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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Say I like crushed blacks. . .

Stephen Pruitt

Stephen Pruitt

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Okay, I'm working with color the first time, and I have to say that I'm absolutely loving it! I'm actually now so glad I get to do this last step in the process myself!

My question is this: In working on several shots, I find that I actually really like the "rich, full" look of crushing some of my darks a bit and taking the overall "key" of the scene down. Now, I hear all the time about how awful it is to crush darks, but my question is, is it just a matter of personal preference ("if it looks right, it is right") or is there some technical problem with creating such a look?

Thanks in advance for your (gentle) answers.

Stephen
 
If you are the one in creative control of the film, and you are achieving looks that support your story then there really is no issue. If your audiences are universally distracted from your story by a particular style choice you made, then perhaps it's worth second guessing those creative decisions. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer when it comes to crushing black levels, it's often a subjective thing that gets dictated by what you are trying to achieve with your story.
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
My question is this: In working on several shots, I find that I actually really like the "rich, full" look of crushing some of my darks a bit and taking the overall "key" of the scene down. Now, I hear all the time about how awful it is to crush darks, but my question is, is it just a matter of personal preference ("if it looks right, it is right") or is there some technical problem with creating such a look?
Click to expand...

If you are referring to what the term stands for which is slamming the blacks flat and loosing data in the shadows, that may be problematic. Less due to the fact that it is a technically incorrect image and more because of lack of natural falloff to black and dark empty parts of the image. These may be more obvious to a viewer watching it on a screen with deeper blacks than your screen.

If you are referring to compressing the blacks while keeping the full signal, that is mostly a matter of your choice.
 
You are asking an aesthetic question, so there is really no right answer. If it's what you want it to look like, it really doesn't matter what any of us think. You are not a neophyte, what matters is what speaks to you.

With that said, maybe you should spend some time looking at great photography and film that works in that rich-black style and try to develop a sense for the nuance of it. The great studio fashion photographers like Hallsman and Avedon that I fell in love with when I was a kid had a way of turning the blacks in a photograph into graphic art. And the great photo essayist W Eugene Smith (still my all-time favorite photographer) worked in some of the richest blacks I've seen to this day, yet they had detail. He was an amazing printmaker. (I was at the Eastman Museum a few years ago and saw two small Smith prints from across the room, and recognized them immediately by the tonality alone.)

If you spend some time looking at different ways that great artists have done dark palettes well, you'll develop an eye for how to look at your own stuff and shape it to what you want. I'll bet you find yourself making some beautiful work.
 
Well, in looking at the RGB parade, it's pretty clear I'm slamming some of the darks on some shots, compressing the image a bit in places and definitely loosing a little bit of the image.

However, I'm using a Flanders Scientific monitor set to RED709 and 2.2 gamma, and it really looks great on my screen. To me, it's a good, rich look with definite highlights, and I think it works well for those shots. . . but what do I know?

Thanks for your insights gentlemen!

Stephen
 
Not long time ago people started to crash black levels. There are couple of reasons for that. One is they use it as a poor man's noise reduction. By crashing blacks they would bury the noise in the dark areas. Many more started doing that for aesthetic reasons. Unfortunately, any specific "look" like crashed blacks can and eventually will become dated ( personally I think that already happened a while ago). So, unless client demands it, I would try to never lose details in the picture. There are many ways to give a picture a dark and moody look without resorting to a loss of the image information. Frankly to me, crashed blacks is a dead give away of a "do it yourself" grade…
 
Yep, what Jake says.

I would also be very, very careful about making absolutely sure you have a calibrated monitor and keep an eye on the scopes. There's no need to crush the blacks if the lighting is right and you bring the mids down first. I think you can touch the baseline with the blacks and still give a hint of detail in there without stomping the life out of it.

