Why do all short films look the same? We analysed the Whiplash short and feature film and found out. Movie LUTs & LR Profiles - movieluts.com Premiere Pro Color Grading Masterclass - course.movieluts.com
When I watched the short film for the first time, what immediately jumped for me was how the difference in set design can change the whole experience, in the short with a more "real life" set and lightning Fletchner seems more like a regular asshole teacher. But in the feature film, the bigger budget allow them to create an special room with an specific atmosphere to it, one that feels like you are entering a whole different level from the practice room of your school, it made Fletchner this larger than life figure and now you are in his domain.
I remember this being levelled at Star Trek: TNG. In the series, the sets were well lit and very open. In the movies, i.e First Contact, the set was really dark. But it added depth and atmosphere to the movie.
It's an interesting idea to consider watching the short film after the feature. You start to wonder maybe if even the audience was duped into thinking Fletcher is more than he actually is. At the end of the day, maybe he really is just an asshole.
I'll save you the time. The reason why short films look different than featured films is that short films often use cheaper equipment, directors use everyday items for set designs, and little to no color manipulation. Basically, feature films have big budgets and can afford to hire professionals to craft every detail.
@@TheAlison1456 They don't have access to compelling set locations, meaning they need to use common spaces. Therefore, no amount of color grading and manipulation will make their movie stand out. Also, most of the actors and most of the crew aren't professionals, just people the directors or producers can find on short notice. In short, short films don't have a dedicated team in most instances...which translates into a less polished appearance. It's the same with indie music. Indie music isn't "bad," just not on the level of professional productions, due to the lack of professional equipment, recording spaces, and engineering.
@@TheAlison1456 Unfortunately, short film directors are questioned/critisized when they apply unnatural looking colors and extreme low lighting in their films. When its done in a feature film people pay for it and watch it in theaters without questioning or thinking about what's the necessity of such unnatural colors and extreme low lighting photography throughout the film
Would not work, the lighting is different. Contrast ratio in the short film is non existent and the light is bouncing around from everywhere because its not controlled.
@@JJ-zo7jv it depends on the color grading, if you let a professional colorist grade a film, you would be looking at a higher level film because an industry professional has worked on it. But thats is not what he said, he said slap a filter on it and most viewers would not know the difference. Thst is incorrect becase lighting is a lot different and the mood and tone will never look the same. Not to mention that one scene is shot in the evening or night and the other is shot during the day with HUGE windows visbile in the shot. That yellow look during the day time would create a totally different feeling or golden hour or something like that. No way in hell they can look those 2 scenes look the same.
@@Yodd he’s not saying they wouldn’t know the difference in comparing the two films. He is saying the audience wouldn’t know the difference between watching this film and a professional film. And if that’s the case, he’d be correct. Because besides color grading, the shirt is still good.
Great video but I think the issue on short films are budget and set design obviously comes into that as does location hire and lighting constraints. Natural light and windows are cheap. Once the sets are lit then costs go up exponentially not just in crew and equipment but in time on set. This difference is purely down to cost. It’s just about cost and every short film has that constraint. It’s hard to grade daylight to become too stylised without it looking forced. Nothing new here but we’ll put together. Thx
I've been going through the comments thinking the same thing, so you're not alone. A few are commenting about whether the script is also made with AI as well as sounding like one.
I think that the distinct yellow light and color grading that Whiplash is known for is one of the most defining characteristics in it's appearance and aethsthetic. Whiplash is a dim, dramatic, tense, loud movie, these themes are contrasted by a dark yellow, black, brown atmosphere. It's warm, but not cozy. The darkness and heat make it feel crampt and uncomfortable, you can feel the pressure of the characters, the sweat dripping down their faces, the blood on the drumset. It all contributes to envelope the viewer in the universe and surroundings of the movie, Whiplash would not be nearly as impactful without it. Look at the short film, the entire movies affect has been cut in half.
