DrDre

More video samples coming soon…

This is what the soldier frame looks like, if I use the frame posted by piota as a reference:

Just to make sure, I uploaded the file I tested myself:

http://we.tl/s5pa7VEqeF

This is the prediction I get for the soldier frame, using the frame piota posted as a reference:

Here are three more comparisons for the 35 mm trailer, the bluray, and the latest color regrade for the bar fight scene.

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

Here is the second Raiders of the Lost Ark trailer in good quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkkzKHCx154

Comparisons with the latest bluray color regrade will follow…

I just rendered a video based on a LUT I made using the frame that piota posted in his thread, and again it worked very well. I use the latest version of Resolve Lite on windows 10. 

Anyone else experiencing problems with LUTs in Resolve?

DoomBot said:

Yep, i tried the lut in resolve that's how i was able to export a lut for After Effects. Neither program changed the colors like the color model, using the same scene in the movie. All it did was up the brightness, really odd.

It built a color correction model, then when finished i exported a lut and tried it.

 Are you sure you're using the most recent version? Because I used the standalone tool, to create a LUT, to match the Raiders of the Lost Ark bluray to the WOWOW as a test, and it works perfectly in Resolve Lite.

I tested a LUT in Resolve Lite, and it works. I placed the LUT in C:\ProgramData\Blackmagic Design\Davinci Resolve\LUT. It was then available when I started Resolve. 

Dunedain said:

NeverarGreat said:

DrDre said:
http://oi57.tinypic.com/3486avs.jpg" width="720" height="306" />

 The improvement is a good one :) The skin tones, hair, and shirt all look just right.

I'd say this one is still the best overall. It's gets rid of that carroty redness that's always a problem for everyone onboard the ship better than any other correction I've seen. Restoring a natural fair appearance. Great job. I'd be very interested to see these same settings from this version of the correction used on the Imperial officers we see on the Tantive IV, if you please, DrDre. :)

 Which officers are we talking about?

Did any of you test the LUT in Resolve? Does it work there? It's really odd, because I literally copied the LUT style exported by Briz converter, which it says is suitable for Resolve and After Effects. 

Actually the WOWOW is much more difficult to regrade. The bluray is already pretty close to the 35 mm references, aside from an orange hue, and a slightly warmer tone. 

Here's the update:

http://we.tl/sPuUNjrHz2

kk650 said:

 

The publicity photo looks warm while your current regrade settings look cold, especially the fleshtones. Ultimately it boils down to your own preference of course, cold fleshtones on Raiders of the Lost Ark don't look right to me personally and the majority of stills and 35mm prints i've seen support that assumption. Here's another still from that bar scene that looks warm like your previous still:

I don't know if you use the movie stills database website, if you don't you really should, its really helped me in the past with older catalog releases to get a better feel for how colours and fleshtones looked on film at the time it was shot, how the sets looked with their natural lighting, how costume looked in normal lighting etc. Here's the address below for Raiders of the Lost Ark:

http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/raiders-of-the-lost-ark-i82971

 The problem to me is that, don't look right is not a very objective criterium. Here's another teaser trailer that has most of its colors intact, and is consistent with the 1983 re-release trailer, confirms the color grading for the bar fight scene is accurate. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkkzKHCx154

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

kk650 said:

I personally wouldn't base a regrade for an entire film on the colours in a trailer, trailer colours are notoriously unreliable as poita said in the other thread and of course only show the colours of a few scenes, all the other scenes you'd have to guess at what they're meant to look like colourwise.

The trailer looks like it has a blanket blue tint all over it. You can see that especially in the bar scene in the trailer, it looks exactly as I think it must have looked on location when it was shot (ungraded basically) but with a blanket blue tint added to it. If you prefer that ungraded look, which I can understand, you have the problem of not knowing what other scenes not shown in the trailer would look like with the trailer's more neutral ungraded colour scheme. You'd be creating a film with a mismash of graded scenes taken from the blu-ray and ungraded scenes whose colours were taken from the trailer, creating an inconsistent colour scheme overall IMHO.

If you try to transfer the look of the trailer to the entire film I think you're just going to end up with a very blue looking film, which is what has happened with your latest regrade screencaps. The shots in the desert feel very cold in your regrade now and I don't think that's a good idea because it will create a disconnect with the viewer. They feel very unnatural to me.

I think you should discard the trailer as a colour grading reference because you don't have the colour scheme for the whole film. With your regraded shots in post 95 and 98 you were going in the right direction IMHO, they looked natural and very nice to me. I think my slight adjustments make them look even better but you may or may not agree with that. If you really want a less warm more neutral blueish colour scheme though, similar to the trailer, you should probably use the WOWOW release as a starting point rather than the blu-ray, that has a less warm more neutral feel to it overall and you have the whole film with the whole colour scheme, unlike the trailer where you just have a few scenes. Personally i'd continue using the blu-ray though, it feels more 'right' to me for a film shot in that era, even if it is more heavily graded.

