ST The Color of The Force Awakens

So we got the teaser which has some nice shots in it but also some shots some said were a little too modern looking maybe. One example that comes to mind are the Troopers who look fabulous from a design standpoint. It's a matter of taste but I personally am not always a fan of the super modern blueish gradin in modern films. For the fun of it I did a little color grading and in my opinion this is way more OT style. I don't say it's better because we have to wait till we see the scene in its context but I like it a lot . Maybe someone likes it

 

Film Grain!

 

That looks so much better

I hope the film isn't ruined by filters. It already kind of looks like there's an Instagram filter over the trailer.

 

Everything looks perfectly beautiful. No changes needed.

 

I know what you mean though, in conjunction with the shaky cam it does feel contemporary. But I think it's an environmental thing. They're clearly on some kind of night raid. It would be weird if they were fully lit.

 

Dude that is def way better nice job.

 

It looks like the OT more, but it also looks like an 80s movie, which is kind of going backwards.

 

I think the problem is that if you wanted to 100% recreate the look of the OT, which you could, it would have to be a 70s/80s pastiche. And while a part of me would of course love to see that, there would always be this layer of phoniness over everything.

 

How does it look like an 80s movie? Is anything that's not tinted considered "80s" these days?

 

I just like how the middle trooper there is peeking out like, "Holy crap!"

 

I'm not a fan of the grading, but I think it has to look like a contemporay movie for the sake of the market.

 

I think the OP is spot on. Compressed dynamic range and teal/orange contrast are staples of modern big-budget blockbusters, and JJ takes them to the extreme. It makes images look "clean" and "modern" on a big screen, but I think it ultimately creates flat images that don't feel nearly as "real" or detailed, especially once you're out of the theatre. It's the sodium-packed, processed fast food of cinematography.
Like fast food, I can dig it as an occasional indulgence, but I don't want it replacing my favorite classic restaurant.
Thankfully, I believe Rian Johnson has the good taste to avoid this for the most part, so I expect much less of it in 8.

 

I'm kind of torn on the issue. I like color grading in moderation in most films, but it seems a little weird in a Star Wars movie. Not that it wasn't used a little bit in the other films, but the Stormtrooper scene in particular feels different. I think it looks cool objectively, but it's hard for me to accept it in Star Wars. This is just me being nitpicky though.

 

I think colour grading has its place if the director know how to use them. The Dark Knight has tons of colour grading but no one has any major complaint about them. It's all about knowing how to use it.

If your colour grading is too prominent and artifical, you aren't using them correctly. Abrams has never been good with using camera to tell a visual story. That is my worry.

 

I think it's funny how in modern days everyone is talking about higher and higher resolutions, more fps, more details, more everything, yet the color palette is being reduced in favor of the "artistic style".
We moved from black&white to full color and now from full color to half-color. Evolution.

Then reality must feel very 80's to you.

 

I'm so sick of the teal & orange color grading. I would personally love some desaturation in the color to make it look like the OT. Also would LOVE to see some film grain. It would make it look very gritty! It would certainly be a nice change for a blockbuster movie of this magnitude to break the current trend!

 

Well I completely agree... I'll never particularly like JJ as a director because I think his style is a bit too manufactured and 'false' (for want of a better word)... but I do think a new SW film should look like it's made in a modern style (whilst keeping with the original asthetic of course).

 

Why does everything have to look like the OT?

 

Let me repost in here. You cant look at the color grading of a youtube video geniuses!

 

The colour will be fine, unless they change it to black and white

 

Yeah you can. The color grading is so blatantly different that it's naive to think one being a trailer on the internet changes anything.

 

I hope you do realise that the OT X-Wing is flying in outer space and the ST one on a planet in broad daylight. The colors are bound to be different.

 

I think you could choose a shot from inside a snowspeeder in broad daylight and you can still see the obvious differences. It's inferior IMHO (I.e. inferior to both the OT and PT) but it's also reflective of just modern filmmaking sensibilities... so I'm not blaming JJ, it's just contemporary styles.

 

Thank you. That's how the bloody movie should look.

They can't get away with that teal %#@$& on Star Wars!