Would have been more interesting if it was black and white with only the brass of the instruments popping out as isolated color. That truly would have made the movie stick out even more.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 Remember when movies strived to capture natural colors, and the "look" of the film was less important than the ACTION/STORY in the film? I can count on one hand how many films have achieved notoriety through wonky color grading. The two biggest contenders arguably being _The Matrix_ and _O Brother Where Art Thou?_ But what about all these films that insist on muted colors, teal/orange grading, etc? They were as quickly forgotten as they were released. In contrast, look at the dozens of films over the last 50 years that achieved worldwide noteriety, yet didn't have any wonky color grading. _Lawrence of Arabia, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Few Good Men, Rio Lobo, Shane, etc.._ on and on. I could list dozens of Technicolor films that have stood the test of time. None of them relied on artsy fartsy color grading to stand out. They stood out with their stories, performances, cinematography, direction, etc. The last 20 years of film has barely been able to produce anything notable. Meanwhile the list of famous films between 1950 & 2000 is virtually endless.
@@sixstanger00 Yup, Hollywood in particular is very notorious for same-looking dozen-ware and movies as a form of entertainment and storytelling have really stagnated badly. I sometimes wonder why? Did digital cinematography make everyone lazy and boring? Or maybe it's the arrogance and the Egos of so many in the movie business that makes them go like "let's just play it safe and use the same ingredients as usual.".. Most of my favorite movies are from the 80s, 70s and also from the EARLY days of cinema up until the late 1930s. I'm a huuuge sucker for silentmovies because they were still VERY much aware of film being a visual medium for storytelling without too much distraction.
Now do "The Whiplash short film but it's yellow". It would be really cool to see how different color grading would change the feeling of the short film. But seriously, this is a great summary of the importance of various aspects of filmmaking that many tend to ignore.
@@justinchey2281 This was quick and dirty, but I was curious too, so I took about 10 minutes to regrade the short film. While it's not the best, scene-by-scene color grading, the results speak for themselves. If this bares a resemblance to any of David Fincher's projects, it's no coincidence, I'm a massive fan of those sickly teal and yellow palettes. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lPgT7XRiF6k.html
How does this have 1 million views but provide so little actual depth. You just basically say "the color grading was good lol" - BUT WHY? What makes it good? Throwing adjectives around isn't specific.
Another very interesting point not discussed here is how acting works. We all know what looks or feels like an act and what feels natural. All of these vary over time. Watch a movie from the 70s and the colors are usually just "natural". Watch a movie from the 30/40s and the acting might seem uncanny, even if acting almost never looks or feels like real-life. Now you can list all the exceptions you have seen 😁
The dark backgrounds of the feature film really help highlight the relationship between Fletcher and Andrew, there's nothing to get lost with in the background and its just them 2. It also helps give us a feeling of understanding with Andrew and how he is overwhelmed and focused on him. Even more so because Fletcher is almost always wearing black so there is nothing else to look at but his stare. Finally I always loved how the only color in the band room was yellow as if the room was just emitting the brass color of the instruments.
Lighting is often a key component - the ability to shape light takes both skill and often equipment resources that beginning film makers lack. The ability to color grade - even on a budget - with tools like Davinci Resolve being economically available to basically everyone - is a bit easier to accomplish. The short you show above looks like absolutely no thought or attention went into the color grade - it looks rather garish and video-like - a bit of effort there could have vastly improved the richness of the image. Even fixing lighting in post is becoming easier with the amazing sophistication of Resolve - as well as improving the look of even low-budget cameras...
it's not about no effort. Clearly the footage has been colored and somebody put some effort into coloring it, but unfortunately it wasn't a Hollywood level colorist or even a professional one. Most likely that the editor himself, who knew how to use davinci, colored it, hence the result being "video-like". But it was still colored, nonetheless
@@honeyflow9450 No one is trying to be harsh, just honest. The color grade was too amateur. The director clearly had a good story and ability to direct actors. Not so much a Cinematographer or DP. Adding those elements changes so much.
@@heartspacefilm it’s shocking how poorly informed these comments are. Have you any idea the gear they used or who is starring in it. It would have been fully crewed on an absolute professional level and the best kit used. It would have been an obvious priority to get the performances to tell the story as anyone can light and stage for a feature film once there is a feature budget. That js why shorts are just not approached in a Hollywood studio style look. The blocking etc is almost identical because they had time.
@@heartspacefilm sure but the implication that this look happens because of a lack of talent or experience is nonsense. It is wholly intentional and strategic. A nutless monkey can push that image towards a teal and orange or whatever. I am sure that it’s shot on an Alexa and that everything was an intentional choice to prioritise flexibility of shooting and capturing performance versus look. By far the biggest pull for the shoot would have been to get JKS on board and to maximise his time. The writer would want to show the studio that he can get a performance out of a top actor, as it’s the central role of two. All fully intentional.
