Rihards

55 minutes ago, Stefan Ringelschwandtner said:

First: I would not try to "normalize" the final Grade back to "rec709" look. I tried it using Auto correcition tool but the "grade" (the look) is still in the neutrak image. So the best way to recreat a look is to find BTS Images. (in my opinion) .
And the best way is to analyze the Vectorscope and rebuild the shape of it. 
There are many ways...

My approach. (Using my "Soft 2 Strip" PowerGrade Node Tree)

1. Take a look at the "Vectorscope" .. and you will see it is a "Teal & Orange" or "Two Strip" (Soft Two Strip) Look.
2. I took the BTS image and applied my PowerGrade to it. Tweaked it a little (but no Hue vs. Hue, no curves, no Color Warper, not even Lift Gamma Gain)

It is not perfect, the lighting in the BTS image is different. But you can see at the vectorscope that it is going in the right direction.
This was a "quick and dirty" match to get the behind the scenes image into the ballpark. From there you can use "hue" to rotate the "2 strip" line
or you can use Lift Gamma Gain / Warper ... to tweak it further.

Thanks Stefan, that looks quite close. I'll presume that you're not very eager to disclose the sauce of you powergrade 🤣

Might want to start here  Colorful Encounters: Greg Fisher on coloring ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

How far have you gotten by yourself? I presume you have tried.

That's a big variety  of looks, it would help by deciding which aspect you are after to guide you better.

As I see you watch wanderingdp I gather you understand the impact of lighting, contrast ratios and set design.

The looks you have referenced dont appear to have anything crazy done color wise. The shadows seem mostly neutral while in some there's slight gain push to the blue. All appear to have some amount of highlight compression and controlled toe, which is pretty standard in high end work.

The first 3 appear to be very subtle on saturation.

Have you analysed these images in your own scopes?

Add some references of what you mean so we can point you in the right direction. 

4 minutes ago, Marc Wielage said:

Yeah, I have to say there's probably about 4 or 5 different ways to do it. One issue I've had is when suddenly there's a "flesh-colored" surface behind or near one of the actors, and suddenly a teal-look isn't possible for the background. I've had to explain to directors, "this is an art direction problem: you need to give me something to work with around the actor, and not pick a wall that's too close to the actor." We wound up rotoscoping the actor a bit in order to force more separation into the shot, but it was a bandaid fix at best and I'm not proud of the results. But: the director was pleased that I'd at least made the effort, and we moved on.

That's a valuable lesson I've told students before: never tell a client NO. At the worst, you could tell them, "that's a challenge because of this specific situation, but let's see how close we can get." Sometimes, they realize after a few minutes that you've gone down a rabbit hole and it could require lots and lots of time, and they'll take what we have and go on to the next scene. 

The key note is that Orange & Teal is not automatic, and a LUT alone won't do it. I had one memorable scene a few years ago where prisoners in a jail cell were just naturally orange & teal, and it worked great with almost zero effort. I used to get a little antsy about putting color in the shadows, but sometimes it's warranted and it can work to a point. 

Would you mind sharing your interpretation of those techniques if you have the time? 

Hahah yes, I know that one. Just make the orange brick building blue or something 🤣 it will be fine. Must have been fun rotoscoping that...

You are so right  about the NO. Next time they'll just go to someone who can "figure it out" .

2 hours ago, Marc Wielage said:

You may be going at this in a much more complex way than the people at CO3 did it. Bear in mind that a lot depends on Art Direction and the original photography, and it's hard to force a look on a shot that doesn't lend itself to that approach.

Veteran LA colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld is generally credited for popularizing the so-called Orange/Teal look, and he was doing it in the mid-to-late 1990s for commercials and home video projects on the old daVinci 2K. The 2K didn't lend itself to extreme secondaries or keys the way Resolve does now, and he actually did a lot of it through just careful Primary manipulation. 

You can argue now that it's possible to use layer mixers to retain more of the original skintone from the initial shot, then change everything else to cyan and use secondaries (or Color Warper) to minimize magenta. Basically, what you're looking for on the Vectorscope is a straight line from a little to the left of Red and then directly down to the Cyan box on the display... and not much else. Look at Transformers and a number of other Sonnenfeld features, and you can at least appreciate the consistency of what he does with the image, both on scopes and on the monitor.

@Stefan Ringelschwandtner has reverse-engineered some of these grades by taking the results, then pushing them back to a "Normal" look, which I think is a very imaginative thought process. His Mononodes are actually very interesting, but I'll let him comment further.

BTW, lest anybody criticize Stefan for this look, know up front that the ultimate decision is always made by the director and DP. It's our job as colorists to merely give them options to choose from. If they want orange/teal for maximum color contrast, then so be it -- it's their film. It's not a look I always like, but you can't deny the success of CO3 or Sonnenfeld. 

Thanks for your reply Marc. No doubt it's a very popular look and done by everyone and their dog however at varying degrees of finesse. 

I did too think that It shouldn't be too complex given it being around for that long however by observing this sort of looks through the years and with advancement of software ability a greater level of control is apparent.

In this specific example the luminance values that are low in cromacity have a controlled blue tint. Once that is achieved it's easy to point the vectors to their respective areas as you suggest. But the question remains how do we tint these luminance values in the best way while still keeping the image looking "Correct"?

Also just to clarify, in this exercise I hold reds and skin tones to little importance as the objective is tinting the neutrals.

Hi folks.

I've been chasing and trying to understand how to achieve a certain blue look very so often seen from the top shelf houses and their colorists. 

I will use references from a music video, YG -Scared Money

 
This was graded by one of the senior colorists at Company3, Joseph Bicknell. https://www.company3.com/artists/joseph-bicknell/

While they don't seem to be very eager to disclose whatever techniques they use, there is a finite amount of techniques that can be utilised and I suppose they are not wizards, well arguably at least. 

I've tried various acrobatics with curves and color spaces, LGG bouncing, change mixer, and color warper which got me the closest.

I'm curious how you guys would approach this sort of challenge?

Please check out the references.
Notice the blue tinting in neutrals as well as the overall blue tone.

 
Ref.2

Ref. 3

 

My Results, Color Warper + CST+Balance+PFE 2393

CST+Balance+PFE 2393

Node Tree and Color Warper Adjustment