In this still, we can see a key light coming from camera left while an over-exposed practical overhead provides a gentle gradient fall-off across the background - while also motivating the hair light. In order to determine which type of ratio you will be metering, examine all sources of light in the frame and consider how the light is interacting between the subject of the frame and the background or foreground. The advantage of using a LUT, however, is that it will work with any program, camera, or monitor with user LUT support (which is most of them). More advanced solutions are vastly more intuitive, but the basics remain the same. Because this isn’t a plugin or built into a monitor, we’ll have some things to work around. IWLTBAP (I don’t get it either) offers false color LUTs on a pay-what-you-can download model. I wanted to illustrate a completely free-of-charge process for this article so anyone can start learning these valuable skills immediately. (Here’s one I grabbed from the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece A Serious Man, imaged by the living legend, Roger Deakins.) To measure any contrast ratio in false color, follow these steps. Using False Color to measure contrast ratios is a slightly different process than using it for exposure metering. Here is a fantastic breakdown of how to use False Color by PremiumBeat author Noam Kroll. Using free online resources like Stills From Beautiful Films to pull shots from some of my favorite films into Resolve (or any other program or device with false color capabilities), I was able to immediately see the ratios used by some of the most influential cinematographers of all time. Once you have a basic understanding of these concepts, learning contrast ratios is easy. The ratio itself represents the relationship between the key side of the subject and the illumination of the background. This ratio helps guide the eye of the viewer to narratively important areas of the frame in an all-but-invisible way. The second most commonly used ratio is Key to Background. This ratio can represent everything from newsy, flat footage to moody, high-contrast cinema-style lighting. It is the most commonly used ratio due to its utility when lighting people. This ratio describes the relationship between the amount of light falling on the key side of the subject compared to its fill. Key to Fill is the most commonly used contrast ratio. In theory, you can compare any two areas in the frame, but the majority of the time you will be working with either a “Key to Fill” ratio or “Key to Background.” Key to Fill On set, you typically measure this ratio in stops, but you can also measure all contrast ratios IRE. I had a name for the concept I needed to learn: “contrast ratios” (or “lighting ratios”).Ī contrast ratio is a representation of the difference in exposure between two areas in a frame. I began to search for what, precisely, was making this footage hard to grade, furiously researching any new lead in forum threads long forgotten.įinally, I stumbled across an article that rewarded my patience. Through these programs, I was able to give my footage a “look,” but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been slapped on top of the mysterious underlying condition afflicting my footage.Īs I continued working as a colorist, I realized that much of the footage I was getting was suffering from similar consistency issues. I began to refresh myself on the basics of color theory before diving headfirst into color grading programs like Resolve. I began to try to find the root cause in my process. Over the course of my quest, I evaluated depth of field, lighting, tracking shots - nothing was getting my footage to the level of consistency I wanted. In my years of experience in film production, one of the greatest hurdles I had to overcome was lack of visual consistency from shot to shot. In this write-up, learn how you can use contrast ratios to define your visual style and build a consistent aesthetic in every scene.
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