This more or less explained my quarrel with Alice in Borderlands. The set design is stylised, the costume design is alright, the characters are highly stylised, so why is it that I feel like something is off? Turns out, it was the lighting and colour grading.
You know, I came to the comments because I wasn't sure it was AI at first. But after several minutes in, it's obvious. The cadence starts off sounding natural enough, but the pronunciation is just too consistently "off" that it's not attributable to normal variation in speaking. The way the word "design" is always pronounced the same odd way, with a slightly rounded and lengthened vowel in the second syllabe, as well as the fact that the narration never puts emphasis on the word "set" in "set design," the way anyone familiar with filmmaking would, gave it away for me. There are other tells involving syllabic emphasis such as "stylized" and "contrasting." Particularly, I think a human narrator would usually say "SHORT films" more often "short FILM," especially when contrasting them with "FEATURE fims" (which is emphasized correctly). There are also some places where the script likely omitted a comma, such as "warm moody colors."
I also think like when you watch a short film it on average lasts 30 minutes. A feature film on average has between 75 and 210 minutes. The time you have, to settle into the theme and the setting of the film is much less in a short film. Thus a realistic (no distinct yellow tint) color palette allows you to quickly get yourself settled in while a distinctly different look depends on you adjusting to it. I hope it makes sense to you who is reading this. For example a news show where everyone wears jedi robes or looks like the alien from the Alien movies is harder to get used to than a show where people wear standard human clothes like a suit or jeans
Short films typically are not color-graded to within an inch of their lives, and typically have a more natural look with less grading and more natural light. Less "heightened" and more of a documentary look. I enjoy both looks at different times.
The color grading on the short was precisely done in my non expert opinion. The set is a room illuminated by natural light. Overdoing some orange cast for example would look out of place. So, I’d say the grading matched what the short was able to give during production. I think the most overseen technicalities in a budget movie must be lighting. Camera and lenses might be expensive, but lighting and rigging sets? Probably even more expensive than a camera and a set of lenses (sure, not talking about Arri or Cooke lenses😊).
The set being changed to a theatre sound stage also brought in the element of light and dark , and the DP and colorist could guide the viewer's eyeballs using power windows and dodge and burn. So I do agree what you said - if the colorist graded the short in that classroom with the warm tones of the practicals in the other location, it would look ridiculous. But then the adds for their luts at the end - they do just that. The Joker look was not all color grading. Yet after all the explanations of the locations in the video - you show a nurse and put the "Joker" lut on it - which in my opinion looked terrible.
Год назад
@@JimRobinson-colors the green cast grading on “The Joker” scenes when talking to the social worker/psychiatrist, and in hospital works for showing the gritty atmosphere, and because the practicals are fluorescent lights. A lot of fluorescent lights have this green cast characteristics and it’s easy to extrapolate that on the grading, different than a daylight cast that is neutral. But yes, if they wanted to, they could have graded more neutral, but would lose the gritty looks that matches with the psychotic mind of Arthur Fleck.
@ You missed the point. I wasn't referring to the "why" in the Joker, only that the colorist wasn't grading on a neutral canvas, she had set design, costume and lighting to aid in the actual grade. The adding of LUT at the end is not how any of these movies are graded. And contradicts a lot of what was said in the video.
Год назад
@@JimRobinson-colors I was just adding to your comment, further explaining to the average viewer the why it works there. And yes, totally agree with what you just said Jim.
Honestly prefer the short’s visual style, that’s what college classrooms actually look like. Also, the high color saturation of the feature is a bit much sometimes.
Experience is key, you got that right. I am often struggling to find the right sound resources, e.g. finding a composer who fits the project and budget but also finding the right voiceover talent, which you solved brilliantly here. Would be lovely to see you share your experience gained in such a video. If you were to include credits, e.g. listing the VO talent, you would also help filmmakers like myself.
I worked with the DP on the short and it was a pitch for the feature. He is also friends with the director of the feature. They switched DP for the feature because the DP of the short was not that well known yet. That is why the short also has shot for shot scenes.
Great video! I also noticed similar differences while watching the short film Curfew, and later it's full-length version, Before I Disappear. You have very concisely and simply answered a question for me. Thanks, man!
