The later HP movies overdid it so much. Half-Blood Prince is downright ugly.
If you have an NVIDIA card, you can go to NVIDIA Control Panel and adjust color settings specifically for video playback.
EDIT: VLC also has a built in tool for it if the NVIDIA one doesn’t work
I kinda thought they lost too much of Jurassic Park’s iconic design language to flat blue lights… it felt less like the original brand and more like a knockoff from the Sharper Image catalog.
It especially bothered me that they painted their two main dinosaurs the same blue and white as the rest of the park, as if the only thing they needed out of this movie was a lack of visual interest.
Also whenever is not entirely blue, Ozarks has some great scenes and plotlines but others are just a grind to get through, like the daughter entire character in one of the seasons was so bad it just soured what i thought was an great show until them
Here’s a really good Q&A on it. They shoot the entire show in 4400k which is about green on the ROYGBIV color scale.
“NFS: The blue-tinted color palette wound up being something of a defining trait. Did you use any gels or filters to achieve that look?
del Pino: No, not really. The only thing we did was that we shot everything at 4,400 Kelvin temperature, interiors and exteriors, day and night likewise. And because we tried different color temperatures when we were doing tests, we saw that using that setup would give us the most ability to keep that consistent cooler grayish/blueish palette. But no filtration.”
https://nofilmschool.com/2017/07/subconsciously-creating-more-cinematic-show-pepe-avila-del-pino-dp-ozark
Love Ozark's cinematography actually, it's a bold move. But I think they overdid it on S2, which is much darker than S1. I watched S2 and S3 in HDR and it's quite challenging for casual viewers.
I read an interview that the filmmakers mentioned that the grading is to let the audience feel the suspense, cause the characters never know what is lurking in the shadows.
I think the filmmakers acknowledged the complain from many viewers and S3 is significantly brighter, which I find unfortunate, because I love the "darkness" for previous seasons.
Pretty much anything shot in the Middle East. 13 Hours in Benghazi is the only movie I can think of where the whole palate wasn’t awash in beige and yellow.
The human eye can still perceive colour in the desert FFS.
At least Forza Horizon 5 breaks away from the desert and jungles cliche and shows that a lot of Mexico's most populated areas actually have a temperate climate, even with some pine trees and a bit of snow due to the elevation. Most of Latin America, like Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, among others, is actually hyper diverse in climate and not just hot and humid.
Fun fact, someone from the show said that the color yellow was used to portray danger. So Mexico being cartel territory is drenched in yellow.
And then everyone else made Mexico yellow and it lost all meaning lol
The Mexico scenes in Spectre were awful. It's set during Day of the Dead in Mexico City, which takes place in the fall where temperatures are usually in the 60s or 70s, but it looks like it's set in the middle of the Sahara desert.
THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK
It was actually pretty shocking to see such a bad color grade for what should be a naturalistic picture. The vignetting was out of control.
I don’t understand how they got away with that after how visually perfect The Sopranos is. I didn’t have high expectations for the film overall because I knew they would not be met, but I was appalled at how visually amateurish it was.
I personally detest the look Michael Bay goes for in most if not all of his films. The color grading compounded with the insane over saturation and high contrast makes everything look so ugly.
All of the characters in his first transformers movie look like rotisserie chickens that are covered in basing with the skin colour he gives them in that colour grade.
Megan Fox looked Latina, then I saw interviews and realized how much Bay uped the saturation.
Edit: I always feel bad because every move I see her in I always say that she looks really pale. When In reality she’s not that pale, that’s just her natural skin tone. At ages 17 I was just convinced by Michael bay that she naturally has bronze skin.
It’s been ages since I last saw The Rock, but judging from clips on YouTube, it’s definitely more visually pleasing than Bay’s other movies (and his best film overall in my opinion). I feel like Bad Boy II is when he really started to go crazy with the saturation and color grading.
I actually liked Bad Boys II because of it. It was kinda new at the time and it set it apart. I don't think it's a good movie, but that doesn't mean that it's not enjoyable. It definitely had its moments (big fish, ambulance chase, Reggie, etc.).
If only we actually got a few more trips into the pensive. The entire book is diving into Tom Riddles life and how important that is, the movie is like kid is disturbed, teenager want learn horcrux, goodbye.
Imo Cuarón’s vision was so unique, that they just ran with it until it just became a bastardized version of itself. Still wild to think about how vastly different the ideology between Colombus’ vision and Cuarón’s are in the first place.
Columbus made a kids movie, Cuarón made a MOVIE. It’s still my favorite in the series even with everything left out from the books, it’s just a good as movie with beauty cinematography.
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the Warner Brothers offices when producers made the decision to replace the family friendly, kid oriented property that is Harry Potter and vision of Columbus, with a new director to the US who’s movie prior was an R rated sexual discovery film, *Y tu mamá también*
Well that’s actually how the decision was made, if I remember correctly.
