EP 056: The Post FPE Era?

00:00:00:17 - 00:00:15:02
Robbie
Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of The Offset Podcast. And this week we're discussing will there be a post FPE era? Stay tuned.

00:00:15:04 - 00:00:47:12
Robbie
Support for this episode comes from Flanders Scientific and Gaia Color Direct Connect Volumetric Auto Cal. Calibration of reference displays is critical in our industry, and there's no easier way to calibrate than by using Gaia Color, which is standard on DM, XMP, and XMP C series monitors. Gaia Color calibration allows supported probes to be plugged in directly to the monitor for fast, accurate, and automated calibration with no computer or operator expertise required.

00:00:47:14 - 00:01:01:15
Robbie
You can learn more about this powerful system at FlandersScientific.com Hey everybody, welcome back in into another episode of The Offset Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Robbie Carman. With me, as always, is Joey D’Anna. Hey, Joey, how are you?

00:01:01:19 - 00:01:03:15
Joey
Hey, everyone.

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Robbie
All right, Joey, we'll dig it into episode. I think this is 56, and it's been a while since we've kind of done a creative topic, so figured we should dive back into that. And this week we're going to be exploring the idea of is there going to be life after the film print emulation era that I think we find ourselves in right now?

00:01:26:15 - 00:01:52:22
Robbie
It should become no surprise to anybody that if you are involved in post-production, specifically color and finishing work the past, what would you say? Maybe two, two and a half years? Three years as literally been nonstop film print emulation from, you know, this stock, that stock, this grain, that grain. And it's just like every day a new flavor or tool or whatever comes out of this.

00:01:53:04 - 00:02:11:02
Robbie
And we have a lot to say about this, obviously, as we normally do. But before we get started, just a couple things of housekeeping. Just remember, you can always head over to the Offset podcast. Com to check out our complete library of episodes, get show notes and you can always also head over to YouTube and you can watch a video version of the show.

00:02:11:03 - 00:02:38:01
Robbie
Of course, the show is available on all major podcasting platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts to search for the offset podcast. And if you're on social media, you can find us on Instagram as well as on Facebook. Just again, search for the offset podcast. All right, Joey, so let's dive into this. You know, I think that it's clear that the proliferation and that's a word I'm going to use because I think it makes it sound more like arms race, you know, 80s Cold War kind of thing.

00:02:38:03 - 00:02:55:08
Robbie
I think the proliferation of film print emulation, I can't decide for myself if it's been good, bad, neutral. What's your general 50,000ft view on what the past few years has meant and brought to the industry in general?

00:02:55:10 - 00:03:24:05
Joey
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely been a major evolution for the colorists that kind of work in the same ecosystem that we work in, right? The huge, you know, Hollywood post houses have always worked either in film, print or in emulated film print or something with an advanced film based pipeline, because they were doing major Hollywood motion pictures that up until recently, still literally printed to film.

00:03:24:07 - 00:03:48:04
Joey
And that look is very ingrained in the kind of high end Hollywood cinematic world. Right. And those of us that don't necessarily work in that level of ecosystem, you know, we didn't always have some of the tools to make some of those looks, although there's a ton you can do just with the built in tools and resolve. And the tools and resolve have been evolving.

00:03:48:04 - 00:04:15:08
Joey
Even the built in film look creator and the film grain that's built in to resolve is absolutely fantastic now. So you could see, you know, it's a lot of trickle down of really good image science that was once kind of, you know, gate kept at the top. Now being available not just with a couple of different plugins or not with a couple of different tools that are built into resolve or even some of the other tools that are out there.

00:04:15:08 - 00:04:45:22
Joey
But now it is a absolute smorgasbord of options for any kind of film. And I mean all the categories of it, from volumetric color to grain to hellion to bloom to optical simulations. There are so many options for every part of emulating film out there now that it's really become kind of trendy, and it's also become kind of difficult to separate the good from the bad, right?

00:04:45:23 - 00:05:10:16
Joey
Because, yeah, anybody can throw out a plugin and it can do really dirty things to your image, or it can do really great things to your image. And obviously there's the colorist input as well, which takes center stage. And you know, it's it is become a very saturated environment for us as colorists that are not at the top of the heap anymore.

00:05:10:18 - 00:05:25:04
Robbie
Yeah, I agree with all that. I mean, I think it's, you know, one of the things that we'll get into a little bit later is sort of like that, that consumer fatigue about this kind of stuff. I think it's real. And I think you kind of hinted at that. And like I said, we'll explore that a little bit later.

00:05:25:04 - 00:05:46:08
Robbie
To me, I, I still started, you know, at the 50,000ft view, I still start with, why do we think this is the end all be all right. And I'm not like, I have gotten some flack from people offline in various places. I mean, like, you're such a hater of film, like, no no no no no no, I love film.

00:05:46:08 - 00:06:07:22
Robbie
Look, I love I think I'm attracted more to the, the secondary elements of a film look, because it tends to be because film has been traditionally so expensive to process, to shoot on, to distribute on that. That means just as a natural part of that, you're dealing with good set design, good lighting, you know, all of those other elements that make it up.

00:06:07:22 - 00:06:25:12
Robbie
So I think one of the things that happens a lot of times is that people think you're crazy when you try to separate film as a medium from all the other aspects that go into a solid production lighting, set design, costuming, makeup, whatever it may be. Right? Yeah, I think.

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Joey
It's 90% of a films look right.

00:06:28:09 - 00:06:44:08
Robbie
And I think it's really easy to, you know, sort of combine the two kind of things is like, oh no, you just get all that extra stuff when you emulate this film. And it's like, if you've got crappy looking video, throwing a film print emulation on it is not going to make it all of a sudden magical. Right?

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Robbie
And I get.

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Joey
You're going to get crappy looking teal and orange video, right?

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Robbie
And people want to argue that and it just seems nonsensical to me. I'm sort of like, this is not a savior, right? This is not like just because something has film, you know, athletics in part or in whole doesn't save you from all of the other things. So that's one that's one thing I feel strongly about. The other thing I feel strongly about is just that we it feels like, I get it, I like it, I think it has a lot of uses, but it's to me it's not the end all be all of image processing, right?

