Testshoot with Alexa and Epic Dragon in germany

[Björn Benckert]

Given enough time, you may create some interesting looking image, but if that "grade" doesn't work with the rest of the storyline of the film set by the director and interpreted by colorist, then what? Do you think it's better for a colorist to have a full set of metadata controls to grade with or for VFX guy to fiddle with the grade of the single shot? I think you know the answer…
On the side note, if you need 29 layers to grade something, there usually something wrong with either the material or the person grading Flame/Smoke are awful devices for grading- overly complicated, very slow (can you say render?) and not really optimized for such operation. And that is why AD still offers Lustre.
And one final point, pushing some colors around is not color grading. Using colors to enhance the story, is.

no its not 29+ layers to grade... its about 40 extras shot in multiple takes and the fotball stadium has 90000 seats... and i need to even out change and alter the inputs and relight the material with virtual light sources to make a up the crowd. this can only be done properly when each layer is in its place togeter with layers of cg people flags etc all rendered in log for most posible dr.

of course a colorist could do a pre light but that would not be much help. but im frankly quite tired of colorists that think they do magic and that thier programs are superior and such. that was the truth when you had the wheels of steel and digitised film but thats not the case any more, you handle files now those files do not behave any different in a modern compositing grade setup then they do in a grading only capable toolset. So the only thjng to argue about is eye and who has the better one. Experience and taste etc but thats for clients to decide not much to duscuss in a forum like this i think.

 

[jake blackstone]

no its not 29+ layers to grade... its about 40 extras shot in multiple takes and the fotball stadium has 90000 seats... and i need to even out change and alter the inputs and relight the material with virtual light sources to make a up the crowd. this can only be done properly when each layer is in its place togeter with layers of cg people flags etc all rendered in log for most posible dr.

of course a colorist could do a pre light but that would not be much help. but im frankly quite tired of colorists that think they do magic and that thier programs are superior and such. that was the truth when you had the wheels of steel and digitised film but thats not the case any more, you handle files now those files do not behave any different in a modern compositing grade setup then they do in a grading only capable toolset. So the only thjng to argue about is eye and who has the better one. Experience and taste etc but thats for clients to decide not much to duscuss in a forum like this i think.

Au contrare compadre. This is precisely the place to discuss this kind of issues. I'm not trying to impede your abilities to compose images. Compose away…On the other hand, why do you feel compelled not to return a favor? You keep missing the big picture my friend. Using pre graded image will help you to understand the thinking of the director, as translated by a colorist. On the other hand your "grade" will greatly affect the amount of work and the ability of a colorist to squeeze your "grade" into the rest of the story. I couldn't care less how many layers you can pile up. Frankly, 29 layers is nothing using todays compositing software. But I digress, let me tell you a recent story, that I had to deal with. It was a commercial for a Russian clothing manufacturer advertising outfits for Russian National Olympic team for upcoming Sochi Games. The spot had a lot of effects, mainly a lot of morphing. Without consulting me and based on the advice of a VFX house in Belgium, the Moscow production company went ahead and authorized all of the VFX work first. Then the client asked me to grade it. At that point the whole :90 spot ended up being a single continuous shot with all scenes morphing from one to the next. I explained to the production company, that it was impossible to meaningfully grade it in it's present form. During a conference call VFX producer started screaming, that he himself could easily grade it using their Scratch. Well, long story short, at the end I had to pre-grade all shots and Belgium VFX shop had to re-do all of the work. It cost a whole bunch of extra money and time. Oh BTW, the VFX producer was very apologetic for his awful advice and unprofessional behavior.

 

[Eric Haase]

I have never heard of editors or colorists dictating the choice of the camera. I hope it doesn't come to that…