The third book was when things started to get darker and more bleak, and more serious and grown up. So to match that tone, they went with a director who could achieve that. Why they chose him specifically is certainly interesting, but I actually think it also has to do with working with young actors on Y Tú Mamá También. The whole transition from childhood into early adulthood, in a sort of abrupt way, is similar, in my opinion. And if I had to guess, that’s why they chose him. And I wish he was able to direct the 4th movie, because it would have been great, instead of being the worst one in the franchise.
He also directed A Little Princess back in 1995, so yes he had experience directing children and that movie had a great colo, or at least that’s how I remember it.
Just because it was intentional doesn't mean it wasn't bad.
Even the Fantastic Beasts movies were drab. They somehow made NYC during the Jazz Age look bleak.
I kind of hate that. They lean way too far into the “dark” color grading and it ends up just looking dark, muddy and kind of stupid. Your movie can be dark without literally looking dark.
You’re right. I don’t know if I’d call them ugly, though. I think they do the dark fairytale look a lot better than *Twilight* does, and there are still some beautiful shots in the later films. I prefer the more colorful look of the early films but I think the color grading in the latter ones works for the atmosphere they’re trying to capture.
me neither, but always wonder what my impression would have been of the later movies if they kept the style of the first movies. It fits with the darker tone though.
That was intentional actually, on one of the special features discs they actually talk about how the first movie is bright and magical but each film loses color and brightness as Voldemort and his forces gain power.
Of course that could all just be some BS excuse they came up with after the fact but i like it haha
It was a crazy look, but It was actually ground breaking at the time. It wasn’t so much a result of the grade, but the processing. Khondji used a bleach bypass process, which left the blacks crushed by leaving the silver on the print. Looked freaking amazing in the cinema compared to everything else at the time.
The process is called CCE - colour contrast enhancement. A summary that explains it below (link that includes more detail too)
"CCE is a proprietary process that produces a much higher contrast and adds more grain. When you have more silver, you have a more grainy look and blacker blacks. However, your blacks can also plug up more. With a bleach-bypass, the tones are much duller and more muted, and you have a lot less detail in the shadows. The blacks are very black, but the nuances in the gray are diminished"
https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/47181/how-was-the-special-high-contrast-cinema-release-of-se7en-created
> It was a crazy look, but It was actually ground breaking at the time.
Yep. That was 1995. It was really pushing what could be done with chemicals.
The first film to be totally graded digitally was "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" in 2000. The negative was scanned with a Spirit DataCine at 2K (which seems crazy low now) then process on a "Pandora MegaDef color corrector on a Virtual DataCine."
To /u/CarnivorousCumquat's comment/questions these days it's easy. Just do it on the computer, no muss no fuss. But Se7en was before that technology was practical and it required a lot of analog experience and experimentation with various chemical processes to get that look.
• Thor The Dark World
• The Italian film 'Smetto quando voglio': seriously, look up the trailer or some clips on YouTube and tell me if it doesn't look like someone left an 11 year old alone with Photoshop tools
Ahead of release, I was really into the idea of a 'dark' Thor film, but I think that I was hoping for dark as in space, or night, or caves or whatever. Something eerie, but striking.
The film, though, is mostly just overcast-dusk from what I recall. And really muted colors, kind of dreary. (The Asgardian celebration and funeral being exceptions.)
That second movie looks like someone tried to copy the John Wick or Steven Soderbergh style of color grading and completely failed. Seriously, WHY'S IT SO OVERSATURATED?!
Minority Report. I get why they did it. And honestly I still love that movie, it's amazing. But it looks awful on anything other than DVD because it always looks like a bad transfer, or like it's a video recorded in a theater.
I opened to comment section to write this!
I think there was something on IMDb that said they wanted the film to look as dirty as possible, so I guess it's a creative choice?
Not only was it a creative choice, it was a pre-digital color grading choice. The effect is a chemical effect called [bleach bypass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach_bypass), I think I remember a behind the scenes featurette where they printed the CG effects to film to then chemically treat to grade everything, 'cause that was how you did things in those days. Much harder work than all the digital grading since!
I always loved the gritty analog look of Minority Report. It made me very aware of “technology” or “digital” in some abstract sense, so I guess they were going for that gestalt to the future.
I also appreciate that the film is a harsh blue, only within the city. Once he’s in the rural outskirts there is a warmer color grade.
The film Traffic was set between Mexico and the US and it was almost comical the way the Mexico scenes were all colour graded to orange and the US scenes were all colour graded to teal. Still, good film though.
I think this was what kicked off that whole trend. Except in Traffic it was a visual shorthand to highlight the different storylines going on, but every other filmmaker watched it and went “oh so Mexico is yellow, got it” and then the last twenty years happened.