I think a major part of what makes short films feel more amateur or lower budget is the camera work itself. You can tell in the short film that shots were either hand held and so partially shaky especially with angel changes mid shot, or it is just stuck on a tri pod. The feature film clearly has very nice gimbles or computer assisted camera movements as shots are steady and there is no shake even with pans. Also shots that are steady are typically from a bit further of a distance in the feature film and we never get any foreground blue like the cymbal in the short film.
This was a great watch, especially for an aspiring DP/gaffer. Also, I happened to love both the short, and the feature. Very rarely are feature films so true to their short film source material. Great film essay!
I think numbing down short films to just a step below feature films is an exaggerated way of seeing things. There are filmmakers who decide on doing a short instead of a larger story. It all depends of what you want to show to the public. I don't believe the color grading in the short film is bad, could it be enhanced entirely by having a bigger budget and more experience? Maybe, but there are details in Chazelle's work on his short film that I believe can't be numbed down to "short on money and experience". He's telling the story with different elements and people in each. You can't just say that because there's a more "simplistic" design in general to the naked eye, it's worse. There are other elements being used.
Год назад
Well, in this case, this was kinda shot as proof of concept short film to get the feature and it shows. I saw many short films that look on par with feature films.
Short film DOPs and colourists are not often the same people who are paid to make feature films. More feature film DOPs and colourists are more experienced, and therefore have earned the confidence to be able to make bold decisions without distraction.
To explain what I mean a little clearer, it's not really even a lack of talent in short films, it's more to do with confidence. Often when people have less experience and are less sure of themself, they will tend towards "safer" choices.
I might just not have caught it but I don't believe anything to the contrary was said in the video. Yes, it was said often that many short films have tbe same look but never that all of them did. It's a part of the simplification of concepts that runs through the video. A generalization that shouldn't need to be elaborated on because this isn't a critique of short films as a medium, it's a simplified look into set design, lighting and color grading framed within the context of the stereotypical short film look. And yes it's simplified because it's just meant to give some insight to anyone interested in the topic without you needing to already have a grasp on concepts only people experienced in the field would have.
@@JosephJoeseph It's a silly generalization that will lead people to a false sense of understanding. Anyone who believes that most short films share the same look simply has not seen enough short films. But since this is the internet, we can make whatever sweeping generalizations we want and call it education for those who want a deeper understanding than they currently have. Gimme a break. It's a normative claim about a format that is misguided because after all runtime doesn't dictate budget.
@@AccipiterPictures That's fair, but it'd also be ignorant to say the 'short film look' doesn't exist. Many short films are amateur films and many short films share the look due to it. I'll be the first to admit I don't watch many short films but I do know that no matter how untrue a stereotype may be there is always a precedent for it. To draw a paralell, lots of trailers have a very specific style of editing and sound design, this time because it's the tried and true method to be completely milquetoast and don't even slightly stand out from the crowd whatsoever, because as we know, sparking no interest in your potential customer is the best way to get them to be interested in your product. But tangent aside, although lots of trailers break this rule and stand out as great appetizers for the movie in question, it's undoubtable that the precedent exists. Could and should it be used to critique the medium as a whole? Of course not! Could it be used to explain how editing and sound design can invole certain emotions and tell certain kinds of stories? I think yes. Could it be misinterpreted by certain viewers who may trick themselves into thinking 'ah yes, all short films look like this', sure, but the video hardly ever even suggested that, if someone infers that that can only be put on them for beind an idiot who acts educated about things they know nothing about.
@@JosephJoeseph I'm dubious of the conceit as a whole, but if someone finds it helpful on the way to building a greater understanding, I guess it's not the worst thing in the world. I just think it's sullies a discussion with generalizations based on eye-catching buzzwords where there are other, more insightful learning resources that may not have the same slick editing and don't attract the same viewership but may actually be more helpful to folks. Calling that out is hardly a travesty. I think exploring trailer conventions is far more fertile ground for discussion because trailers tend to have a lot more in common with one another than short films. This video is not only narrowing the focus to commonalities between short films (of which there are some worthy of discussion) but commonalities between the look of short films. I feel the notion of there being a "short film look" is preposterous. Certainly the visual differences exhibited between the short film version of Whiplash and the feature are not indicative of a broad enough trend to call it "the short film look." I think it's unhelpful and limiting. What about short films with only night exteriors? What about short films with elaborate costuming and/or lighting? What about short films shot on camcorders for a purposely gritty look? What about features shot on camcorders for a purposely gritty look. I suppose it may be helpful to someone, but this kind of reductionism chafes at me. I see it in my feed thinking it's click bait and they're going to explain how this is a bit of a misconception, but they go ahead operating on the notion that most short films have a look in common with one another. I just fundamentally disagree with that.
