Dark Grey / Black Effect advice (see pic)

[David Roth weiss]

Shawn,

Start by analyzing the shot. The first thing you see is that there are three things missing, the color, the whites, and very many shades of gray.

So, you can get a good start by simply eliminating all color saturation and highlights using the 3-way color correction filter. Then use adjust the black level, which will then act like a contrast control to give you control over the number of shades of gray to black in the image.

That’s the most basic way to get what you want. There are other ways to do the same thing, and you can add to this substantially and get as sophisticated as you wish, but this will get you started.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Keith Mcgregor]

There is also a lot of fog in there, so when you shoot it use fog machines to produce the atmospheric effect. (unless you want to do it in a 3d program in post) and it even looks underexposed a bit with no detail in the blacks, and finally it looks like someone laid a 75% grey solid on top.
-K

Reality? What did you make it?

[Shawn Convey]

Thanks for the advice!
I am going to do some test shooting tomorrow or the day after and see what I can come up with.

Can you recommend any good plug ins for greater and or ease of control over greyscale adjustments?

[Shawn Convey]

Thanks!
is there a “good” way to make properly exposed footage “underexposed” in post? I would rather pick and choose how much detail is “lost” rather then shooting it like that….

also good idea with the transparent grey solid…

as for the fog, I won’t have control over that as it will be more like street shooting. Good eye, but I am more concerned about the overall tone from a palette / contrast perspective and not that concerned about replicating that image exactly….

[Chris Wiggles]

For the blurry dreamy effect, I’d think you’d want to take this into Color, that would make control over the look much easier, and you could create that foggy kind of look pretty simply.

You could try messing around with something like this if you’re lazy:
https://www.coloruser.net/grades/28-old-soviet-film-svema-bandw

And there is also some kind of ‘dream’ look already in the Color defaults, and if you just desaturated the footage in the primary room and played around with the settings a little bit and curves if you want to get a little fancy, I think this would take you no time at all.

Regards,
Chris