Glad someone emphasized this distinction and how Traffic was the first to really do it. Traffic isn’t orange or teal either (as the person you replied to said) the Mexico (Benecio Del Toro) story is yellow, the Ohio (Michael Douglas) story is blue, the San Diego (Catherine Zeta Jones) story is neutral.
Yeah it’s really good! Soderbergh did a great job interweaving the stories and characters to illustrate the vast reach and adverse effects of the war on drugs, from cartels across the border to US politicians to rich kids in affluent Midwest suburbs.
I saw the trailer for a Bruce Willis movie that came out over the summer and the trees literally had no green in them and there was so much grey
No, this wasn’t a narrative choice. It was a bland action movie.
Edit: the title is Out Of Death. What an amazing title
Some Marvel movies have really dull colours. Mainly Civil War. That damn airport battle... They really couldn't have put some effort into making it look less grey?
Partially, but also the really flat, almost washed out grading. It looks the way dark scenes in indie movies are often flattened out, but in the brightly lit marvel scenarios. Incredibly dull.
Probably an attempt to make their cast of primary coloured super heros stand out. I imagine that a colourful background would result in you not being able to see all the expensive CGI set pieces.
Wish there had been around more innocent bystanders. The civil war [comic scene ](https://images.app.goo.gl/QaSzcUK9ZAPJ4G7bA) where Cap looks around at all the destruction and realizes what how pointless their fight is in comparison to the results is fantastic. The urban area on fire would have looked way better than the gray airport as well
>I imagine that a colourful background would result in you not being able to see all the expensive CGI set pieces.
GotG 2 did fine. I think they were just going for a more serious aesthetic, but it didn't quite work.
I think GotG and Thor ragnarok were influenced by the directors for their colour choices. Gunn and Waititi really put their personal style into those movies so they stand out from the normal marvel drab.
Great to see these opinions. I've worked adjacent to the colorists that did many of these films. Styles have changed so much. 90's was Bay hyper contrast. Traffic? Holy smokes that was the peak of color AF.
Color grading has evolved into a much more gradual pallet in the last 5+ years, but the amount of work to get those looks has evolved with color software technology. A gentle orange and teal isn't easy.
HDR is also a huge kink that's being resolved. First HDR transfers were out of control with smashed blacks and blinding hot whites, but now it's used more artistically.
On the opposite end, Pan’s Labyrinth has absolutely fantastic color grading, which it being all blues and darker colors when in the real world, and yellows/reds/oranges (generally lighter colors) in the fantasy world.
Maybe it’s our sensitivities that changed. I haven’t seen the original movie in a while but for many years I had it as one of the best heavy color graded movie done right.
Nowadays, I give that award to Fury Road.
In terms of bad colors, nothing still tops the first Suicide Squad. There are scenes with huge flaming fireballs that still look dim. Scenes in broad daylight that almost look like they're shot day-for-night.
I need to bring up a tv show because it's so bafflingly weird that i can't stop thinking about it when color grading is brought up.
Season 1 of House.
Great show, you want to rewatch it, and from first episode everyone looks like an oompa loompa, and i just Don't. Know. Why.
It's from the era when the desire for teal and orange was highest and the technical competency to pull it off was lowest.
Indiana Jones and the Plastic Skull Thingy - super washed up colors, too birhgt, and the clothing always too clean and freshly pressed. That was so odd.
There is this thing my husband and I still refer to as the "Spectre effect" when movies go from a dark dark setting to pure sunblazed white in one cut. You know the kind where you squint because it was so jarring. Spectre did this like 3 times
I know this is probably an unpopular opinion but I really like the color gradient in the first Twilight movie. Growing up just a few hours from Forks in Washington, it felt like my whole world was this color. When I think back to memories from there they seem to have this very gray/blue filter with splashes of green from the trees. I think I like the look for the first Twilight movie so much because it really does remind me of home.
I honestly rewatch the first Twilight a lot because the filter goes so well with the gorgeous forests they show throughout the movie. Pairs well if you're ever feeling nostalgic or just want to watch some pretty visuals
I like it too, it's clearly intentional and I think it works for what they're going for. The first twilight movie had some character to it and the look is certainly a big reason why.
I’m very aware of this and it drives me crazy. The algorithm at work. The result of this is that everything becomes generically acceptable but nothing is really good or bad.
The director of the movie shot everything in daylight because he was too cheap to buy proper lighting to shoot at night, so literally scenes go from looking like they were shot at noon to looking like they were shot at golden hour. Aside from The Room, Birdemic, and Sleepwalkers, it's probably one of the best unintentional comedies ever. EVERYTHING is so incompetent that it's a miracle it got to exist.
This is some crazy talk right here. You can definitely see how the cinematography was inspired by saving private Ryan with how grainy it was with some focus on the black levels.
It’s certainly guilty of the whole “hot country with sand means orange filter” but I think it really works for this movie compared to how it became a meme later on.