I've been producing short films for a while and this video very much helps. My newest short film we're producing looked quite cinematic to me, and it was actually all in the color grade and camera quality. (That aside, I do believe the five points you covered are all crucial) All my old shorts were filmed on iphone, which lacks a lot of depth and clarity. Also, a lot of my color grades either a) didn't exist, or b) were cheap and tacky. I often slapped grades on without thinking, and ended up butchering the look of the short. So I believe that a bad color grade is worse than no color grade. That newest short that I thought looked very cinematic was filmed outdoors on a Canon DSLR. The lighting was incredibly diffuse as it was cloudy that day, so the whole sky was one big softbox light. The Canon DSLR was a huge step up from the iPhone, and really lent to the overall look. However, the real standout thing was the color grade I added, which looks very similar to the golden-green shades used by the Whiplash film shots you demonstrated. The film was in a forest, so the sunset looks with the gold highlights and greener shadows was quite appealing, as it matched the natural look of the forest quite well. That aside, I do believe that each shot requires a different aspect to shine through. All shots require costume design, set design, and at least a DSLR camera to look very good (iPhone _can_ look good, but it's tricky), but the lighting and color grade are what makes or breaks a shot. However, in some cases, color grade is more important; in others, lighting is more important. However the two work in tandem, overall making both - in my opinion - the most important aspect of cinematic footage.
Great points! An upgrade to a DSLR where you can change lenses and achieve different focal lengths is a huge difference from a smartphone camera. A good color grade can further enhance the story as you said, and it's best when it's used in tandem with the lighting on the set.
@@movieluts Oh, I also must ask: did you use ChatGPT to write the script of this video? It sounds a lot like ChatGPT's wording to me. Pardon me if I'm incorrect.
You're right, bad color grading is worse than no grading at all. I see a lot of bad color grading in modern film and TV. Just because you CAN color grade, doesn't mean you SHOULD. The example that comes to mind is the remake of Hawaii Five-O. The original show did it's best showcase the vivid, bright colors of Hawaii, in part because they wanted to show off the new color TVs. Drab colors wouldn't look very different from black and white TVs. This wouldn't convince people they needed to buy a new color TV. You can see this in a lot of late 1960s television shows. Anyway, fast forward to 2010, and color grading is edgy. All the brilliant colors of Hawaii have been sucked out. The show has low color saturation, and it's graded towards more greenish drab hues. It's awful! The worst choice ever for a show that takes place in the beautiful state of Hawaii. This is one reason why I never watched more than two episodes. The color grading similar to the fluorescent lit office scenes in The Matrix. It made sense in that case.
Great video, very well thought-out and incredibly educational. Can't believe no one else has noticed the AI Brooks Moore/How It's Made voice, though lmao. It's super convincing
@@jakesequeira9284 It's a thousand percent AI. 2:03 listen to the way he says "Sundance" -- no native speaker who is aware of film would say it this way. There are also numerous notable AI quirks all over the speech. Pay attention to the ends of sentences and phrases, you'll hear it.
I wish this wasn't read by ai. Very good video with excellent points. Just wish I had a personality attached to it. Someone I can relate to read it. Hearing an AI voice just through my focus off. Thanks for taking the time to make this though.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed. It was probably written by AI too. The way it followed the intro with dictionary definitions of short and feature length films is really unnatural and unnecessary.
The dark and yellow, almost "smoky" blur athmosphere choice is easy to understand, it creates the kind of ambiance you can find in concert rooms, piano bars and cabarets, i.e. the kind of places people associate with jazz music, so that everything reminds you the kind of mental universe the protagonists evolve in.
I don't understand why "feature films" ruin their look by colouring everything teal and blue: it looks bloody awful. Human skin isn't supposed to be that weird yellow-orange colour, either.