 I did not use the trailer as a reference, apart from the bar fight scene. I will come to that later. I used the 35 mm frames as a reference, and then observed that the color scheme I ended up with is very close to the trailer. The only adjustments I made to the origonal color grading is to reduce the dark greens, as the band on Indy's hat was too greenish compared to the photographs of Indy's hat from Raiders. 

As far as the 35 mm reference frames go, I'm satisfied, as I noticed the following:

1) In the first frame the chalkboard should be blue, which it is in the regrade.

2) The wall in the second frame is blue/green, and the jacket of the guy nearest to the camera is a yellowish beige. Both of these are true for the regarde, unlike the bluray and WOWOW.

3) In the third frame, the sky should be blue, the sand yellow, and Indy's scarf should be white. Again all these are all correct for the regrade, and not for the bluray and WOWOW.

So, the simple truth is, I tried to match the 35 mm frames, starting from a publicity shot from 1981, and ended up with a color scheme that closely matches the 35 mm trailer in every scene shown, except for the bar fight.

The color scheme for the bar fight was so different from any of the others, that the only logical conclusion was that the scene originally had a different color scheme, at least for the trailer. Since the trailer was from 1983, I believed it to be the color scheme for the 1981 theatrical release as well, and has since been confirmed by hairy_hen, who saw a 35 mm print in 2007. Since there are no other references for this scene, other than the trailer, and publicity photos, which also show that the lighting conditions for this scene were far from the red we see in the home video releases, I used the trailer and publicity photos as a reference.

Publicity photo:

Bluray:

Regrade:

Harmy said:

I downloaded a program called Briz LUT Converter and used it to convert the .cube to .3dl and that loaded fine in AE - but the Briz converter trial only lets you convert 10 files and then you have to buy it - I don't know if there's any freeware that could do the same thing.

Here are the .mat, .cube and .3dl files from my test, so that you can check them out DrDre:
http://uloz.to/x5Qg2nnT/luts-rar

 Thanks! I think the problem is due to the delimiter, and/or number of decimals. The tool has been updated, and the LUT now matches the LUT produced by Briz converter, so it should work. I'm waiting for wetransfer to send the link.

DoomBot said:

Same thing happening here, "Unable to apply LUT from selected file". in both After Effects and Resolve.

 AnctuFaalb tested a LUT, and it worked in Resolve. You do have to choose sRGB for the whole path through.

Here's the comparison of the regrade against the 35 mm frames, the bluray, and the WOWOW.

35 mm:

Bluray:

WOWOW:

Regrade:

35 mm:

Bluray:

WOWOW:

Regrade:

35 mm:

Bluray:

WOWOW:

Regrade:

I adjusted the color correction for the rest of the film somewhat, to have less dark green, as the band on Indy's hat was a bit too green in some frames. Here are a the same comparisons for the regrade against the white balanced 35 mm trailer.

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

litemakr said:

Looks good. The walls of the bar are supposed to be gray, not orange/red. I do think you went a little too far in the shot of Toht, there should be a little more red because of the fire.

 I added a bit more red. Here's the result (bluray top, regrade bottom):

Harmy said:

In After Effects I'm getting "Unable to apply LUT from selected file". 

 That's odd, it's able to read the LUTs in Resolve with the sRGB setting. Can you export a LUT from After Effects, such that I can see if there is a difference between the delimiters for example?

Here's my second attempt at regrading the bar brawl scene (bluray top, regrade bottom):

poita said:

Hard to know if the scenes were changed for home release, or if the trailer wasn't colour timed (which is often the case).

Either way, the tool is working well.

 That's true, but hairy_hen was at a viewing of a 35 mm print in 2007, and it did not have the red shift, and looked very much like the trailer, so there were at least some prints that matched the trailer. Also the trailer is for the re-release from 1983, so it's likely that the theatrical print was used for the trailer, and not some raw footage, as could have been the case if the trailer was for the original 1981 release.  

While regrading Raiders of the Lost Ark, I discovered that the bar brawl scene has been heavily altered in all home video releases. I discussed this in the Raiders regrade thread, but I thought this was interesting to share here as well.

35 mm trailer (white balanced):

Bluray:

Regrade:

Trailer:

Bluray:

Regrade:

The regrade comes a bit closer, but these scenes seem to have been deliberately red shifted. So, this scene needs separate regrading.

Here's my first attempt at manually regrading this scene, since the trailer is not the best quality for color matching with the algorithm, but the colors are consistent with the 35 mm trailer (bluray top, regrade bottom):