00:07:18:16 - 00:07:46:01
Robbie
Think about the past 20 years and where we've come from, everything. I mean, like I'm, you know, dating myself a little bit, but I remember when I, you know, back back in the day, you know, that first what was that camera, the canon ZL1 right there like DV camera that like Steven Soderbergh was shooting with and whatever. I mean, like, think about that 25 years ago or whatever 30 years ago to where we are now with, you know, everything can shoot 23.98 24 120 doesn't matter, right?

00:07:46:02 - 00:08:12:12
Robbie
All these wide like I feel like the film emulation discussion is also some semi. I don't I don't know exactly how to express this, but semi stifling or lessening all of the technical developments that have gone into cameras in the past 20 or 30 years. It's like we're taking these cameras that have gotten to be, you know, super machines and we're like, no, no, no, no, no.

00:08:12:13 - 00:08:27:23
Robbie
We're just going to we're going to just mess it up a little bit. Right? We're going to we're going to separate things. So there's some and we're going to add all this grain. We're gonna, we're going to like all the color science that the engineers of these camera companies work so hard on. Yeah. We're just going to take that and do a little hue shift to it.

00:08:28:00 - 00:08:46:11
Robbie
Like it just seems a little bit nonsensical, but also like potentially if it keeps going like this, it will stifle that further development. Right. And I think we've already seen that a little bit like when's the last time the cameras come out that everybody is like, oh my God, this I mean like it happens a little bit, right?

00:08:46:12 - 00:09:13:01
Robbie
You know, Ari comes out with something or Sony comes out with something, but it doesn't seem like that radical shift, like when Red hit or that canon ZL1 that I mentioned. Right. It just seems like it's all evolutionary, not revolutionary. And I wonder if our love affair and sort of where we're stuck with film print emulation is part of that equation, you know, and I don't know I don't know exactly how to articulate it, but like, that's kind of how I feel about it.

00:09:13:02 - 00:09:35:09
Joey
Yeah. I mean, I think that issue is twofold. One, you're right. The camera manufacturers are going to gear their product offerings to what the majority of filmmakers want, right? There's there's no getting around that. And that's a good thing. We want the camera manufacturers respecting what the creatives want versus what maybe some engineer thinks is technically optimal. I'm all for that.

00:09:35:13 - 00:09:42:14
Joey
However, I think we could acknowledge at this point we might have reached peak camera, you know what I mean?

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Robbie
Like.

00:09:43:05 - 00:10:22:02
Joey
Yeah, every modern digital cinema camera starting at even the least expensive ones captures a vastly, let's say, technically better and more detailed and more color rich capture than we ever put on a display. Whether we're working in HDR, SDR, printing to film, going to mobile, whatever, every camera out there captures a image when exposed, properly captures an image that is so much more than we're ever going to display, and even the best display mediums that the camera.

00:10:22:02 - 00:10:47:19
Joey
And we've talked about this before, the camera's mostly irrelevant at this point. It's kind of a logistical preference choice for the DP and the production, and I feel like that's exactly where it should be, because now you're leaving all of the creative imaging choices to the director, to the DP, to the costume designers, to the set designers, the wardrobe, and then eventually down to the measly colorist to try to put it all together.

00:10:47:20 - 00:11:08:23
Robbie
Yeah, no, you're right, you're right. But I do think so. Like, if I take the next step down from that 50,000ft view, I think then it begs the question, what's good? What's bad executed? You know, FP and to me, there has been so many attempts at bad or mid-range FP where it's not. And you like people. People do.

00:11:09:00 - 00:11:27:23
Robbie
I mean, you're for one, you've created some details and things of that nature over the years that have been in this general ecosystem of FP. And you're the first one to say like, no, no, no, no, no. Like I'm not doing anything technically sound here. This is more of just an esthetic extrapolation of what I like and what I think.

00:11:27:23 - 00:11:46:18
Robbie
And so there's I think that part of the problem is that a lot of people won't acknowledge that part of it. Right? Yeah. They'll be like, this is film true. Film me like, yeah, no, it's not because it's not film and whatever. But then there's people like our buddy Collin Kelly who's, you know, he's he's, you know, teamed up with Mitch, you know, famed Kodak engineer.

00:11:46:18 - 00:12:20:15
Robbie
And they're trying to do things really from like that super technical math, physics accuracy point of view, which is a totally different world, by the way, than, oh, I want some, you know, whatever. Teal and orange or some grain. Like it's a different thing. We can argue the merits of one over the other. But to me, one of the things that the truly good technical tools like Collins Pipelines and stuff like that do is they're not garish, they're not in your face as like, oh, we put a filter on this, like, I've actually started.

00:12:20:17 - 00:12:43:09
Robbie
And I think you have to a certain degree to like, you know, tools like Genesis from Cullen, you know, like they are, they're pretty seamless in their image development. And he, he, he talks about this a lot about image reproduction and sort of like that pipeline versus some of the other tools where it feels like I'm throwing on, you know, a lack of a better term, an Instagram filter or something like that.

00:12:43:09 - 00:13:03:15
Robbie
Onto the shot. Right. So like to me, there's certain categories of this, and I think I gravitate towards the places that are less in your face, less obvious, less, you know, drastic moves. And I gravitate more towards the ones that are like, oh yeah, this is subtle. It's doing these things. It's technically sound like, you know that. Does that make sense?

00:13:03:17 - 00:13:25:22
Joey
Yeah. And I think, you know, for the tool builders, there's always a balance between trying to get as technically accurate as possible, which is a moving target because every photochemical film process is bespoke, whether it's the day the the print was made, the temperature, the chemical balance, the way it was exposed. Every film itself is a bespoke unit of process.

00:13:25:22 - 00:13:55:23
Joey
So there's no one. We got the right emulation, but there is good technical practices and bad technical practices for color management. And the best film tools combine very good technical processes. You can kind of evaluate this with how they deal with things like wide gamut colors. Does it break apart or does it roll off gradually? Do you have inputs that are impossible to use, or can you use it with any input as long as you correctly map it, things like that.