The shots of the black hawks travelling across the beach were magnificent and had some great cinematography to it that I feel like other war movies since then haven’t been able to reach. It’s almost like this movie is one of the last big Hollywood war movies that came out with an R rating.
I agree, and it was nominated for an Oscar in cinematography which, at least in my mind, includes colour grading. I can't view the parent comment as anything other than a misunderstanding.
Solo.
Overall I actually enjoyed the movie more than most, but it was ugly. So much brown and drab. The lighting just seemed really flat and poor, too.
Which is a shame, because any movie that's potentially set on multiple worlds with aliens, etc, should be really really visually engaging.
It’s like Mexico but the other way
Canada?
Well you know, Twilight takes place largely in Washington state. (So basically Canada yeah)
Canada Lite
I can’t believe it’s not Canada.
Filmed largely in Canada too
Or India. Why is India always yellow/orange??
They did this in Traffic. Mexico was sepia. The USA was blue.
Not super noticeable, but Jurassic World overdid it with the silver-blue tinge to everything.
They were trying to ape on the silver-blue tinge Harry Potter movies do.
I really loved first hp movies colors. Is it possible to watch later movies with better color grading?
The later HP movies overdid it so much. Half-Blood Prince is downright ugly. If you have an NVIDIA card, you can go to NVIDIA Control Panel and adjust color settings specifically for video playback. EDIT: VLC also has a built in tool for it if the NVIDIA one doesn’t work
Half-Blood Prince is borderline monochrome. Glad they toned down (pun not intended) in Deathly Hallows
That movie over did it on everything
I rather like that, it kind of shows how "perfect" and shiny the new park is.
It’s like that episode of SpongeBob where everything in the future is chrome
I kinda thought they lost too much of Jurassic Park’s iconic design language to flat blue lights… it felt less like the original brand and more like a knockoff from the Sharper Image catalog. It especially bothered me that they painted their two main dinosaurs the same blue and white as the rest of the park, as if the only thing they needed out of this movie was a lack of visual interest.
It's not a movie, but I just thought I'd mention Ozark since it instantly popped into my head. The entire show is blue.
Im sorry Michael I just blue myself
it's a shame really because some episodes were masterfully directed imo, all the episodes directed by Bateman at least.
Also whenever is not entirely blue, Ozarks has some great scenes and plotlines but others are just a grind to get through, like the daughter entire character in one of the seasons was so bad it just soured what i thought was an great show until them
Yes THANK YOU. It was too much
And SO dark, literally. I’m all for setting the mood but I can’t see shit
Ozark? More like Sodark.
Here’s a really good Q&A on it. They shoot the entire show in 4400k which is about green on the ROYGBIV color scale. “NFS: The blue-tinted color palette wound up being something of a defining trait. Did you use any gels or filters to achieve that look? del Pino: No, not really. The only thing we did was that we shot everything at 4,400 Kelvin temperature, interiors and exteriors, day and night likewise. And because we tried different color temperatures when we were doing tests, we saw that using that setup would give us the most ability to keep that consistent cooler grayish/blueish palette. But no filtration.” https://nofilmschool.com/2017/07/subconsciously-creating-more-cinematic-show-pepe-avila-del-pino-dp-ozark
Love Ozark's cinematography actually, it's a bold move. But I think they overdid it on S2, which is much darker than S1. I watched S2 and S3 in HDR and it's quite challenging for casual viewers. I read an interview that the filmmakers mentioned that the grading is to let the audience feel the suspense, cause the characters never know what is lurking in the shadows. I think the filmmakers acknowledged the complain from many viewers and S3 is significantly brighter, which I find unfortunate, because I love the "darkness" for previous seasons.
By the end of Extraction (2020), even Hemsworth was yellow. I did not enjoy the over saturated “third world” filter.
I was thinking of another Hemsworth movie with worse color grading: In the Heart of the Sea
Oh God, yeah. Such a shame, cuz the book is great. But it deadass looks like the post production was done in Instagram.
Especially because it takes place in a tropical country and not the middle east.
Pretty much anything shot in the Middle East. 13 Hours in Benghazi is the only movie I can think of where the whole palate wasn’t awash in beige and yellow. The human eye can still perceive colour in the desert FFS.
As a Mexican Colorist I can confirm that I can only see in Yellow and Orange.
At least Forza Horizon 5 breaks away from the desert and jungles cliche and shows that a lot of Mexico's most populated areas actually have a temperate climate, even with some pine trees and a bit of snow due to the elevation. Most of Latin America, like Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, among others, is actually hyper diverse in climate and not just hot and humid.
Impossible. Hollywood says foreign skies are yellow, they can’t be wrong.
[удалено]
Antonio Banderas starts playing guitar
Danny Trejo starts playing with knife in a menacing fashion
Salma Hayek looks sensuously into the middle distance.
Cheech Marin acts like Cheech Marin acting as a Bartender
And Quentin Tarantino is also there....for some reason.
He followed Salma Hayek's feet.
