Film Visual Quality – Alchemy is Not Dead

As the quality and accuracy of colour and tonal reproduction of film emulsions continues to improve, filmmakers are seeking more creative ways to express mood in a film, or to gain greater impact in their photography. The colour film process, once regarded as an immutable standard, is now just one more of the variables in the photographic system, to be added to art direction, lighting and exposure on the set, to film grading for theatrical prints, to video colour correction and most recently to digital colour correction. In some ways, these techniques simply restore the full set of tools to the cinematographer that the stills photographer has enjoyed since the invention of photography. The more conservative view, that any post production technique that alters the image is somehow denying the cinematographers' control, is indicative of the general change from non-interactive (pre-planned) to interactive (flexible) methods that many technologies have passed through. — As an example of processing variation, the technique of “bleach bypass” is explained, with examples demonstrating the effects of interaction of lighting, exposure, processing and grading on the eventual quality of the image. The relevance of this technique in the future context of digital film grading is discussed.

Published

1999-07

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M001199

ISBN

978-1-61482-948-5