00:13:55:23 - 00:14:34:19
Joey
And then there's the creative aspects of it. What controls does this offer the colorist. Because again, every film print is its own process. And you can very technically emulate a single film process, but a really useful film emulation tool is going to allow the colors to have a good technical foundation of the image science, not breaking things and not making the image worse, but enough creative control in the right places to make the image how you want it to feel and how it best reflects again, how we started the photography and what was actually done on set, which is 90% of the look.

00:14:34:19 - 00:14:45:22
Joey
Whereas some of the more garish tools out there, you throw it on there and you're like, oh, okay. Yep. Now everything looks like that, whatever that is.

00:14:46:00 - 00:14:46:06
Robbie
Yeah.

00:14:46:06 - 00:14:47:15
Joey
Yeah, yeah.

00:14:47:16 - 00:15:08:19
Robbie
No, I agree, that's well said. I think that, you know, to me, part of the challenge here too is that I think you hit on one like I was going to say the goalposts kind of keep moving with what film print emulation is. And I think you hit on the crux of the issue with that, and that is, is that it is a bespoke, slightly different process every time.

00:15:08:20 - 00:15:29:13
Robbie
Like if you were doing this in a real process. But also I think that there has been as film is, I don't know, maybe phased out to a certain degree as a distribution medium. There are now, you know, the guys that were doing it in the 70s and 80s or whatever and doing all those pipelines, hey, they're retired and I got nothing to do.

00:15:29:14 - 00:15:51:11
Robbie
They want to talk about it. Right. And so part of this, I think, is like now the accessibility of that sort of behind that black hole, you know, behind the, you know, the locked door of the guy running the, you know, running the machine with the, you know, the printer lights or whatever that information keeps coming out. And these stories about, oh, this film, that's how it was done, this film, how it was done.

00:15:51:12 - 00:16:06:16
Robbie
And so the developers and stuff are also Gronk that information as it becomes available and going, oh, well, now we can do x, y, z process that this famous color timer did or whatever. And so like I think that's I don't know that's it comes off as sort.

00:16:06:16 - 00:16:38:16
Joey
Of yeah. Let's talk about the ultimate goal post shift of film print emulation is the entire purpose of it now is different than it was when it was kind of invented. Right? In the in the early days of Digital Intermediate, you would bring your film scans in and you would the color scientists at Kodak and Fuji and at these big facilities and these big film labs would profile the negative batches that they ordered for a film all the way through prints, and they would make an emulator.

00:16:38:18 - 00:17:05:20
Joey
So we would work in the intermediate you were looking at on a monitor, a direct view monitor in approximation of what it would look like. After it's printed. Right. So you were emulating the print. Now, what we're trying to do is make a digital pipeline that will never be printed back to film, look like something that was printed to film, maybe because we kind of like that style.

00:17:05:20 - 00:17:26:05
Joey
So the entire goalpost of what film print emulation is has drastically shifted over the past 20 years, from digital intermediate to general digital color grading. And I think a lot of people don't really realize that, that a lot of these looks and styles that are very, very trendy right now kind of evolved out of that transitional process.

00:17:26:07 - 00:17:42:06
Robbie
That's really that's just that's great insight, man. And I think you're absolutely right. And I think, you know, it's funny, I haven't done that many print projects over, you know, over my career. But I've done a handful of them. And I remember the first time doing that being like, I gotta I got an emulation LUT from the lab.

00:17:42:07 - 00:18:02:12
Robbie
They, you know, they're like, oh, you got to work. At that time it was like, what? I gotta like put this on my output and we're like, it was kind of confusing. And then like, oh, when you render you're going to turn it off. And I'm like, what? You know, because when they were doing the actual. So everything looked wack and really strange and, but then they did the print and I was like, oh, I get it, you know, and then there's, there's, there's middle ground.

00:18:02:12 - 00:18:14:21
Robbie
So people are now doing the thing where, you know, they're taking their digital version of the film and they're doing, you know, these intermediate steps, printing it back and then recapturing that. And we don't have to feel like that's.

00:18:14:21 - 00:18:23:09
Joey
Just an exercise in intentional futility. But people have had wonderful results from it. And if they're happy with it, wonderful. I'm not going to yeah.

00:18:23:11 - 00:18:37:01
Robbie
I'm not I'm not going to argue the validity of it. I mean, I think that it's one of those things, but I think those same people are also the people that pray at the altar of, you know, film is the ultimate, the ultimate medium, which I just don't really agree with altogether.

00:18:37:05 - 00:19:05:11
Joey
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00:19:05:13 - 00:19:30:06
Joey
Built by post professionals, Conform.Tools helps editors, colorists, and conform artists move faster and finish stronger. Learn more at Conform.Tools. I think that's kind of the next. The next thing that we really need to touch on is, is projected film, the absolute be all, end all of the best display of an image, which a lot of people think that, and that's fine.

00:19:30:06 - 00:20:01:22
Joey
But I think that concept has really limited us creatively in this new era of HDR in the world. Absolutely. If you could make your output look as close to projected film as possible, it looked amazing, right? That was the that was the high point. But now our display technology has dramatically changed, and we have the opportunity to go into realms of displaying images that a printed film could never do.

00:20:01:22 - 00:20:05:01
Joey
And in a lot of cases, we kind of aren't.

00:20:05:07 - 00:20:39:10
Robbie
Yeah, I agree, I agree with all of that too. And I think it's well, let me say it this way. You know what? You and I are both space nerds. We like the idea, you know, partly science fiction, but also like the real space part of things. And I've been watching the I know you kind of faded off this series after the first season or two, but I've been I just finished watching the Apple TV, fifth season of For All Mankind, and then started watching the the opposite of that show, which is called Star City, which is about the Russian, the USSR rise of that same period in the alternate reality that for all

00:20:39:10 - 00:21:03:05
Robbie
mankind exists and anyway. But there's a there's a line in there that one of the protagonists says of like, you know, basically like all these people were like the moon, the moon, the moon. And he's like, no, we got to go to Mars and Titan and Pluto and like further out in the ego. And this kind of feels similar to me that like all the film, people are like the moon, the moon, the moon, the moon.

