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A Single Man – live saturation spikes

The changing color in this film works as a clear emotional subtext essential to the story. Saturation is the life blood of the character’s emotion –missing. His environment is shrouded in deep desaturated earth tones evoking stability, unchanging, firm heavy ground. This is broken as his emotions are ignited and colors spark to life. People that engage his romanticism aesthetically or are positive and interesting saturate, but cutting back to him he is still desaturated. When they touch his heart or his lust, like lava breaking through the heavy earth, he saturates — a red-out head rush of lust or beauty peeking through. At times the overwhelming deepness is contrasted by brighter more saturated flashbacks of a better time and scenes of the mother next door playing with her children running about 20 IRE brighter than his dark sad introversions.

The mother and daughter bring the world to life with color until the husband comes and the colors fade away. Their young boy also seems to produce nothing but contempt in the main character George (played by Colin Firth). Over time through the saturation and desaturation it becomes clear that heterosexual men are the unyielding icon of a society that binds him and his emotions, and women, girls, and gay men are the beauty and inspiration that bring moments of joy and beauty back into his world.

We are lead to understand the influence of color in a brief dialogue with a young man where George states that red represents rage and lust and blue spirituality. The young man he is talking to has, for that moment, brilliant blue eyes, and bright red lips.

[***SPOILERS BELOW***]

At the end, he is inspired so deeply that his entire body becomes richly saturated and his love and life come back into him, this cathartic moment gives him final breathing room to move on from his sadness and then on from the world, fading back into desaturation and final death. This affirms the subtext of saturation being synonymous with living, and shows that the characters he is taken by are the ones he perceives to be alive inside and the ones that bring him back to life. Thus the colors show he is living in a dead world of oppression and sadness, this world of the 50s heterosexual man, where he is not allowed to attend the funeral of his multi-decade lover.

[***END SPOILERS***]

Overall color characterization:

Mostly done in warm tones, all 50s style colors, lots of blue in the desaturated greens, and a lot of subtle browns and creamy soft highlights.
The blacks tended to be crushed, which gave a sense of order, clean edges, and maintained contrast in what was a fairly deep toned image. These darker tones allow the low saturation to still feel rich and thick, which I feel has a more stable serious feeling, like something unchanging, stability, or a the heavy base of a mountain. The world does not feel flighty, airy or open, it feels settled and firm. The passing moments of high saturation feel firey, not light or fleeting, but tapping into something raw beneath the surface like lava coming through cracks  in the hard heavy earth.

A Single Man - Stephen Nakamura digital film colorist 35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279) to Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format)

A Single Man – Stephen Nakamura digital film colorist
35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279) to Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format)

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A Single Man - Stephen Nakamura digital film colorist 35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279) to Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format)

A Single Man – Stephen Nakamura digital film colorist
35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279) to Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format)

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A Single Man - Stephen Nakamura digital film colorist 35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279) to Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format)

A Single Man – Stephen Nakamura digital film colorist
35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279) to Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format)

This Must Be The Place – golden sunny

A hot gold wash sells this middle-American summer, balanced by a selection to maintain the rich cyan sky. Amber waves of grain show the classic beauty of an American road trip to a long time shut-in finally returning to the world.

This Must Be The Place  -  digital intermediate colorist Andrea Orsini  35 mm (Kodak Vision3 200T 5213, Vision3 500T 5219) negative to 2K digital intermediate

A strong gold wash is balanced out by a rich cyan sky selection.

This Must Be The Place  -  digital intermediate colorist Andrea Orsini  35 mm (Kodak Vision3 200T 5213, Vision3 500T 5219) negative to 2K digital intermediate

This Must Be The Place – digital intermediate colorist Andrea Orsini
35 mm (Kodak Vision3 200T 5213, Vision3 500T 5219) negative to 2K digital intermediate

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Masters Of Sex – warm with neutral punch outs

This scene is very warm, but high saturation apparel remain unaffected by the warm grade. Because of their more neutral balance and high saturation these items stand out quite a lot. It’s slightly distracting to me because they don’t quite fit in, but perhaps it indicates a rising popularity of saturated synthetic fabrics, which at the time were breaking new ground on a regular basis. According to http://www.straw.com/sig/dyehist.html in 1956 “One person working out of every 7 in the USA received his income from work performed in textile or apparel industries”

The interesting thing about this scene is that the colors that stand out are not worn by the main characters, they are not to draw attention to the dialogue but perhaps to draw it away. Most of this scene is posturing, the intermingling of people, winding down previous events and a calm before the storm to come. The dialogue itself is fairly benign.

Masters Of Sex - colorist Randy Starnes

Masters Of Sex – colorist Randy Starnes

Moneyball – retro look

Moneyball has a fairly nostalgic look, not one harkening to the time it takes place -the mid 90s- but perhaps the 60s, a time I identify in film by the hue of their greens and blues, fairly dark mid tones, cream highlights, and lowish saturation levels.

This look reminds me of the men in the story who sit at the table as advisers to the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt). Men who grew up as baseball’s professional format cemented and were part of a generation in awe of Babe Ruth -always looking for that monolithic star communities gather around.

This film takes place in their world. It might be the 90s, but their formative years were in the 60s. This look makes Billy (Brad) feel stuck in that time. And now the Goliaths of economic disparity and a calcifying industry formula have left him little hope for an equal fair shake on the field. He struggles amongst the old guard for a new idea to stay alive, and new direction to make his mark.