Really? Awarding someone pushing a slider to orange-teal (if not downright just pressing a button), because they somehow learned that natural colors are bad and now all looks the same? Phew...
@@snitheads Not really. If I see a movie with a car driving through the night an the light the car shines is blue I immediately know it's fake. If I see a teal tinge while it's broad daylight, I know it's fake. If people have teal skin color when not in direct light, I know it's fake. And if someone activates a Fleshlight and it's green, I know it's fake. Awarding breaking the immersion without even the intention of breaking the immersion, that's embarrassing.
I honestly like the look of the short film of Whiplash more, I actually used it as inspiration for my own feature film. For some reason the movie looks cheaper to me, and more minimalist.
A short film version of this RU-vid video would have been nice. In addition to a few instances of odd pronunciation and misplaced emphasis, the script was a great demonstration of teasing out a short answer into a 12-minute answer. I gave up at the halfway point, which was apparently two minutes before they finally got to talking about lighting.
Good video, one thing about modern color grading though, including the other films showcased in this video, is that I feel like they need to dial the intensity of the grade down by about 15%. Modern grading feels too consistently saturated for my tastes, especially when it's applied across the whole film. I don't mind it for certain scenes though, for example the intense orange of Vegas in BR 2049 served a very specific purpose. And as someone who spent the late 2010's in California, a very familiar look (wildfires).
Is this AI script made and read? a disclaimer would be nice, feels kinda manipulative, especially when you're selling luts. feels very greedy and low effort without a disclaimer.
I feel like short films have this more "alive" feel to them because most of the times people who are making them are really passionate about what they are making wich results in a pretty good looking product. Sadly the same could not be said about most big budget movies and even games nowadays.
Would this be an even more prominent issue when shooting digital as opposed to film? I assume shooting on film you’d pick a stock which gives you the tones and color balance you’re looking for.
Some people still prefer film over digital, but in todays age you can achieve a lot with digital, even fake it to look a lot like film. Of course it's not gonna be the same, but it is close.
Short films can look every bit as good as their feature counterparts - it's just a time, money, and skill thing. After all, commercials are short films and they often have budgets, per second, higher than features.
This sounds like the Wade C. voice from Wellsaid labs. All of their voices were cloned with the written consent of the voice actors, and they earn royalties every time it is used in a project. Wellsaid studio's highest tier pricing is $200 a month. A 12 minute video with a real voiceover artist of this quality would be at least $300.
A windowless room feels suffocating as it is. And then you have this intense stress before and after the trombonist is kicked out only to have the 2nd chair be the one who is flat. I think implying that the sweat is from the physical and emotional claustrophobia elevates that lit fuse that explodes when the chair is throne. Nail biting tension.
Number one and only reason is that the director wanted the instruments to pop out with that color grading which is understandable cuz in the short film, the instruments sort of just blend with everything else.
I think that in term of color correction there's also a difference between short and feature films. The movies has the hability to gave color a meaning, the relation between the different scenes and their colours are one of the key to do that. A feature film has more possibilities to create originals looks, because they have time to build ideas about what yellow means, what blue means, etc. I think it's natural that short films tend to use more "natural" or "realistic" looks, because they need to get straight to the point, probably the warm look of the feature film would have look exaggerated on the short film because it doesn't have the same construction of this dramatic scenario. And if you see a look too strong on a short film usually doesn't feel organic. (Still, I think this habit is something that can be broke with creativity)
The simple answer is that a compelling film drastically simplifies the visual narrative structure so that the actors performance stands out via distinct foreground and background separation. Every day settings and lighting are chaotic and random, so if they're used as is, there is little to no foreground and background separation; this makes the actors performance and the directorial tone feel flat and indifferent. The simple hack of the feature film version here isn't colour grading, it's replacing white walls lit by omni present daylight, with dark to black backgrounds lit by directional lights focused on the actors only. This creates a frame where only faces and hands stand out in a sea of dark, the only thing the audience considers is emotion; the concept of setting is erased entirely. It makes us feel, "There's you, there's me, and there's the music, and nothing else." Much like a tense police interrogation scene.