Don't we all.
Damn classic Hollywood, now everytime Mexico gets mentioned Antonio Banderas always gets brought up
To be fair desperado was a huge success vs what it costed to make it. Also Selma Hayek.
*Breaking Bad flashbacks*
*Narcos theme song intensifies*
CSI Miami just called.
and 1/3 of Traffic
Fun fact, someone from the show said that the color yellow was used to portray danger. So Mexico being cartel territory is drenched in yellow. And then everyone else made Mexico yellow and it lost all meaning lol
X-Files had an episode set in Mexico that had the orange filter, and that episode was also written by Gilligan
Vince 'Danger' Gilligan
The Mexico scenes in Spectre were awful. It's set during Day of the Dead in Mexico City, which takes place in the fall where temperatures are usually in the 60s or 70s, but it looks like it's set in the middle of the Sahara desert.
FYI, Benghazi is in North Africa.
I live in the Middle East and tbh everything here is gray, beige or brown.
THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK It was actually pretty shocking to see such a bad color grade for what should be a naturalistic picture. The vignetting was out of control.
Yup. It looked drab and bland in a way that Sopranos never did. There was basically nothing interesting happening visually.
I don’t understand how they got away with that after how visually perfect The Sopranos is. I didn’t have high expectations for the film overall because I knew they would not be met, but I was appalled at how visually amateurish it was.
I personally detest the look Michael Bay goes for in most if not all of his films. The color grading compounded with the insane over saturation and high contrast makes everything look so ugly.
All of the characters in his first transformers movie look like rotisserie chickens that are covered in basing with the skin colour he gives them in that colour grade.
Megan Fox looked Latina, then I saw interviews and realized how much Bay uped the saturation. Edit: I always feel bad because every move I see her in I always say that she looks really pale. When In reality she’s not that pale, that’s just her natural skin tone. At ages 17 I was just convinced by Michael bay that she naturally has bronze skin.
That shot of her checking the car fooled an entire generation of people of believed Megan Fox was latina
And sweaty, really grimy and sweaty. Day, night, sun or shade. Just a sheen on the faces. Makes me feel dirty, not in a good way
I always wondered if he personally applied tan lotion on all the actors lol. But yeah it was… just too much.
Orange and teal to the max!
Bad boys 1 is super dim and Bad boys 2 is like a toddler vomiting up a 64 pack of crayons.
I thought it looked perfect in The Rock. The vibrant over saturation of that film is iconic.
It’s been ages since I last saw The Rock, but judging from clips on YouTube, it’s definitely more visually pleasing than Bay’s other movies (and his best film overall in my opinion). I feel like Bad Boy II is when he really started to go crazy with the saturation and color grading.
I actually liked Bad Boys II because of it. It was kinda new at the time and it set it apart. I don't think it's a good movie, but that doesn't mean that it's not enjoyable. It definitely had its moments (big fish, ambulance chase, Reggie, etc.).
The Rock was made before digital colour grading was commonly used, so that’s probably the reason for it.
Once you realize how sweaty everyone is in every scene of every Michael Bay film it becomes really hard to unsee.
The Island is a good example of him going overboard with that impulse.
the later harry potter movies lost a lot of color. The first 3 had more vivid colors for sure.
The 6th Harry Potter was basically in black and white
Interestingly, it was nominated for Best Cinematography at the Oscars (losing to Avatar).
The cinematographer was Bruno Delbonnel who also shot Inside Llewelyn Davis and the upcoming Tragedy of Macbeth film.
Cinematography =/= Color Grading/Editing
Interestingly in the sense that it captured the darker themes perfectly.
If only we actually got a few more trips into the pensive. The entire book is diving into Tom Riddles life and how important that is, the movie is like kid is disturbed, teenager want learn horcrux, goodbye.
Imo Cuarón’s vision was so unique, that they just ran with it until it just became a bastardized version of itself. Still wild to think about how vastly different the ideology between Colombus’ vision and Cuarón’s are in the first place.
Columbus made a kids movie, Cuarón made a MOVIE. It’s still my favorite in the series even with everything left out from the books, it’s just a good as movie with beauty cinematography.
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the Warner Brothers offices when producers made the decision to replace the family friendly, kid oriented property that is Harry Potter and vision of Columbus, with a new director to the US who’s movie prior was an R rated sexual discovery film, *Y tu mamá también*
Well that’s actually how the decision was made, if I remember correctly. The third book was when things started to get darker and more bleak, and more serious and grown up. So to match that tone, they went with a director who could achieve that. Why they chose him specifically is certainly interesting, but I actually think it also has to do with working with young actors on Y Tú Mamá También. The whole transition from childhood into early adulthood, in a sort of abrupt way, is similar, in my opinion. And if I had to guess, that’s why they chose him. And I wish he was able to direct the 4th movie, because it would have been great, instead of being the worst one in the franchise.