00:21:03:05 - 00:21:19:17
Robbie
And we're forgetting about Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, you know, and that's kind of what it feels like when we when we get into this thing, it's like you feel like a little bit of a looney tune when you talk about like, well, what about HDR? And people are like, oh, that's just BS. Like it's not filmmaker intent, it's crap.

00:21:19:17 - 00:21:42:14
Robbie
And it's just like, I don't know, man. I think that there is something to be said about the evolution of this. I don't want to be stuck on the moon forever. I want to go explore the rest of the solar system. And that's what kind of HDR represents to me, a sort of bit. And I also doesn't think I don't think that that means that we have to completely forget about the moon and forget about film.

00:21:42:14 - 00:21:51:07
Robbie
I think we can combine the two approaches a little bit as we further our explorations out into the solar system for a semi bad analogy, but I hope you get.

00:21:51:08 - 00:22:20:11
Joey
Yeah, you know, there's kind of two ways that film print emulation has worked its way into the modern world of HDR. Right? There's what I consider kind of the default for most things, especially, you know, really high end shows. And I'm not criticizing them. They look great. But the general mentality is we're going to work in essentially SDR and we're going to containerize this into HDR, maybe make it a little bit brighter so we get a little bit more contrast.

00:22:20:11 - 00:22:43:20
Joey
But things like bright highlights are always going to desaturate because a lot of people think that looks pretty. And in a lot of cases it does look pretty. But in other cases, bright fire, bright flames. You could want more color in there than a film print could ever hold. And we're not really doing that. When we containerize a film print emulation into HDR and stretch it, you know?

00:22:43:21 - 00:23:06:15
Joey
So there's some balance there. Again, with the creative and the technical and the display of we can take the aspects of film that we really like, you know, whether it's a volumetric color thing, whether it's a little bit of grain, whether it's this or that, and we can apply that in an HTML world, but we can still explore where we can go to what a film print could never display.

00:23:06:15 - 00:23:26:10
Joey
And I got I want to talk about two examples of that one in earlier show in the era that I thought used HDR incredibly effectively, but maybe two aggressively for a lot of people's taste, which was altered carbon, altered carbon looked insane and I.

00:23:26:10 - 00:23:48:02
Robbie
Got to go back and watch it. I got to go back and watch it because it I remember it struck me at the time as being like, whoa. Like we're at the time where everything was like super vanilla, you know, and just wait for its moments. This was like, hit you over the head. And I after the first episode or two, I was like, yeah, I'm into this, you know?

00:23:48:04 - 00:24:06:08
Joey
Yeah. But there were parts of it. It got a little garish, you know, especially with some of the really bright highlights in high contrast scenes where, you know, there's always the the typical example of, well, I want to make a cinematic shot and there's a window behind someone. Well, in HDR, if I make that window 4000 nits now, I made a shot about the window, not the subject.

00:24:06:09 - 00:24:28:21
Joey
Right. And that's a you know, that's a creative thing that's going to evolve over time. And I don't think they got it right in every single scene in that show. But they went so much further than anyone ever did in HDR basically before or since. And I think it's a great example of what we can do while keeping a really premium esthetic.

00:24:28:21 - 00:24:54:20
Joey
And a lot of that premium esthetic is like we keep saying lighting and production design, but let's tone it down a little bit and everybody knows what I'm going to say, because I've said it a thousand times. The benchmark of film style in HDR is still glow. It is bright, it's not subdued. There are really saturated bits, but there's detail everywhere.

00:24:54:22 - 00:25:16:04
Joey
The grain is absolutely beautiful and looks right for the era, but still looks modern. It is literally like all of the best of every single possible thing, from film print to HDR to modern display technology to great production design. Part of this is is tempered by the fact that I love the 80s, so those colors just speak to me.

00:25:16:04 - 00:25:30:01
Joey
But that to me is the benchmark of where we can do film. It's still really feel it in and not be like, this is what it would look like projected to film on your LG old.

00:25:30:06 - 00:25:38:09
Robbie
I actually think that's I mean, well, first of all, I have to say that Ian Ian is going to start thinking that we're going to stop stalking him because we mentioned him like every third episode.

00:25:38:12 - 00:25:40:22
Joey
I've watched that series like seven times.

00:25:40:22 - 00:26:17:21
Robbie
It's great. I actually think that I think it was Skip Kimball. I think it did Stranger Things. I actually think Stranger Things was fantastic for that combination of homage to the 80s film look, because it had a very 80s look. But man, there's some there's some really awesome HDR in that too, like in like and you know, and I think that, you know, one of the, one of the challenges, I think with getting real film looks and HDR stuff is, is primarily the idea that things can't things like in the film and they're not that bright.

00:26:17:21 - 00:26:33:08
Robbie
They don't get that. There's not that much contrast, not that much in the sharpness of the highlight. There's a lot of ascetic things that people ejecta. But like I agree, like there are now tools and ways to get things bright but not make them feel electric. Right.

00:26:33:09 - 00:26:54:06
Joey
And let's look at Stranger Things, the intro to Stranger Things, that read title that comes in, it's got that little film flicker. It's kind of a little bit of grain. It feels like a projection on purpose, that red at the brightness that it is in HDR with the amount of saturation it has, could never be.

00:26:54:06 - 00:26:58:07
Robbie
Projected because it would just volumetric. It would just collapse in. You could.

00:26:58:07 - 00:27:15:17
Joey
Never project that red with film. So I mean, that's a great example of kind of straddling those worlds. And you couldn't do that if you just did what a lot of things are doing now, which is kind of SDR pipeline film print, but a little brighter.

