtlety, right?

 

[Phil Holland]

the worst way.

I apologize in advance, but I need to chime in.

Far be it from me jumping in and discussing anything about this, but at it's core the reason the orange/teal look has grabbed hold as something creators aim for is squarely due to color theory.

Orange and teal are complements of each other and therefore provide a high level of color contrast which essentially helps focus the viewer. It's as simple as that.

There's nothing truly unnatural about it. It is an enhanced version of reality. Sometimes pushed to interesting extremes. I find it interesting that during magic hour if you beef up the saturation of the last light as key on the subject you get something familiar in relationship to this look. If you look at various Maxfield Parrish paintings for instance you will see even larger extremes. Some chase natural images, some chase a surreal quality. There's no "wrong" way in reality, though there are of course technical and subjective "best practices". Heh. If you guys read Sargent's painting notes on skin tones it might drive you insane.

Back when I was a Digital Colorist I worked on about a dozen or so films that desired a similar look. Interestingly enough however, usually for scenes here and there and not throughout an entire project. Though I've seen a motivated effort on some films to become more "uniform" in their grades. Personally I don't think "uniformity" to the palette is always the best way to go, but to each their own. That's their vision and take on the story.

Side note. While everybody is entitled to their own opinion do acknowledge that their of REDusers and shooters working on these films who visit these boards. Often times, especially on projects of this scale, you are looking at a year or more of work.

From a creators perspective influences and inspiration can be found anywhere. Like the look or not, the creators of this project did. Commercial success or not, it's what was decided on. Be critical of what you like and don't like, but certainly be open minded about the concept that there is certainly more than one way to go about things. Especially when relating to color theory and composition. Otherwise you'll be trapped in a tiny box full of other people very excited to be locked up in there with you oblivious to the spectrum of wonderment outside those confines.