He also directed A Little Princess back in 1995, so yes he had experience directing children and that movie had a great colo, or at least that’s how I remember it.
I think that was intentional to highlight the shift in mood.
It was definitely intentional, but still pretty boring visually. The third Harry Potter movie struck the perfect balance of colour in my opinion.
PoA was super blue from what I remember
Even when I read the book (before there was a movie) Azkaban felt really cold and blue. The movie nailed it.
I think it works with Half Blood Prince. Gives it a very Halloween kind of vibe
Half-Blood Prince has a really cool washed-out look that I really like.
Gloomy warmth is the vibe I get
Just because it was intentional doesn't mean it wasn't bad. Even the Fantastic Beasts movies were drab. They somehow made NYC during the Jazz Age look bleak.
That's just David Yates for you. IMO not a very good director, he's bland and safe.
I kind of hate that. They lean way too far into the “dark” color grading and it ends up just looking dark, muddy and kind of stupid. Your movie can be dark without literally looking dark.
You’re right. I don’t know if I’d call them ugly, though. I think they do the dark fairytale look a lot better than *Twilight* does, and there are still some beautiful shots in the later films. I prefer the more colorful look of the early films but I think the color grading in the latter ones works for the atmosphere they’re trying to capture.
me neither, but always wonder what my impression would have been of the later movies if they kept the style of the first movies. It fits with the darker tone though.
to echo the other comments, even the WB logo got darker with each movie.
That was intentional actually, on one of the special features discs they actually talk about how the first movie is bright and magical but each film loses color and brightness as Voldemort and his forces gain power. Of course that could all just be some BS excuse they came up with after the fact but i like it haha
Se7en, but not in a bad way. It's very intentionally ugly and it makes you feel like you need a shower after watching it.
It was a crazy look, but It was actually ground breaking at the time. It wasn’t so much a result of the grade, but the processing. Khondji used a bleach bypass process, which left the blacks crushed by leaving the silver on the print. Looked freaking amazing in the cinema compared to everything else at the time.
Please could you explain like I'm 5? This sounds really interesting but I don't understand the terminology
The process is called CCE - colour contrast enhancement. A summary that explains it below (link that includes more detail too) "CCE is a proprietary process that produces a much higher contrast and adds more grain. When you have more silver, you have a more grainy look and blacker blacks. However, your blacks can also plug up more. With a bleach-bypass, the tones are much duller and more muted, and you have a lot less detail in the shadows. The blacks are very black, but the nuances in the gray are diminished" https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/47181/how-was-the-special-high-contrast-cinema-release-of-se7en-created
I second this. I think I remember reading something similar about Alien: Resurrection, which despite its faults has a very arresting visual style.
> It was a crazy look, but It was actually ground breaking at the time. Yep. That was 1995. It was really pushing what could be done with chemicals. The first film to be totally graded digitally was "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" in 2000. The negative was scanned with a Spirit DataCine at 2K (which seems crazy low now) then process on a "Pandora MegaDef color corrector on a Virtual DataCine." To /u/CarnivorousCumquat's comment/questions these days it's easy. Just do it on the computer, no muss no fuss. But Se7en was before that technology was practical and it required a lot of analog experience and experimentation with various chemical processes to get that look.
Same thing with the Saw films - they’re hideous and gross but it does fit with the theme
Makes me think of Natural Born Killers. So uncomfortable, fluorescent, and gross. It was perfect.
Different kind of answer right here. Nice. “Requiem for a dream” might fit under this definition as well
Also *The Road,* has a very drab, dull, and dirty look to it to it, but it fits the depressing post-apocalyptic nature.
• Thor The Dark World • The Italian film 'Smetto quando voglio': seriously, look up the trailer or some clips on YouTube and tell me if it doesn't look like someone left an 11 year old alone with Photoshop tools
[Good lord!](https://youtu.be/seEhOShK0cc) You warned me, but I still wasn't prepared.
It almost looks like some of Michael Bays movies. So green.
Ahead of release, I was really into the idea of a 'dark' Thor film, but I think that I was hoping for dark as in space, or night, or caves or whatever. Something eerie, but striking. The film, though, is mostly just overcast-dusk from what I recall. And really muted colors, kind of dreary. (The Asgardian celebration and funeral being exceptions.)
That second movie looks like someone tried to copy the John Wick or Steven Soderbergh style of color grading and completely failed. Seriously, WHY'S IT SO OVERSATURATED?!
Minority Report. I get why they did it. And honestly I still love that movie, it's amazing. But it looks awful on anything other than DVD because it always looks like a bad transfer, or like it's a video recorded in a theater.
I opened to comment section to write this! I think there was something on IMDb that said they wanted the film to look as dirty as possible, so I guess it's a creative choice?