00:27:15:19 - 00:27:32:08
Robbie
Yeah. Or the other approach for that is that people are so scared of it that, you know, if they're going to get HDR, it's going to be on like super mega obvious things, right? It's going to be like, you know, take like the Disney stuff with like the Star Wars, like The Mandalorian, right? It's like, hey, 98% of the show is 100 nits.

00:27:32:08 - 00:28:09:19
Robbie
And then, oh, we're going to show a laser. Cool. That can be 400 nits. But like the rest of the show is, you know, so like I get that approach, but it just seems safe to me. I mean, the other one that I think that another area that's worth looking into is kind of the remastering area with this, because I think that if we're going to if we're going to make a really honest assessment of film emulation in the modern pipeline, in that modern HDR pipeline, how do old shows that were actually acquired and originally, you know, distributed or printed on or films printed on film, how do those make it the way out there?

00:28:09:20 - 00:28:29:22
Robbie
And I think there's several, several examples of that. Right. You know, from I know, I know you have a couple favorites, like Battlestar Galactica is one that you talk about all the time. Like, I think that's really interesting because in those approaches, it's showing that here's something that was actually acquired on film. We're plugging into this pipeline now.

00:28:29:22 - 00:28:45:20
Robbie
What's in what's your opinion? I have some I have some thoughts about some of those older shows, and I've seen good versions of bad versions. I saw somebody the other day posted a, a comparison of all of the different versions of The Matrix. Right. And, you know, kind of, you know, like, hey, this green wasn't in the original, like whatever.

00:28:45:20 - 00:29:00:11
Robbie
Like there's a lot of different, you know, remastering is a whole nother subject that we're going to talk about in a later episode. But what's your feeling about that? Does plugging these old, this old content, film based content into a modern pipeline? Does it show off the bad parts of film? Does it show off the good parts of film?

00:29:00:11 - 00:29:08:11
Robbie
And like, does it let HDR kind of breathe on its own while still respecting, you know, kind of the old the old method of capture?

00:29:08:13 - 00:29:50:08
Joey
Yeah. And I think it really depends on the source. Right. Let's go back to the idea of things that actually were creatively built to be projected on film, films like The Matrix, you know, things that were, you know, Hollywood movies. As much as I literally just went on a rant about how we shouldn't containerize film print emulation into HDR, I think for most of those things, unless there's direct input from the original creative team, which there isn't always, I think those should lean more towards the containerization of get the best, use this modern display technology and this modern encoding technology to get the best possible reproduction of what this looked like projected on a modern

00:29:50:08 - 00:30:16:09
Joey
display. Right? Because that was the creative intent of the time, even though their possibilities were limited. Right. But then there's this whole other ecosystem of shows and television that was shot on film, captured with lots of data, but mastered for SDR. And you look at the late 90s, the early 2000, like you said, some of my favorite shows, they didn't look massively filmic.

00:30:16:10 - 00:30:38:11
Joey
They were higher contrast, but kind of stuck in the limits of what STR could do. So, you know, if you look at kind of the display evolution, right, SDR is incredibly limited on what it can show you. A film projection is way better than traditional television and what it can show you, but still pretty limited, especially in brightness and gamut in the higher brightness.

00:30:38:12 - 00:31:03:08
Joey
Now HDR, the world is your Oster. You can be bright, you can be saturated, you can be dark, you can be desaturated. Doesn't matter. You can do anything. So you look at the three examples I want to talk about for old shows that I think should be remastered from film. Negative in HDR is Battlestar Galactica 24 and earlier episodes of Law and Order.

00:31:03:08 - 00:31:30:12
Joey
And I know those are all kind of different genres, right? Yeah, that's a very dark, gritty sci fi, but half of it is on, you know, the occupied worlds where the aliens have invaded and nuked everything. And the photography there is beautiful but not respected in the masters we have now, in terms I shouldn't say respected. It's not displayed well in STR because things clip like crazy.

00:31:30:12 - 00:31:55:08
Joey
That whole world where it's bright blue or bright yellow everywhere, where they're like post-nuclear holocaust. There's got to be more detail in those film negatives that could be pushed into a more saturated yellow with more detail than where they were kind of like, we're just going to clip this because that's the best we can do. And I think that is ripe for an HDR remaster with yes, it was it was film.

00:31:55:08 - 00:32:21:01
Joey
It was all 35 millimeter. It would look incredible and it wouldn't look anything like what we consider film print emulation today. I would love to see that 24 action. Right. Much more down to earth, much more realistic feel. Right. It was never heavily stylized but also shot on film. So a lot of the especially the early seasons, you can only really see on DVD, right?

00:32:21:02 - 00:32:44:04
Joey
They were they were finished in SDR or sorry, in SD, you know, again, shot on film, there's so much clipping in the highlights and shadows that could be eliminated with a remaster, and it could give you that more realistic feel like I'm there, like it's not stylized. It's the same reason I brought up Law and Order, right? It was never a stylized show.

00:32:44:05 - 00:33:15:16
Joey
It was never supposed to look like a nuclear holocaust, like Battlestar Galactica, or a future insane thing like Altered Carbon, or a retro homage to the 80s like Stranger Things or Glow. Right? These shows that were shot in like the early 2000, mid 2000 that were realistic shows shot on film could be shown in a very realistic way in HDR that I think we have never seen in the way they were mastered for SDR.

00:33:15:18 - 00:33:43:10
Robbie
Yeah, I agree with all that, and I do think I want to be clear that I do think that there are this is not a one size fits all discussion. I mean, I think there are certainly there are certainly people that are doing creative things with kind of homage to film print looks with combining HDR. I think Apple TV ecosystem in general has probably done this better than anybody else, because they're kind of pushing HDR really hard in a strong way.

00:33:43:12 - 00:34:07:13
Robbie
You know, I'm thinking about shows like that were popular this spring like Pluribus, and I think that's how you say that. I think it's something like that. And, you know, and then, you know, obviously, like we've talked about before For All Mankind and Foundation and like, so there's there's a lot of a lot of that going on where I think that people that can combine it and I think that it needs some of this also is out of the filmmaker's control.

