I was working on creating a custom study material sometime last month and I noticed that a monolithic template had been adopted by Nigerian cinematographers and filmmakers for what night should look like and it had adopted the cyan colour scheme.
Immediately after this observation, I took to Instagram and asked why this scheme had been adopted and I got varied response ranging from beginners who had simply adopted this style for lack of experience and wanting to be in the trends to those who weren’t pushing the bounds of their creativity to explore the new and undiscovered… in the midst of all of this, it struck me that I could put a piece addressing this whilst highlighting tools that could help filmmakers improve upon their coloring elements to better help tell their stories.
First off, as par the night conversation, there have been many interpretations of how night can be stylized with several of Michael Bay movies {Director of Bad Boys 1&2, Transformers, etc) leaning to the cyan colouring and that’s where that might have been copied from but there are several interpretations as to how night could look like. There’s the pale and desaturated look to black and white like in Malcom and Marie or David Fincher’s Mank to the heavily dark as is adopted in HBO’s Euphoria. There are various visual textures that one could pull from and adopt to enrich their story instead of relying on what is trendy which eventually results in the entire industry looking like a pyramid scheme where what’s at the top tickles down to the bottom, lacking visual diversity and mostly looking like an examination where everyone copied from each other.
This is also applicable to the music visual industry and what this speaks to me is that as an industry we are yet to position ourselves in a space where we can be recognized for our differences. Just as the Nigerian geographic space is an ensemble of various languages, cultures and attires, our film industry can be so much more than it currently is and can push the boundaries of what it is possible. I’m in no way saying that what currently is is bad, its simply that there’s so much more we could be exploring rather than limiting ourselves to one look.
Now delving into show LUT, this isn’t exactly something new, it dates almost a decade back. Show LUTS area set of mathematical constraint that is creatively put on your colour process to give a definitive taste or in very lay man words “It’s the kind of house you build a plot of land” with the land here being the colour space that is readily available on your camera whether that be a C-Log 2 from Canon, Arri-Log from Arri, S-Log from Sony, etc while the house in this case is the Show LUT and based on the cinematographers preference would determine what the final look is and how pleasing it is to the eyes. Its your job to design this Look Up Tables (LUTs) and put them through various arrays of test to ensure that they work for several conditions. You test these but shooting a bunch of test footage with wardrobe that would be used on the project and in various locations, under various lighting conditions and then you can tweak it till its perfect. Back in the days, the show LUT was built into the film stock and so cinematographers would first choose the film stock that best suited the visual experience they were aiming for but now, you build it yourself which is great because filmmakers can now in the accurate ways show their stories rather than just take what was offered by manufacturers. For example, if your shooting you’re shooting at night, it’d be better you create a show LUT that’s a couple of stops under exposed so that when you light your scenario, you have a rich digital negative that allows you to room to push shadows and other elements and come out with a clean product as opposed to manufacturers standard that would end up noisy amongst other stuff.
When you’ve shot your footage and applied your show LUT, you can move in the footage to your post production software like DaVinci Resolve or Adobe Premiere Pro and start in processes in your post production pipeline like color adjustments amongst other thing. Filtering your footage on a trusted LUTs monitor on set turns you into a live or in the moment colorist and you can make in the moment decisions using other tools to ensure you get the best possible look for your footage. Your Color Decision List (CDL) is a stepping block from LUTs and you can use these CDLs (exposure manipulation, white balance, tint) to further enhance your work. There’s always the option of hiring a daily colorist that’s on set and manages all of these processes but if all is properly set up, then that doesn’t have to be an option.
The benefits of creating a LUT is that it creates a cast-mold and all you need do funnel your footage through it to know what exactly works and what to adjust rather than going through the hassle of figuring everything out in post-production.
And just incase you need a visual aid to understand all Daniel said, here’s a YouTube video introducing the concept by Oleg Sharonov.
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Daniel Ehinem is a filmmaker in every sense of the word as he is a Director, Cinematographer, Sound Editor, and Colourist. He occasionally facilitates film-making workshops organized by Canon Central and Northern Africa. Connect with him on Instagram here or watch him break down film making bits on YouTube here.