"this makes the actors performance and the directorial tone feel flat and indifferent." -> nonsense. i 100% disagree. The case for natural lighting: There are many examples, but one of the most famous ones in recent times is "The Revenant". You don't just color grade everything yellow and get a better movie
What it actually comes down to is boldness. on a feature a more experienced director will “we are doing it this way cause it will make the story better” and that’s that. on a short, all the film makers, including the director, are all trying not to make mistakes so they can get hired again. this causes them to look very similar. sticking to the traditional cinema color pallet like it’s law.
in my opinion the differences between the two boiled down to creative differences from whomever was the DP. With that being said I agree, bigger budgets allow more production value and a more experienced team, but the feature look could have been executed with a short film budget for sure. This is a bad comparison to make such a generalization about how short films look. Ive seen shorts that have visually blown me away and also features that leave you baffled at why it cost so much.
Strange comparison. The short film is a bright daylight set and the feature film is a low key dark interior with no windows. Something that helped the story when it had to be elaborated into a feature film.
It's a money issue. Most short films are shot on a shoestring budget. Which means less money for equipment, which means less sources of artificial light and proper ways to shape light. And if you are shooting on "hybrid cameras" such as the A7S III or Panasonic S5, you'll never reach the image flexibility of even (the super cheap) Blackmagic 4K / 6K. By shooting RAW, you can really bend the image to look exactly the way you planned it. If you try to mess a lot with videos shot on H264, you'll quickly learn the limitations of those files. I'm actually editing a project now where I'm blending 8K RAW footage from the Canon R5C and H264 footage from an A7III, and it's been a real struggle to match the shots. Due to budget being so tight, you end up using more natural light and due to the files having so little flexibility for post, you can't really mess too much on the color grading aspect of filmmaking.
@@Incog80 Not exactly a CON, but MASSIVE FILE SIZES (Every hour I shoot on my Blackmagic 6K G2 at 6K resolution on BRAW I'm getting almost 700MB of space occupied). I literally have to shoot directly to a SSD disk. There's no noise reduction. This is actually pretty good, since you want to do that on post production, but if you're doing fast projects where you just want to edit fast and be done with, some people feel like this is a CON (not for me). Other than these "CONS" (which I don't really see as a CON, just mild incoveniences for some people who want finish projects super fast), shooting RAW is a dream. You get all the information there, you can change ISO and WB while editing, which can be very forgiving if you're doing run n gun style of shooting and you didn't get the perfect settings dialed in while filming. You get the literal "RAW" image. No digital trickery being done on top. And super flexibility and LOTS AND LOTS of information on that image. You can literally change the color of the sky to purple without breaking the image.
@@Incog80 Depends on the camera you are using, resolution, compression rates, etc. You might be able to shoot with a super fast SD Card or maybe you'll need a SSD drive. One of the most common (but quite expensive solutions) are CFast cards. They are as fast as SSD drives, small size, BUT terribly expensive. I can buy 4-6 1TB SSD drives for the price of 1 TB CFast card. It all comes down to your workflow, camera, settings, etc. There's not really a solution that fits all needs, you have to research and find out the solution that best suits your needs :)
AWESOME video and explanation! Absolutely on-point. Your explanations and sample frames you pulled illustrated your points perfectly. My snap reaction was to say, yeah, well, budget, duh. But going further in-depth, and choosing a film made so similarily in short and feature form really enhanced the reasons bigger budgets make such a big difference.
Great breakdown, but i am sure the color grading of the short was a creative choice because of the budget constraints in regards to practical lighting and location choice. Grading a scene unnaturally is not really something aspiring filmmakers do if they want to be taken seriously.
creating separation with white walls is always a challenge even its very common. if the short film would be shot at night, it would be much more difficult to compare both. since it is not expansive to bring up 3 flex mattes that mimic sealing light or three practicals on the walls, it is not always about the money and the skills. they also should look for a room with no windows
One thing you don't mention is the connection between set design and lighting. Simply being able have a set, not needing a location, means being able to have a more flexible lighting setup. Lights can be above the actors, not just in places where the cameras won't see them. That's why the lighting can be more dramatic; it's easier to be more dramatic when lights can be wherever the DoP wants them.
Hmmm, I’m grading what I shot, and I have always this sentence in my mind: make the look in camera-grading only enhances what the set design, dp, and lighting crew managed to do on the set. When I see films that are poorly made I feel that someone tries to save it with grading. It’s very hard to grade bad shots, and for me, even the most talented colorist can’t help a bad shot/prepped movie.
