Technicolor 3 strip – tutorial

[Robert Due]

Great tutorial. Great explanation as well.
Thanks!

Robert Due
Editor / Colorist
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[Sascha Haber]

I Wonder what Mike has to say on this one…
I have the feeling there is more to it than just the pure math.
Because it doesn’t look much like it 🙂

A slice of color…

Resolve 9.0.5 OSX 10.8.2

Colorist / Aerial footage producer
https://vimeo.com/saschahaber

[Mike Most]

It’s an interesting approach, but ultimately not really accurate because the Parallel node simply does a mix of its inputs rather than populate the red, green, and blue channels specifically and individually. A few years ago I wrote a Shake script called Technilook (you can probably still find it somewhere on the Net, I think I originally posted it on Highend2D) that used some specific math to create “pure” red, green, and blue records and combine them in a channel specific mixing node. As with this example, the red saturation tends to get a bit out of control using this approach, so I put in a user control to adjust that. Most of what I did was based on some things that Rob Legato and Josh Pines did in prepping the movie “The Aviator” for Marty Scorsese, but I never really had access to their code (although I recall asking Josh about it a few years later….).

Just looked – yeah, it’s still there on creativecrash.com…

[John Burkhart]

Thanks for the interest guys, I created this tutorial, and any suggestions or constructive criticisms to improve it are welcome.

Mostly it was an attempt to replicate an analog process digitally, using the same theories. Mike brings up an interesting point about the parallel node not allowing you to send data to certain channels only. But it was the closest thing I could find in resolve to physically smashing bits together.

I’m thinking of adding a bit at the end about adding to the look by crushing the blacks a little bit, adding a little cyan to the shadows, increasing the contrast, but leaving the highlights nice and wide and maybe adding a little halation to them. But these are all subjective choices and will change with the footage. The tutorial is more designed to get you to about 80% or so of the final look, and you take yourself the rest of the way.

Thanks!

John Burkhart

https://mynahmedia.com

[Eddie Torre]

Mike,

That was a FANTASTIC tutorial, very detailed. I ran across that on Highend2D back in the day. Still one of my favourites of all time. If they gave Oscars for tutorials, you would have won an award for that.

I went looking for that tutorial not too long ago, but wasn’t able to find it, thanks for the link.
I still have it on my system I think “Technilook-v0”

[Stig Olsen]

Mike,

Is it possible to come closer or to create this look without the use of parallel nodes? In Davinci.

Stig

[Eric Johnson]

This is pretty cool!

But I was wondering, based on the illustration on this page: https://www.digital-intermediate.co.uk/examples/3strip/technicolor.htm

Would the values actually be 1/3, 1/3, 1/3? Or would more than a 1/3 make it to the Green strip and the remainder be split across the Red and Blue, with a slight offset towards the Blue since the light hits it before the Red?

Rational is based on what I’ve heard from people on 3D shows, the beam splitter tends to create a slightly darker frame for one eye, and sometimes the prism also introduces a slight color shift… not sure if thats true for all 3D systems, but seems to be for some… So would that not hold true for a prism 75-80 yrs ago?

And if the Parallel node isn’t the right way to bring it all together… what about a Layer node with a Composite mode?

Just thoughts that came to mind while reading the tutorial and responses to it. Really cool process, gonna give it a whirl next chance I get.

[Joseph Owens]

[Sascha Haber] “I have the feeling there is more to it than just the pure math.
Because it doesn’t look much like it :)”

Same gut response here… and/but also completely fascinating.

I can’t convince myself that there is a linear correspondence between the decoded RGB values of a digitally-gathered file, possibly (or probably) matrixed as it is for 709 space, and mechanically filtered light recorded on black&white stock, which will have its own spectral response. What are the center-wavelengths of the printed gelatin (complementary) three-strips and printing densities?

Too bad we don’t really have the same Y’CbCr extraction and conversion tools as SHAKE, where the split and recombine nodes are a click away. and….

Its one of the few things I miss about AppleCOLOR/Final Touch.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Juan Salvo]

“I have the feeling there is more to it than just the pure math.”
It seems the math is a bit off. I’ve done a version which I think should be more mathematically accurate.

I think it comes quite a bit closer, still a work in progress. But it’s based on the same formula used for the 3-strip look in the aviator.

Here is screengrab of my node tree:

More about it here: https://liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?threads/technicolor-3way-the-correct-way.951/#post-4778

Colorist | Online Editor | Post Super | VFX Artist | BD Author

https://JuanSalvo.com

[John Burkhart]

I’m trying out some new ideas using a layer node in the subtractive mode, trying to just get an image to a single RGB channel of another node, but it’s exploding and getting messy quickly 🙂

John Burkhart

https://mynahmedia.com