00:34:07:13 - 00:34:31:13
Robbie
It has to do with a little bit of like the distribution side's expectation of what is quality on their platform. Right. And if you know, if you're looking at something that's all clipped out and crazy, that's not our that scares people. So what do they do? They turn it down. Now. The execs are happy. Now they have something that's one size fits all and it's not pushing one way or the other, and we just get into this blah.

00:34:31:13 - 00:34:59:03
Robbie
And as you've said many times to me before, everything kind of looks the same. You know, I mean, undoubtedly people have seen all those articles about like, you know, the discoloration of modern media content, right, that everything's now flats and neutrals or whatever. And that's a it's a really nuanced, complicated discussion. But I think at least one part of it is the play it safe mentality with distribution side of things really does crank it down, right.

00:34:59:04 - 00:35:24:23
Robbie
And like some of the ones that you pointed out, like Altered Carbon, like there's a reason that there are a lot of those shows, like shows like that have not been done again because they weren't playing it safe. I think that there was more latitude in features to to be a little like the Joker comes to mind as one, you know that that was really popular, the whole John Wick series, as another one that comes to mind if you see it in.

00:35:25:01 - 00:35:49:07
Robbie
And those are because there was like, oh yeah, we don't want to see it. This is a movie. We can make it crazy and we can make it whatever it is, versus a television show where, you know, networks might be worried about viewer fatigue and is it too much? So it's complicated. Now let's switch gears a little bit, because I think one of the things also that's part of this proliferation is, you know, I think about this in terms of, hey, you're a developer, right?

00:35:49:08 - 00:36:19:07
Robbie
No, at no point in time has development been more accessible to everyone. We've talked about this on our vibe coding episodes. We've talked about this in our refactoring episode that we did last week. You know, this stuff is accessible to people now. So part of the problem is, is that, like everybody is is able to a certain degree to jump on this idea of details of and it seems to me that PHP is just really low hanging fruit.

00:36:19:08 - 00:36:43:08
Robbie
Right? Oh, like I want to make a creative tool coming up with my own version of, I don't know, the warp or HDR tools or something functional. Really difficult, but I can make something teal and orange super quick that has lifted blacks. Hey, it's a film for emulation. Let me sell my tool. Right? And so I think part of this problem is like this multi-headed guilty combination comedy.

00:36:43:09 - 00:37:12:22
Robbie
Yeah. Combination of factors of okay, film emulation. Everybody likes it seems cool. It's cool. It's never been easier to make stuff. You combine those two together. Now we just have everybody in their, you know, their cousin Tony making film because it seems like this is an accessible, color esque tool that I can make easily without having to do the really hard thinking, hard math to get it right or to even break new ground.

00:37:13:04 - 00:37:36:03
Joey
Yes. And there's two aspects to this. And there's there's the good part in the bad part. Right? The good part is especially with using kind of vibe coding and LMS to, to write software. You know, we've talked about this, what an LM does at its core, no matter what is move text around. That's it. It just moves text around everything else.

00:37:36:03 - 00:38:03:01
Joey
Downstream from that is a subset of. It's just moving text around. Now, the beautiful thing is most color math has been figured out, documented and published. So if you need to go from asked to linear to some other kind of weird color space that nobody's ever heard of to manipulate something, you could tell an LM, do this, then do this, then do this.

00:38:03:02 - 00:38:31:03
Joey
Here's the matrixes, or here's the transform equations. Put them together and it will put them together in the right order, exactly how you specify. And it will make a technically correct tool that does exactly what you want. It does that very effectively. So if you can kind of conceptualize exactly what you want pipeline wise, and LM can execute it for you massively, effectively, and that's not a bad way to go if you're looking for something specific.

00:38:31:05 - 00:39:15:14
Joey
However, I think the best tools that are out there also happened to be the most expensive we've talked about about Genesis. We're both big, big, big fans of Genesis. I would probably say that if somebody has a film print product, I can emulate what it's doing in Genesis or in any of the other really good emulation tools that are out there, not not excluding the the film print or the film creator built in to resolve using that and regular color tools combined, you can build something that matches just about every tool out there with these really strong tools that are kind of the top of the heap.

00:39:15:16 - 00:39:34:12
Robbie
Yeah, and to me, those strong tools, I think that there's a little bit of a confidence factor that goes into them because, you know, Film Box is another one from the guys at Video Village that's similar. Like it's like, hey, you know, we're going to be at least semi-transparent with our process. And, you know, the thinking that went into it.

00:39:34:12 - 00:40:13:05
Robbie
And I think that gives a little confidence. But I think the other thing about it too, is that like those those top end tools are fixing problems that you didn't even know you had. And you mentioned a couple of these earlier around the periphery, around the edges of this. Right. You know, one of the like I encourage everybody to do this, find some shots or some test shots or whatever that you can do this with that are going to show you like gamut problems, like how does it fold down from, you know, this crazy saturated, you know, off the charts, read that kind of stuff because like, it's more than just quality of the image.

00:40:13:05 - 00:40:38:10
Robbie
It's color fidelity, you know, color purity and all of those things that kind of happen around the edge and where, you know, some of the algorithmic approaches to this that are, you know, vibe coder or whatever can break down because that part of it is much harder to solve than moving text around to, you know, hey, you have published, you know, specs on the math of this, put it in.

00:40:38:12 - 00:40:58:03
Robbie
That part of it is still, I think, a little bit where the science and the technology meets the art, you know, and I think that the top end tools are doing that better than the the person who's, you know, inputting stuff into Claude only and going or, you know, and say, give me a film print emulation, you know.

00:40:58:06 - 00:41:15:17
Joey
Yeah. And I'll, I'll fully admit and I think anybody and it's all about, you know, kind of presentation and where you're putting your tool in the ecosystem. Right. I will never claim that some of the tools that I've released, either for sale or for free, you know, I've got some free tools that have been out there for a while, like my saturation tool that I've developed, things like that.