There are also good technical reasons not to crush blacks. One is that it may be flagged by the distributor's QC department, and another is that large solid blocks of black (or solid colors) are hard to compress during encoding. If you look at any major film of the last 10 years (digital or not), pay close attention to how they deal with blacks in dark scenes. Sometimes the suggestion of black is what makes the scene dense and moody, not crushing the blacks per se. There's an art to doing this well.

I also have watched my share of dozens and dozens of 1940s film noir movies, and the cinematographers' use of shadows is amazing, particularly the shades of gray here and there in an average set (even a night scene). It's not all about crushing at all.
 
It's really an amazing time to be able to audition on our desktops looks like this that a decade ago required special film lab bypass and cross processing or expensive time in a telecine or cc suite. I'm ecstatic every time I sit down to my davinci suite because I remember what a treat it was to take a negative into telecine a cook up a look. To have the freedom to experiment with more capability on my home system is kind of mind blowing. So, I say expose well and protect your blacks on set and after that go crazy and crush them and let the ink bleed.
 
You don't want to lose detail, but at the same time I feel like a surplus of shadow detail and a lack of mid tone detail is the dead giveaway of an earlier digital production. But even now, watching Mad Men vs Mad Men season 1 (and it's so gorgeously shot) I can tell that the Alexa "film look" has way too much shadow detail and even too much highlight detail.

Watch your noise levels, bring the darks deep but don't let them clip. Or if you do let them clip cover the whole thing with a grain pass to cover your tracks lol or you lose texture.

I am a fan of it tbh. Digital needs more love than film, partially because it's shown less love on set. But the contrast that people try to add by crushing blacks too deep can be better found through judicious use of power windows (though then you really need to know what you're doing). Just don't let your noise floor drop too low (keep the texture) and don't let it get too inconsistent.

But I think keeping the detail out of the darks and into the mid tones is absolutely the way to go. Who needs to see it! Add contrast. Lose that useless shadow detail, throw it away.

Film did.
 
You know what?
Look/Dated/whatever.

Bang'em down if that's what makes you happy!

Trends are a-plenty.

For a while a lot of stuff has looked like plain log...

There is nothing morally (or technically) wrong by doing aesthethic choices.
The bolder the better.

BUT
Some of those will age early, others will live on.
 
Trends come. Trends go.

Nicely timed 70mm seems to always still blow me away. Rarely see too much of "look" applied to that stuff.

Personally, I'm liking that corner to corner, nicely detailed, information in the blacks look these days. It's so nice to have that information to play with that I hope it becomes a trend so more people start showing it off.

Battistella
 
What I'm finding utterly fascinating from a my perspective is in the last 14 days I've had to execute a rather dry and technical shoot to emulate specific times of day on green screen that is very VFX driven as well as well as showcase a really heavy grade essentially nuking the colors from the palette to a fairly complementary palette with crushed shadows and one other recent shoot that I lit fairly nicely to in post do nearly nothing to the image.

Been a crazy couple weeks. And I have no realy idea what I prefer overall. I find most shoots, while having similar notes, are often different pieces of music. Across my career, where direction has played a more important role rather than my own preference, the only thing I truly know is that material doesn't need to look the same.

There's certainly places where common executions exist. And man have I see my share of canned LUTs to export in the last few years. But the true artistry comes from being honest to the vision, direction, intent, and the material.

I'm finding I have to do less "finagling" in post to get things working, but rather focusing on tone, feel, and mood. That's where I like to be. It's so odd and fun. When I get to shoot and see it through post it allows for some additional focus and attention to detail that's really hard to explain fully. You get to carve it out completely in that way. While not practical for some shoots, it is really wonderful being able to flex a few muscles to get it done in camera and in post.
 
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In 2006 I saw the first 35mm telecine stuff in 1080p and I was amazed how clear and defined detail can be. From then on I stopped crushing blacks. The resolution that is nowadays possible, especially with Red cameras, can lead to a very detailed 1080p or even beyond that, and can be in itself breath-taking even in a slightly adjusted log-feeling (aka typical flary Alexa grades) where blacks just touch the bottom when very deep and no information left.