Well, editors already think they can reframe our shots. You wouldn't believe the atrocities I've seen with ignorant editors pushing in on 5K footage, thinking that pushing into 1080 from 5K is fine because we are only delivering 1080. I've also had editors insist on shooting green screen at 29.97 even though the backplates had already been shot in another city at 23.98 by another crew. They were so entrenched in their old workflow. I tried about 5 times to the point of being nearly obnoxious to explain to the client exactly why this was a bad idea, but to no avail. The end composite looked hideous of course. These are reasons why RAW workflow for offline worries me. Editors having the ability to change the color metadata on the footage easily in their NLE? I prefer to deliver graded, baked in dailies that represent my (and the director's) vision for the look of the project.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Au contrare compadre. This is precisely the place to discuss this kind of issues. I'm not trying to impede your abilities to compose images. Compose away…On the other hand, why do you feel compelled not to return a favor? You keep missing the big picture my friend. Using pre graded image will help you to understand the thinking of the director, as translated by a colorist. On the other hand your "grade" will greatly affect the amount of work and the ability of a colorist to squeeze your "grade" into the rest of the story. I couldn't care less how many layers you can pile up. Frankly, 29 layers is nothing using todays compositing software. But I digress, let me tell you a recent story, that I had to deal with. It was a commercial for a Russian clothing manufacturer advertising outfits for Russian National Olympic team for upcoming Sochi Games. The spot had a lot of effects, mainly a lot of morphing. Without consulting me and based on the advice of a VFX house in Belgium, the Moscow production company went ahead and authorized all of the VFX work first. Then the client asked me to grade it. At that point the whole :90 spot ended up being a single continuous shot with all scenes morphing from one to the next. I explained to the production company, that it was impossible to meaningfully grade it in it's present form. During a conference call VFX producer started screaming, that he himself could easily grade it using their Scratch. Well, long story short, at the end I had to pre-grade all shots and Belgium VFX shop had to re-do all of the work. It cost a whole bunch of extra money and time. Oh BTW, the VFX producer was very apologetic for his awful advice and unprofessional behavior.

Ok it's not 29 layers, it's 29 layers of raw 5k that then is multiplied in numbers I have not even counted, but that's not the point what I'm trying to describe is a workflow where I keep things open, the grade and compositing is done within the same node tree. I basically grade and composite at the same time and for most of the vfx heavy short format work that we do our clients like that work flow.

I done a bit of colourists work. I actually had two scanners in my life, a genesis 4k scanner and a domino3k scanner even though this was quite a few years ago, i bought them in my early twenties and had them for 6 years or so, but grading and "being a colourist" has never been my main focus or main profession, but many, or even most of my clients use me as such. I'm a VFX guy but I still I like to have the control over the grade for the projects I work on and most of my clients like it that way, one reason why is because they never get into the situations that you describe above, my colours are all open until the shot / project is closed. But again, thats how I work and it's for sure not a good method for everyone or every project.

The soccer stuff I work on now I find it great to have all the colours available while I comp since the empty plates is not much to look at or grade. So basically the plates need to follow the CG not the opposite. So I want to stay in linear and have full access to the r3d's and be able to reach the images from the roots sort of speak and do the comps under / before / within my grade node tree. So when I apply a flare, light source, CG element or plate, that node has exposure nodes, colour nodes mattes etc applied to it's branch and that branch is feed into a larger batch that at the end of it all has the nodes that makes out the overall grade for the specific shot even after grain and all such things. Why I do so is for many reasons, for example if I apply a light source for example or a flare I can look at the result 20 nodes down the tree and see how that looks in the final result and by doing so I'm able to fine tune it in a highly precise way, and let it affect the other layers ungraded so my flare is then kind of stuck in underneath the grade together with the imagery and I'm able to adjust them both at any given time.
The same goes for CG, the 3D team gets viewing luts to render under and can then match ther CG to a red log file without any grade applied, that is far easier light match to make then if somebody has crushed around the colors before them.

Again that's how I work most VFX people would not agree most of them want their shots graded and then a second pass for green screen or what not with no secondaries etc. But I prefer things differently, and I usually grade and do the composites and I do this in Flame, as for me there is no other tool where I can achieve a better grade or have more control over my colours. For sure other likes other programs but I got 21 years invested in Flame and I see no reason to move to any other program any time soon. So for me grading in Flame is.

Also this project involves a lot of scaling, as one player is 2,3 the size of the rest and is shot in the same plate alot of the time so I really need the 5K to scale him, It's also shot with our hawks so I need to "de lens the shots" to track and composite and then "lens them back" after composite is done to give the shots their original lens character, I want to do that at quite high res not to loose to much sharpness, if I would work from DPX 5k 16 bit I would simply not manage, I would be done around midsummer, that would not work I only got a month before delivery... With r3d's as input nodes on the other hand it's like cutting trough butter and i got all thats there 16bit raw in a nice compressed format that has built in proxies down to 1/16 of original size... working with those even leaves a bit of time for christmas

To me it's insane that there is no such thing as a "grade XML" or universial translator for grading that goes between all programs. Just as a 3D maya model can be converted to 3DSmax or such I think it's really reasonable that grading setup should be possible to transfer in between programs. So grades, no matter how advanced should just go along with clips as meta data if wanted. When that is feasible I would be happy to push all the primary grading work over to somebody else as no matter what you think I want to be able to get in underneath that primary grade when I do my work.