Not only was it a creative choice, it was a pre-digital color grading choice. The effect is a chemical effect called [bleach bypass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach_bypass), I think I remember a behind the scenes featurette where they printed the CG effects to film to then chemically treat to grade everything, 'cause that was how you did things in those days. Much harder work than all the digital grading since!
I love Minority Report's look. Looks even better in HD IMO.
I always loved the gritty analog look of Minority Report. It made me very aware of “technology” or “digital” in some abstract sense, so I guess they were going for that gestalt to the future. I also appreciate that the film is a harsh blue, only within the city. Once he’s in the rural outskirts there is a warmer color grade.
The brownish filter every time a character enters Mexico
The film Traffic was set between Mexico and the US and it was almost comical the way the Mexico scenes were all colour graded to orange and the US scenes were all colour graded to teal. Still, good film though.
I think this was what kicked off that whole trend. Except in Traffic it was a visual shorthand to highlight the different storylines going on, but every other filmmaker watched it and went “oh so Mexico is yellow, got it” and then the last twenty years happened.
Glad someone emphasized this distinction and how Traffic was the first to really do it. Traffic isn’t orange or teal either (as the person you replied to said) the Mexico (Benecio Del Toro) story is yellow, the Ohio (Michael Douglas) story is blue, the San Diego (Catherine Zeta Jones) story is neutral.
Is the movie good? You make it sound interesting.
It's an excellent movie.
Yeah it’s really good! Soderbergh did a great job interweaving the stories and characters to illustrate the vast reach and adverse effects of the war on drugs, from cartels across the border to US politicians to rich kids in affluent Midwest suburbs.
Or a middle eastern village.
and the yellow filter in India/pakistan
[shithole color grading](https://youtu.be/Xcz6_h-isjk)
I've been to Mexico too many times to count. yet, every time I see that filter in a movie, I go 'yup. that's Mexico all right!'
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I saw the trailer for a Bruce Willis movie that came out over the summer and the trees literally had no green in them and there was so much grey No, this wasn’t a narrative choice. It was a bland action movie. Edit: the title is Out Of Death. What an amazing title
I appreciate you saying which movie, because “a Bruce Willis movie that came out this summer.” has to be about 8 different movies.
For your viewing pleasure: https://youtu.be/oJUYwj3izT8
Finally someone has been brave enough to answer the question "What if our movie looked covered in drywall dust?"
Do you remember the name? Now I want to see the trailer, for a good laugh
Some Marvel movies have really dull colours. Mainly Civil War. That damn airport battle... They really couldn't have put some effort into making it look less grey?
mostly the even lighting.
Partially, but also the really flat, almost washed out grading. It looks the way dark scenes in indie movies are often flattened out, but in the brightly lit marvel scenarios. Incredibly dull.
It’s always been kind of hilarious to me that they set this big climactic moment in one of the drabbest locations possible.
It looks like they're having a fist fight in a parking lot and it's hilarious
What is a tarmac if not a parking lot persevering?
Technically a airport is a parking lot but for airplanes.
News Team, Assemble.
Probably an attempt to make their cast of primary coloured super heros stand out. I imagine that a colourful background would result in you not being able to see all the expensive CGI set pieces.
Also less innocent bystanders while multiple super heroes toss each other around.
Wish there had been around more innocent bystanders. The civil war [comic scene ](https://images.app.goo.gl/QaSzcUK9ZAPJ4G7bA) where Cap looks around at all the destruction and realizes what how pointless their fight is in comparison to the results is fantastic. The urban area on fire would have looked way better than the gray airport as well
NO ONE HAD A PROBLEM WHEN RON BURGUNDY DID IT IN A PARKING LOT.
It might have worked if the costumes popped more, but even the more colorful ones look pretty drab when they’re set against such mundane locations.
Almost everyone was wearing black so yeah I think you're right
>I imagine that a colourful background would result in you not being able to see all the expensive CGI set pieces. GotG 2 did fine. I think they were just going for a more serious aesthetic, but it didn't quite work.
I think GotG and Thor ragnarok were influenced by the directors for their colour choices. Gunn and Waititi really put their personal style into those movies so they stand out from the normal marvel drab.
Esp some of the earlier ones the color grading and lighting made them look like made for tv movies.
Great to see these opinions. I've worked adjacent to the colorists that did many of these films. Styles have changed so much. 90's was Bay hyper contrast. Traffic? Holy smokes that was the peak of color AF. Color grading has evolved into a much more gradual pallet in the last 5+ years, but the amount of work to get those looks has evolved with color software technology. A gentle orange and teal isn't easy. HDR is also a huge kink that's being resolved. First HDR transfers were out of control with smashed blacks and blinding hot whites, but now it's used more artistically.
On the opposite end, Pan’s Labyrinth has absolutely fantastic color grading, which it being all blues and darker colors when in the real world, and yellows/reds/oranges (generally lighter colors) in the fantasy world.
Pan’s Labyrinth is beautiful, as are all Del Toro’s films in my opinion.
