"That’s the paradox of contemporary film preservation. For a film to be preserved, it must remain accessible. But to remain accessible, it must be modernized." - Well said!
I've been a portrait photographer for over 20 years. I work with and see the color.
Granted, my images have a warmer (Red/Magenta) tinge that I prefer.
That modern shift to Green/Cyan in the movies is atrocious. I don't know what to attribute that trend to. I have a couple of theories.
One is that they probably teach this "new" approach in colleges that stipulates that you should push G/C into the shadows and R/Y into the highlights. Supposedly that sort of color separation technique adds to contrast and appeal (NOT). They call it the "Hollywood" or "Blockbuster" look. I don't know who started this but IMO most younger colorists follow or are forced to follow it.
Two, and it's a silly one, another modern trend. The "bad" or "harmful" blue light from digital screens. The marketing of blue-blocking prescription and reading glasses is a heavy one. That "blue-blocking" coating add a magenta filter to the glasses. If I were to use them while color editing, of course, I'd be overcorrecting on the green side (opposite of magenta).
This was such an interesting piece! While the color change doesn’t totally “grind my gears” I feel a bit foolish for not thinking about this before. Cyan IS everywhere. Really appreciate the technical take!
I've never thought so much about different editions of media content, I really love reading these essays! Even when I've never seen the content, it's very compelling. I don't normally want to read content that speaks to such concrete or specific examples if I have not engaged with the content myself, but there's something A) about how Mikhail writes and B) about the idea of different editions or versions of content as always in flux that makes Textual Variations fun and accessible.
Also, I've mentioned a couple of fan edits of LOST, and now I'm super curious about what you'd think about 'Circle' in relation to the colour-grading. The fan editor is 1000% doing all kinds of colour-grading changes (not to mention just like... adding in little musical cues from outside of LOST).
"That’s the paradox of contemporary film preservation. For a film to be preserved, it must remain accessible. But to remain accessible, it must be modernized." - Well said!
I've been a portrait photographer for over 20 years. I work with and see the color.
Granted, my images have a warmer (Red/Magenta) tinge that I prefer.
That modern shift to Green/Cyan in the movies is atrocious. I don't know what to attribute that trend to. I have a couple of theories.
One is that they probably teach this "new" approach in colleges that stipulates that you should push G/C into the shadows and R/Y into the highlights. Supposedly that sort of color separation technique adds to contrast and appeal (NOT). They call it the "Hollywood" or "Blockbuster" look. I don't know who started this but IMO most younger colorists follow or are forced to follow it.
Two, and it's a silly one, another modern trend. The "bad" or "harmful" blue light from digital screens. The marketing of blue-blocking prescription and reading glasses is a heavy one. That "blue-blocking" coating add a magenta filter to the glasses. If I were to use them while color editing, of course, I'd be overcorrecting on the green side (opposite of magenta).
There you have it.
This was such an interesting piece! While the color change doesn’t totally “grind my gears” I feel a bit foolish for not thinking about this before. Cyan IS everywhere. Really appreciate the technical take!
Excellent essay. I love this kind of hyper-specific dive into a topic.
At the risk of sounding silly, can you identify the two versions by their colour grade here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FIlm/s/gLLjFO6RIH
And more importantly, are any of the two the ‘original’ colour grade? It doesn’t seem like it, but I don’t know how blue the original blue was!
I've never thought so much about different editions of media content, I really love reading these essays! Even when I've never seen the content, it's very compelling. I don't normally want to read content that speaks to such concrete or specific examples if I have not engaged with the content myself, but there's something A) about how Mikhail writes and B) about the idea of different editions or versions of content as always in flux that makes Textual Variations fun and accessible.
Also, I've mentioned a couple of fan edits of LOST, and now I'm super curious about what you'd think about 'Circle' in relation to the colour-grading. The fan editor is 1000% doing all kinds of colour-grading changes (not to mention just like... adding in little musical cues from outside of LOST).