 

[jake blackstone]

To me it's insane that there is no such thing as a "grade XML" or universial translator for grading that goes between all programs. Just as a 3D maya model can be converted to 3DSmax or such I think it's really reasonable that grading setup should be possible to transfer in between programs. So grades, no matter how advanced should just go along with clips as meta data if wanted. When that is feasible I would be happy to push all the primary grading work over to somebody else as no matter what you think I want to be able to get in underneath that primary grade when I do my work.

That's funny. If you look back i already had mentioned Baselight as that "grade XML". It works between Avid or FCP7, Baselight and Nuke. All grades are passed along with Baselight grade XML and they never need to be baked in until the final render. So, Baselight can pre-grade R3D, pass it to Nuke with grade XML. Nuke opens it with all grades virtually applied, does the compositing, while grading individual layers and passes composited EXR along with the new XML back to Baselight for final grade and render. Don't forget, the editorial have the same metadata. Mind you, at that point you still have all controls over individual layers. That is how Elysium was done, except compositing was done so well (the director- Neill Blomkamp is VFX guy as you know), that individual EXR layers were totally unnecessary. Also, very important point on Elysium workflow. The color grading normally starts toward the end of editorial process. Not with Elysium. They started grading two weeks after the editorial process started. That meant, that while the editorial process kept revisions for the grade, the Baselight grades kept up with the editorial process, as editorial were receiving temporary XML grades from Baselight suite. In other words, every department was looking at the same image, regardless of platform. I attended Elysium post presentation at Academy of Motion Picture a couple of months ago and I was blown away by the fluidity of the process and constant exchange of metadata between editorial, grade and VFX depts.
Of coarse, if you're on Flame, then it's not going to work. The problem with round tripping between Smoke/Flame and Lustre is, that before the handover it does require a render, which defeats the purpose of this discussion. Baselight does not…

 

[jake blackstone]

Well, editors already think they can reframe our shots. You wouldn't believe the atrocities I've seen with ignorant editors pushing in on 5K footage, thinking that pushing into 1080 from 5K is fine because we are only delivering 1080. I've also had editors insist on shooting green screen at 29.97 even though the backplates had already been shot in another city at 23.98 by another crew. They were so entrenched in their old workflow. I tried about 5 times to the point of being nearly obnoxious to explain to the client exactly why this was a bad idea, but to no avail. The end composite looked hideous of course. These are reasons why RAW workflow for offline worries me. Editors having the ability to change the color metadata on the footage easily in their NLE? I prefer to deliver graded, baked in dailies that represent my (and the director's) vision for the look of the project.

Unfortunately, editors are an important cog in the post process. So, if there is no adult supervision, as in a qualified VFX or post supervisor, then yes, that will happen…

 

[Björn Benckert]

That's funny. If you look back i already had mentioned Baselight as that "grade XML". It works between Avid or FCP7, Baselight and Nuke. All grades are passed along with Baselight grade XML and they never need to be baked in until the final render. So, Baselight can pre-grade R3D, pass it to Nuke with grade XML. Nuke opens it with all grades virtually applied, does the compositing, while grading individual layers and passes composited EXR along with the new XML back to Baselight for final grade and render. Don't forget, the editorial have the same metadata. Mind you, at that point you still have all controls over individual layers. That is how Elysium was done, except compositing was done so well (the director- Neill Blomkamp is VFX guy as you know), that individual EXR layers were totally unnecessary. Also, very important point on Elysium workflow. The color grading normally starts toward the end of editorial process. Not with Elysium. They started grading two weeks after the editorial process started. That meant, that while the editorial process kept revisions for the grade, the Baselight grades kept up with the editorial process, as editorial were receiving temporary XML grades from Baselight suite. In other words, every department was looking at the same image, regardless of platform. I attended Elysium post presentation at Academy of Motion Picture a couple of months ago and I was blown away by the fluidity of the process and constant exchange of metadata between editorial, grade and VFX depts.
Of coarse, if you're on Flame, then it's not going to work. The problem with round tripping between Smoke/Flame and Lustre is, that before the handover it does require a render, which defeats the purpose of this discussion. Baselight does not…

