by mrandish | 2025-04-02 18:52:37+00:00
> color grades the shit out of color

Color grading itself isn't the problem. It's just a creative tool that can be used well or poorly. The problem is the intentional stylistic choices being made with the tool. I don't have strong opinions about TFAs arguments re: color in general but as someone deep into cinema production technology, there's a troubling lack of visual diversity in modern cinema and it's not just color, it's dynamic range and texture too.

It's crazy because this is happening in an era when digital cinema workflows from cameras to file formats to post-production allow everyone to capture, manipulate and distribute visuals with unprecedented levels of fidelity and dynamic range. Even DSLRs down to $3000 can capture full frame 4k camera raw with >14 stops of dynamic range which is insane. The great cinematographers of the past needed incredible skill to capture dynamic range from deep shadows to punchy highlights on film and it was always a risk since they had to wait for dailies. And they had little latitude to manipulate the image captured on the camera negative in post.

Today's imagers, formats and tools make capturing immense dynamic range not only fast and easy but cheap and virtually risk-free yet so much cinema looks flat and boring - and there's no technical reason for it. This video shows compelling examples contrasting recent movies with those shot on film in the 90s but also movies shot on much less capable digital cinema cameras in the early 2000s proving it's not digital or grading that's driving this. "Why don't movies look like movies any more?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTUM9cFeSo.

According to Hollywood cinematographers in the video it's partly intentional artistic choices, part the impact of composing and lighting for HDR, part lack of creativity and production skill and a big part over focus on flat lighting for VFX shots (because the more expressive the digital camera negative is, the harder it is for VFX teams to match with CGI). I'd add another factor which is that younger cinematographers, LDs and camera ops who learned on high dynamic range digital cinema cameras have been trained to shoot a flat LUT. While this technically maximizes the latitude available for color grading in post (which is generally a good thing), the issue is that many extend this to composing and lighting shots that have virtually no expressive look in the captured digital negative at all. Color grading in post should be for small tweaks, conforming shot-to-shot variance, mastering and, occasionally, saving the day when something goes wrong with a shot. While modern editing and grading tools are immensely powerful, re-framing and grading in post cannot substitute for creative on-set lighting, lensing, composition and exposure choices. Great cinematographers still create their looks with lighting, lens and camera as if there were going to be no grading in post. Unfortunately, this seems to increasingly be an under-valued skill.

The requirements of modern VFX also contribute in an indirect way as well. It takes on-set time and energy for the camera teams to capture and check the increasingly complex list of clean plates, reflection map spheres and color/contrast references with specialized LUTs and metadata at a variety of apertures for every shot. This takes time away from traditional lighting and composition and ultimately producers don't budget enough time. When something has to give - it's not going to be the VFX plates. In modern effects-heavy productions, the VFX director always has a team on-set for every shot verifying they're getting what they need. While this is necessary and understandable, unfortunately, the reverse is rarely true. The cinematographer is not supervising the lighting and composition of all the major VFX elements because they are being produced by a dozen different vendors over a year-long post-production cycle. This can still work when you have a director like a James Cameron who's hands-on throughout the process and has top-notch VFX director and cinematography skills. But that's not the norm. This creates systemic incentives for directors, cinematographers and LDs to lens flat, unexpressive shots. Because if there's not consistent, hand-on creative direction over the whole process, the editor and colorist are left trying to stitch together a bunch of shots and elements that weren't created to exist cohesively in the same frame. I suspect not managing this complexity is how visual disasters like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania happen.

Sadly, there's no reason it has to be this way. Technically, it's entirely possible to create a VFX-heavy movie that looks like every part of every frame was lensed by a master like Bernardo Bertolucci. There's nothing required that's even that hard or expensive compared to modern VFX blockbuster complexity or budgets. I think the reason we haven't seen it yet is two-fold: today's top producers, directors and cinematographers rarely have the new and diverse skill sets required in one person and none of the few with the skills and experience has had both the creative intention and budget to do it. I'm actually hopeful that maybe in the next few years someone like a Nolan or Cameron will decide to try to take it to this level as an aspiration. Currently, many of those with the budgets and cred are choosing to address the challenge by reverting to creating effects with practical sets and in-camera techniques. This can avoid the problem but it's looking backward instead of embracing the challenge and doing the pioneering work of figuring out how to push through and solve it. Whoever does it may discover all-new creative and expressive capabilities.