00:41:15:18 - 00:41:44:01
Joey
I will never, you know, get on a soapbox and say, this is the best approach. This is technically superior. This is, you know, absolutely super premium because most of the stuff that I build is designed for saving time. I'm more geared towards efficiency and making workflow stuff. So if it's a shortcut, you can look at some of these tools that I've built and say, I could build this in a node tree, just just fine with nodes.

00:41:44:01 - 00:42:05:08
Joey
You're absolutely 1,000% right. But when I'm going through 1000 shots in a day, I like to be able to press one button and have it, you know, so it's a balance there where that's where some of the pricing people look at some of these more advanced tools like Film Box and some of the others, and they say, why is this so much more expensive when so-and-so's whatever tool is 30 bucks or 50 bucks?

00:42:05:08 - 00:42:26:02
Joey
That's why. And you know, there's nothing wrong with the $50 tool if you know what it does and where it should fit in your workflow. And there's nothing wrong with $2,000 tool if you need that flexibility for developing looks for big, advanced projects with complicated color science, and you want to do more than what that $50 tool does.

00:42:26:03 - 00:42:45:14
Robbie
Yeah, and I said before, it's confidence. I mean, I guess that could possibly looked at as like a little bit of like a little like that. You're like, oh, well, the expensive tool, like maybe there's probably a little bit of that. And I think that, you know, certainly some of the, the, the people in the companies that are making some of these tools, they lean into that elitism a little bit like, you know, but that's that's fine.

00:42:45:16 - 00:43:02:02
Robbie
But I don't think there's right or wrong. I think one of the realities of this, though, and let's kind of switch back to the end user, I think there's a little bit of fatigue that's going on with all this, right? That it's just like, geez, another day, another plug in, you evaluate. And so then then you're like, me, right?

00:43:02:02 - 00:43:36:13
Robbie
You end up with an off panel or whatever that has, you know, 40 different film and you're like, which one was it that I liked again? You know, and it's like they're all just sort of a different flavor of one or the other. And it's one thing that I think that, you know, it's interesting about some of the, you know, tools like Film Box and Genesis and stuff is that I've actually you probably noticed the same thing, that they have favored simplicity and under the hood work rather than, here's 14,000 different controls.

00:43:36:13 - 00:43:54:08
Robbie
And I, you know, from a consumer, you look at that and go, wow, it's not as full featured. It's not as I don't have as much control over the image. But then I'm like, then I look at some tools that have 18,000 sliders and I'm like, I don't know what any of these do. This would take me two hours to adjust all the sliders until it's right.

00:43:54:08 - 00:44:00:14
Robbie
So there's something to me about like that seems weird about paying more for less control. But also.

00:44:00:15 - 00:44:14:11
Joey
Like I said, I challenge you to take some of these less expensive tools that are making really high end claims and not be able to emulate exactly what they're doing on the same footage with a higher end tool that has less controls.

00:44:14:13 - 00:44:31:11
Robbie
Yeah, yeah. So that's pretty interesting to me. But so I don't know if we're going to get over that fatigue anytime soon because I think it's it's it's multi-headed, as we say. But I want to sort of kind of wrap up this episode with a little discussion on the idea of like, what's after this? I mean, there's got to be something.

00:44:31:12 - 00:45:01:18
Robbie
Right? And, and one of the, one of the 2 or 3 things that I keep thinking about is and we've experienced this because we've traveled various places around the world, you know, speaking to different groups and that kind of stuff. And it seems to me that every time that we've done a presentation or been part of a presentation in other parts of the world where we start talking about film print emulations, people going to gloss over a little bit and go, oh yeah, what?

00:45:01:19 - 00:45:27:21
Robbie
Like And so like, I guess my first question about this is this film print emulation stuff, more of a, I don't know, lack of a better term like a Western issue or, you know, you know, whatever. Maybe I don't have the I don't have any data on it, but it just feels to me that like, maybe we are, you know, we are self-important here and we think our market is our looks and our preferences are the right way.

00:45:27:23 - 00:46:04:13
Robbie
Whereas when I travel other places in the world, it's more about clean esthetic. It's more about like, don't you dare put grain on that because we want it like we wanted it 120 frames a second and, you know, with no motion blur and perfectly clean cool. Like, who's to say that that's wrong. Right. And so like, that's, that's kind of the thing is that like, I wonder if here in our, you know, the general western market, the US market, whatever you want to call it, we're ever going to switch to that because I think right now we have a whole bunch of perverse gatekeepers on this that are like the taste makers, if you will,

00:46:04:14 - 00:46:22:05
Robbie
that are telling us that like, no, no, no, no, no, that stuff is video looking, it's fake looking, it's gross. It's disgusting. We need to go back to, you know, 1988 and The Abyss because it's never going to get better. Right? I know you feel that way. Well I.

00:46:22:05 - 00:46:46:20
Joey
Actually I wanted to I'm going out of order here a little bit. I wanted to say when we were talking about remastering and I said that, you know, I think it should match the film print as possible unless there's direct input from the creators. James Cameron recently did an HD remaster of The Abyss that goes into HDR, does not look like a projected film, and had his direct involvement.

00:46:46:20 - 00:47:01:01
Joey
And as I've said many times, The Abyss is my favorite movie of all time. I loved every frame of it. I thought it was gorgeous, and we can definitively say, that's right, because the man who created it supervised.

00:47:01:02 - 00:47:03:20
Robbie
Was involved. Yeah, yeah.

00:47:03:22 - 00:47:28:21
Joey
So I mean, the different not only is there a regional taste things, there's generational taste things. The younger kids, as we've talked about many times, like higher frame rates, the youths like it to look like video games. They like it cleaner, you know, although now there's some video games that are kind of, you know, marketing that people are age and now they're adding like film into video games.

00:47:28:21 - 00:47:57:00
Joey
So it's like this push and pull of both the generations, the world economy shifting as American media is starting to be consumed in other parts of the world, and we're starting to consume media from those parts of the world. The tastemakers might say, well, if our if we have a huge market in Asia, we might tailored to the look to what they like, and the domestic market is just going to have to have to like that and maybe it'll evolve.