Did not know that. I know some stuff can float in XLM's But to me XML's gets it all (or most of it) wrong like softness on splines scalings etc, especially if you jump between different resolutions for editing and online. Do you mean that you get your whole node tree to move back and forth between Baselight and nuke without errors? Or are you talking about just basic grading like what could be saved in a 3Dlut? like no keyers or such.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Unfortunately, editors are an important cog in the post process. So, if there is no adult supervision, as in a qualified VFX or post supervisor, then yes, that will happen…

+1

I agree, I work with editors for a living. The best editors I know are brilliant minds/craftsman, no different than top flight DP's etc.

That said, I have found some AGENCY editors to be harder to work with (usually because they have strong personalities, but not as technically grounded as I would have expected). So Eric's experience is also not surprising to me...

(I work in PROMO ordinarily, which is the opposite of AGENCY - most of us are pretty technical...lower budgets demand that - but personality is less emphasized).

 

[jake blackstone]

Did not know that. I know some stuff can float in XLM's But to me XML's gets it all (or most of it) wrong like softness on splines scalings etc, especially if you jump between different resolutions for editing and online. Do you mean that you get your whole node tree to move back and forth between Baselight and nuke without errors? Or are you talking about just basic grading like what could be saved in a 3Dlut? like no keyers or such.

Nope. I'm talking the whole enchilada See it for yourself. http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/editions/overview_ed.php
You can grade in Baselight, export session XML, open it in Nuke, do the VFX, apply or even change grade, export EXR with XML and open it in Baselight again with all layers intact with the new grades from Nuke applied. You can then regrade each layer in Baselight and, if needed send it back to Nuke. At the presentation of Baselight V4 colorist opened EXR with 50!!! layers of huge robot with masks and easily graded any of the layers, while playing it back in real time with no render. Same goes for passing grades to/from Avid/FCP7. They all can exchange grade metadata back and forth until the final render. As far as I know, it's the first attempt of exchanging grade metadata between different platforms and applications (Baselight is Linux, Avid/Nuke is Mac or PC) without using any kind of LUTs. And, as i'd said, it was used successfully on Elysium already. And because of everything being pre-graded, there was no need for any grading of layers, when VFX shots came back.
Here is a short write up on the post process. At the presentation they were much more detailed and technical. Peter Postma from FilmLight was at hand to talk in more details about use of Baselight Editions during the post process of the film.
http://www.studiodaily.com/2013/07/how-elysiums-4k-di-integrated-editorial-and-vfx/

 

[shashbugu]

Nope. I'm talking the whole enchilada See it for yourself. http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/editions/overview_ed.php
You can grade in Baselight, export session XML, open it in Nuke, do the VFX, apply or even change grade, export EXR with XML and open it in Baselight again with all layers intact with the new grades from Nuke applied. You can then regrade each layer in Baselight and, if needed send it back to Nuke. At the presentation of Baselight V4 colorist opened EXR with 50!!! layers of huge robot with masks and easily graded any of the layers, while playing it back in real time with no render. Same goes for passing grades to/from Avid/FCP7. They all can exchange grade metadata back and forth until the final render. As far as I know, it's the first attempt of exchanging grade metadata between different platforms and applications (Baselight is Linux, Avid/Nuke is Mac or PC) without using any kind of LUTs. And, as i'd said, it was used successfully on Elysium already. And because of everything being pre-graded, there was no need for any grading of layers, when VFX shots came back.
Here is a short write up on the post process. At the presentation they were much more detailed and technical. Peter Postma from FilmLight was at hand to talk in more details about use of Baselight Editions during the post process of the film.
http://www.studiodaily.com/2013/07/how-elysiums-4k-di-integrated-editorial-and-vfx/

Very interesting

 

[Mike P.]

There is no Baselight lite for free, is there?

Jk…but seriously, that seems to be by far the most intuitive way to do it. Aside from FCP7, Avid and Nuke, is there a list somewhere on what software can properly translate the xml's?