A darkish grade with delicate blacks and tons of information in the dark parts can lead to a very magnetic film experience.

Hans
 
If I could figure out a way to post stills on this crazy system, I'd show you a couple of shots that I am liking. Any suggestions how to put a .png or .tif on here???

In the case of this film, whether it ends up looking great or lousy (probably sometimes both), I'll have absolutely no one to blame but myself. I produced it, I picked the locations, I lit it the way I wanted (I seldom actually run the camera myself, as I find I can't both direct and run the camera at the same time. . . maybe someday), I directed it, I edited it, and now I am coloring it. But the best part is. . . I'm just flat-out loving it! We've made a really beautiful film that will be seen by. . . well. . . probably dozens. But it was never about the bucks. And thank God for that, 'cause I'd be a very unhappy boy if it was!

Thanks gentlemen. I really appreciate the insights.

Stephen
 
It sounds so wrong but it feels so good! I dont like crushed black but if you like it go with it!
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
If I could figure out a way to post stills on this crazy system, I'd show you a couple of shots that I am liking. Any suggestions how to put a .png or .tif on here???
Click to expand...
Photobucket works well for me and is free:

http://www.photobucket.com

In the case of this film, whether it ends up looking great or lousy (probably sometimes both), I'll have absolutely no one to blame but myself. I produced it, I picked the locations, I lit it the way I wanted (I seldom actually run the camera myself, as I find I can't both direct and run the camera at the same time. . . maybe someday), I directed it, I edited it, and now I am coloring it.
Click to expand...
The thing is, only by working with other people do you get the benefit of objective 3rd party opinion, and years of experience. Many, many times I've sat with a client, discussed a look, then something came up where they said, "wow! That's better than anything I ever expected!" Happy accidents also happen with editing and in sound, but it helps to have somebody with lots of experience behind the knobs.

As I said earlier, bear in mind that density is not necessarily the same thing as crushed blacks. You can have a killer dark scene and still retail a vestige of detail in the blacks. Crushing blacks aren't necessary as long as the look still communicates the emotion of a scene. It took me more than 20 years to realize that color really reflects the emotional feel of the film, not necessarily about lens and photography per se. It's more about guts than it is about technology.
 
Doing the two-step

Doing the two-step

One thing I've really gotten into, that Phil alluded to in his post, is shooting a particular digital "negative" density on set with a particular post processing (RAW development) style in mind. My analogy is when I would push or pull B&W still exposures to leverage development techniques (time in the developer, how much agitation, temperature of the developer solution, etc) as well as printing metrics (which paper, blocking/dodging under the enlarger lens, time before the stop bath on the print, etc). I spent several weeks shooting a lot of snowy exteriors where I bracketed exposure then experimented with wildly out of spec development protocols (mostly Tri-X, some Plus-X stock with D-76 developer IIRC). Very illuminating (pardon the pun).

I've been shooting and "developing" R3Ds for 7 years now and have really enjoyed creating unique looks, some of which even my colorist buddies were impressed with. That said, I have also turned some well exposed imagery into crap with poor choices along the way. Live and learn.

Cheers - #19
 
My personal idea about this.

Complete zeroed out blacks (which are noise/grain free), for me that requires that the rest of the image is 100% noise/grain free, otherwise it is rather distracting.
The image needs a well cared transition from the 100% black parts to the gradually brighter areas. This area needs to be tested and observed with any compression that will be used for delivery.

/ 2 cents.
 
Thanks to Marc, here is a snap. It's a PNG file. This shot is not crushed at all, but it is dark, which is just the way I wanted this scene. Comments always appreciated, of course.

I do understand I am not a pro and never will be. I also understand I can't afford the services of a pro and likely never will be able to. If I want to keep making indie features, for now I'm going to have to do it myself.

The file is actually 2048x1080, but for some reason it doesn't come out that way on Photobucket.

http://s48.photobucket.com/user/never2latestudios/media/tyleroffice_zpsd05f7612.png.html
 
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