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BTS-GRAM | Behind The Scenes
@behindthescenegram

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How to use false color for your low-key, moody scenes By: @orensofferdp "For me, the key to crafting low-key, moody, “underexposed” images that maintain a sense of richness and don’t just feel muddy and flat is to counterbalance a lot of darkness and shadows with pockets of mid-range exposure and a few small dashes of the higher range of exposure to draw the eye and create more contrast within the image. This also serves the purpose of forcing your eye to adjust to the brighter areas of the frame, which closes down your iris and makes the darker parts of the frame feel even richer and darker. "I rely on a rough adaptation of the Zone System in order to build out an image in this way, and I use false color in order to check my work - it’s a great tool that allows you to strip away color contrast in the image and just look at it as a map of exposure values. So when I’m setting up an image that I want to be dark and moody but still feel rich and vivid, I am looking for a few things: first, a WHOLE LOT of purple and blue which roughly correspond to Zone I and Zones II-III respectively on the Zone System. This will create the baseline of darkness that will set the overall tone of the image. "Then, for certain smaller areas of the frame, I’m looking for green and pink in the false color, green corresponds to 18% Gray which falls right around Zone V-VI on the gradient scale, as well as pushing yellow and red for the brightest of bright highlights in the frame, which cover the highest reaches of the scale. And if my key lighting is falling a little short of that exposure level, I’ll boost it up to bring the exposure of that region of the frame into that range. There are two ways to go about creating this contrast for me, either punctuating dark environments with pockets of middle exposure or silhouetting darker foregrounds against lighter backgrounds. #behindthescenegram #falsecolor #behindthescenes #colorist #filmlighting #filmmaking