Money Ball  -  Steve Bowen digital intermediate colorist  35 mm Negative (Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, Vision3 500T 5219) to 4K digital intermediate, Kodak Vision 2383 prints

Money Ball – Steve Bowen digital intermediate colorist
35 mm Negative (Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, Vision3 500T 5219) to 4K digital intermediate, Kodak Vision 2383 prints

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Prometheus – monochromatic (blue) wash

Prometheus begins with a pre-dawn blue light. This scene feels as calm as morning coffee before the hustle and bustle of a world springing to life. The morning look works as a sort of double entendre of figurative foreshadowing: present day in lush Scotland finding cave paintings like the scene before, as well as linking that past with the monochromatic alien world to come.

Other colors in this film are almost exclusively reserved for humans and human habitat. The sterility of monochromatism isolates the cerebral logic and monolithic power of the alien world from the nature and emotion of humanity.

Prometheus - Stephen Nakamura Digital Intermediate Colorist Red Epic Redcode RAW (5K) (dual-strip 3-D) source format

Prometheus – Stephen Nakamura Digital Intermediate Colorist
Red Epic Redcode RAW (5K) (dual-strip 3-D) source format

Prometheus - Stephen Nakamura Digital Intermediate Colorist Red Epic Redcode RAW (5K) (dual-strip 3-D) source format

Prometheus – Stephen Nakamura Digital Intermediate Colorist
Red Epic Redcode RAW (5K) (dual-strip 3-D) source format

 

Minority Report – magenta skin

Magenta areas of the face can show a vulnerable emotional connection to the other character on screen. Often present at intense or cathartic moments: breakups, sexuality, flirtation, this is not a sign of physical pain or weakness, but an inability to overcome the emotional impact of, or receptiveness to, the other character’s identity.

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Minority Report (2002) – Color Timer Dale E. Grahn
VFX: digital color timer: PDI/Dreamworks Begonia Colomar; color timing supervisor: ILM Kenneth Smith
Super 35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279, Vision 800T 5289, Eastman EXR 200T 5293, Fuji Super F-500T 8572)
parts of the film were processed with bleach bipass
Print 2.35 : 1 Technicolor 35 mm (anamorphic) (Kodak Vision Premier 2393)

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Minority Report (2002) - Color Timer Dale E. Grahn VFX: digital color timer: PDI/Dreamworks Begonia Colomar; color timing supervisor: ILM Kenneth Smith Super 35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279, Vision 800T 5289, Eastman EXR 200T 5293, Fuji Super F-500T 8572) parts of the film were processed with bleach bipass Print 2.35 : 1 Technicolor 35 mm (anamorphic) (Kodak Vision Premier 2393)

Minority Report (2002)
Partners face off in an unfortunate circumstance;
both must follow their assigned path despite how it might hurt the other.

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John Anderton plays opposite an adversary.
Confused, hurt, but decisive, he is not vulnerable to the emotions of the other character (pictured below).

 

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Making his confession the adversary puts his life in John’s hands.

 

Minority Report – high contrast

The high contrast look of Minority Report can be misleading. In this shot the blacks are actually lifted and highlights are a good bit below max. This allows for a nice smooth roll off into black and a feeling of deep deep shadows without having a crushed or crunchy clipping feel. The highlights also have a bloom that softens the hard contrast and adds a dream like layer to the experience, as if a subtler version of the pre-cognition seen by the oracles of the film. This relationship heightens the experience in its assertion that the plot is itself a premonition of our own real world future.

Minority Report (2002) - Color Timer  Dale E. Grahn digital color timer: PDI/Dreamworks Begonia Colomar; color timing supervisor: ILM Kenneth Smith   Super 35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279, Vision 800T 5289, Eastman EXR 200T 5293, Fuji Super F-500T 8572) Print 2.35 : 1 Technicolor 35 mm (anamorphic) (Kodak Vision Premier 2393)

Minority Report (2002) – Color Timer Dale E. Grahn
VFX: digital color timer: PDI/Dreamworks Begonia Colomar; color timing supervisor: ILM Kenneth Smith
Super 35 mm (Kodak Vision 500T 5279, Vision 800T 5289, Eastman EXR 200T 5293, Fuji Super F-500T 8572)
parts of the film were processed with bleach bipass
Print 2.35 : 1 Technicolor 35 mm (anamorphic) (Kodak Vision Premier 2393)

 

 

 

Backlit Dark/Bright

Here we see two backlit yellow scenes, one from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the other from Children of Men.

Both cases communicate the negative properties of yellow: an uneasiness or dissatisfaction.

In Benjamin Button it is a monotone life with shadows into which his face cannot be seen -he does not know himself, only his paltry accommodations. This shot is soon juxtaposed by his leaving to see the world in cyan daylight.

In Childrenof Men, it is a frenetic unease in the face of cerebral antagonism. We quickly realize that he has a long established rapport with his kidnapper, and the light returns to normal for their more cordial conversation.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)  -  Senior D.I. Colorist Jan Yarbrough Arriflex 435, 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 50D 5201, Vision3 500T 5219) Sony CineAlta F23, Thomson VIPER FilmStream Camera; 4:4:4 1080p log

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) – Senior D.I. Colorist Jan Yarbrough
Arriflex 435, 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 50D 5201, Vision3 500T 5219)
Sony CineAlta F23, Thomson VIPER FilmStream; 4:4:4 1080p log

Children of Men (2006)  -  Digital Colorist Steven J. Scott 2K D.I. from 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T 5229)

Children of Men (2006) – Digital Colorist Steven J. Scott
2K D.I. from 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T 5229)