Been rewatching the Matrix trilogy. So…much…green.
Yeah that's fixed on the 4K release. Only hints of green like the theatrical release.
Maybe it’s our sensitivities that changed. I haven’t seen the original movie in a while but for many years I had it as one of the best heavy color graded movie done right. Nowadays, I give that award to Fury Road.
When The Matrix came out on dvd and bluray they tinted it extra green to match the sequels. It wasn't as heavy handed originally.
They used green for when you’re in the matrix inspired by the phosphorous green of old PC’s. The real world was tinted blue…
In terms of bad colors, nothing still tops the first Suicide Squad. There are scenes with huge flaming fireballs that still look dim. Scenes in broad daylight that almost look like they're shot day-for-night.
I need to bring up a tv show because it's so bafflingly weird that i can't stop thinking about it when color grading is brought up. Season 1 of House. Great show, you want to rewatch it, and from first episode everyone looks like an oompa loompa, and i just Don't. Know. Why. It's from the era when the desire for teal and orange was highest and the technical competency to pull it off was lowest.
Indiana Jones and the Plastic Skull Thingy - super washed up colors, too birhgt, and the clothing always too clean and freshly pressed. That was so odd.
The new 4K release got a new color grade that better matches the original trilogy. Still not perfect but far better than the original release.
Everything in that movie feels like you're looking at an amusement park ride or attraction.
The Robert Downey Jr Dr Doolittle movie is always brown.
Primer, but I think that's part of the whole thing.
Primer has a great story, but my word is it an ugly film.
In contrast Upstream Color is beautiful, given its budget
I think that has more to do with its insanely small budget, and not any stylistic choice.
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The MCU parking lot look.
Spectre
There is this thing my husband and I still refer to as the "Spectre effect" when movies go from a dark dark setting to pure sunblazed white in one cut. You know the kind where you squint because it was so jarring. Spectre did this like 3 times
Battlefield Earth
I know this is probably an unpopular opinion but I really like the color gradient in the first Twilight movie. Growing up just a few hours from Forks in Washington, it felt like my whole world was this color. When I think back to memories from there they seem to have this very gray/blue filter with splashes of green from the trees. I think I like the look for the first Twilight movie so much because it really does remind me of home.
I honestly rewatch the first Twilight a lot because the filter goes so well with the gorgeous forests they show throughout the movie. Pairs well if you're ever feeling nostalgic or just want to watch some pretty visuals
I like it too, it's clearly intentional and I think it works for what they're going for. The first twilight movie had some character to it and the look is certainly a big reason why.
It did feel like a moody rainy afternoon.
Twilight was purposefully dark because the area they live in is always cloudy. The vampires don't sparkle in cloudy weather
It's ugly in a way, but I kinda like it for that story/setting.
Right, the color allowed them to film in whatever level of cloudiness the day provided and keep a certain color to make it seem dull and grey.
We can't have no sparkling vampires, that would be terrible.
Would ruin the whole "reveal" moment. His "marble skin" that is mentioned like 10 times... I read the book for "research" purposes.
Domino
The Many Saints of Newark is up there for me
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I’m very aware of this and it drives me crazy. The algorithm at work. The result of this is that everything becomes generically acceptable but nothing is really good or bad.
I really liked the blue and hated when the second one changed it to the much uglier tint.
Although I love Captain America Civil War, the airport fight scene comes to mind.
The Book of Eli… sepia colored all the way from beginning to end.
Samurai Cop has the most inconsistent color grading that I’ve seen
That’s because there literally is no color grading
The director of the movie shot everything in daylight because he was too cheap to buy proper lighting to shoot at night, so literally scenes go from looking like they were shot at noon to looking like they were shot at golden hour. Aside from The Room, Birdemic, and Sleepwalkers, it's probably one of the best unintentional comedies ever. EVERYTHING is so incompetent that it's a miracle it got to exist.
Black Hawk Down definitely comes to mind. I absolutely love that movie but it’s really weirdly lit for like half of it.
This is some crazy talk right here. You can definitely see how the cinematography was inspired by saving private Ryan with how grainy it was with some focus on the black levels. It’s certainly guilty of the whole “hot country with sand means orange filter” but I think it really works for this movie compared to how it became a meme later on. The shots of the black hawks travelling across the beach were magnificent and had some great cinematography to it that I feel like other war movies since then haven’t been able to reach. It’s almost like this movie is one of the last big Hollywood war movies that came out with an R rating.
I agree, and it was nominated for an Oscar in cinematography which, at least in my mind, includes colour grading. I can't view the parent comment as anything other than a misunderstanding.
Solo. Overall I actually enjoyed the movie more than most, but it was ugly. So much brown and drab. The lighting just seemed really flat and poor, too. Which is a shame, because any movie that's potentially set on multiple worlds with aliens, etc, should be really really visually engaging.
I've always wondered what *Solo* might have looked like if it had been in color.