00:47:57:00 - 00:48:05:17
Joey
So we're seeing, you know, the world kind of shrinking in terms of content and styles. And it's going to mix together.

00:48:05:19 - 00:48:07:17
Robbie
Yeah. And I think I think.

00:48:07:19 - 00:48:26:04
Joey
If anything, if there's something hopeful to say about this is that's a good thing, we were going to find, we're going to see some stuff that we think looks really bad. We're going to see some stuff that we haven't ever thought of would look good, but looks amazing. Support for this episode comes from Flanders Scientific and the XMP 270 and XMP 310.

00:48:26:05 - 00:48:38:20
Joey
The accessible, lightweight and versatile monitors helping to bring HDR monitoring on set while also being very well suited to post-production work. Learn more at FlandersScientific.com.

00:48:38:22 - 00:49:03:22
Robbie
It's hard to realize when you're in the middle of something that what's happening, and I think that, you know, I think that the the move towards social media consumption, whether that be, you know, vertical, vertical videos, whether that be. I mean, like I was shocked when I was talking to I recently I talked to my, my son who's, you know, he's a budding teenager about, you know what he's I'm like, what are you watching?

00:49:03:23 - 00:49:28:15
Robbie
He's like, oh, I'm watching a movie. And it was like it was a movie. Like a short, like a short film. Like a 15 minute film, completely vertical on some platform he had found. And I'm like, what? And so, like, I think that, you know, the tastemakers are also they tend to be a little nostalgic and look at new look at new things as being attacking their sense of, yeah, it's hacking, their sense of nostalgia or whatever.

00:49:28:15 - 00:49:46:12
Robbie
And I think that that's going to shift. I think that when when our kids, you know, who are teenagers or whatever, you know about that now when they come of age, if you will, and enter, if they enter, enter this industry, which hopefully it's still around. You know, their generational esthetic, as you said, is going to be different, right?

00:49:46:13 - 00:50:14:04
Robbie
And I think that we're seeing that. But I also think there's something weird about generational cynic that I think is worth some discussion. And that is just that, right? When you're young and you're entering an industry you know best, you're trying to be disruptive, change everything, right? And then there's this period where you know, you're you're making money, your status quo, and then you start to do this thing where like you kind of go, oh, man, the old guys really had it, right?

00:50:14:05 - 00:50:15:22
Robbie
Right. And that's I think that happens.

00:50:16:02 - 00:50:17:00
Joey
Every cycle.

00:50:17:06 - 00:50:41:07
Robbie
It's a cycle. I think that I think that that that happens to every generation. They look back on it and go, oh, well, you know, like so I wonder if part of this is, again, the tastemakers who are now arguably at the the last quarter of their their careers. Right. You know, they might be 50, 55, 60 and they're going, no, no, no.

00:50:41:10 - 00:50:53:04
Robbie
This was the bee's knees back then. They're driving the conversation more than the younger kids. But I also think that like it's just not the same circles either. Right. There are.

00:50:53:06 - 00:51:03:10
Joey
There are, there are the Youngs these days that are nostalgic for things that we would just completely hate universally.

00:51:03:14 - 00:51:04:00
Robbie
I mean.

00:51:04:01 - 00:51:16:15
Joey
Like, I see guys walking around cars and coffee filming my 80s car with VHS and mini DV camcorders and thinking they're the coolest thing on the planet. And I'm like.

00:51:16:16 - 00:51:17:04
Robbie
My.

00:51:17:10 - 00:51:19:00
Joey
Okay, maybe not that.

00:51:19:04 - 00:51:40:05
Robbie
My 18 year old daughter going to college this year. She's just graduating from high school. You know what one of the things she asked for as a graduation present a Walkman, a Walkman, right? And I'm like, dude, where? Like what? And then I started looking at them on eBay, just, you know, to to be like, I'm like, I'm not paying that much for a Walkman.

00:51:40:05 - 00:51:42:02
Robbie
Are you kidding me? You know, just.

00:51:42:02 - 00:51:44:14
Joey
Go to the local dump. You'll find 15 of them.

00:51:44:17 - 00:52:09:02
Robbie
So you're right there. Everything that's old again is new again. That's that's I mean, that's a theme that, you know, just human history, right? That's. We're always in Seljuk for them. Right? But I don't know, it'll be interesting. And I would just say, I'll end it on this. I think that I think the people who are head over heels for film should have a little bit more, a little bit more of an open view of the world.

00:52:09:03 - 00:52:29:06
Robbie
Right. And I think the people who are anti and want the cleanliness like they should understand that nostalgia is a powerful marketing thing. It's a powerful it's a powerful creative tool and those kind of thing. And so like to me, none of this is ever going to be one size fits all. It's never going to be dogmatic. Right?

00:52:29:06 - 00:52:53:12
Robbie
It has to be looked at it. And I think that you just need to be careful about listening to the people who want to make this dogmatic, because oftentimes the people who want to make it dogmatic have one goal that's to sell you something. Right. And if you look, if you can look past that and make intelligent decisions about what fits the project and what fits the creative goals of the project, then the world, you're, you know, you're always or whatever, right?

00:52:53:12 - 00:53:15:21
Robbie
You can make and pick and choose parts of these things that you like. And, you know, going back to our friend Ian, who we we have man crushes on, I think that's one of the reasons that you like glow so much. And I like his, you know, another show he worked on, tales from the loop so much because it's like a combination of all of the things like it's the clean new, it's resolution.

00:53:15:22 - 00:53:38:09
Robbie
Yeah. I love that cinema cameras that are pushing the limits on that. But then it's. Oh man, that's filmic, that's glow. But then it's highlights and contrast like so like I think the people that are doing this the best have thought through all the creative ramifications of this and are picking, choosing the parts of all of this stuff to combine the people who are purely dogmatic about it.

00:53:38:09 - 00:53:52:23
Robbie
It's just it's propaganda to me to a certain degree. It's just sort of like, you know, like cool, like great that you think The Godfather is the most best shot film ever. Like, every film doesn't need to look like The Godfather, you know? Like move on. So, yeah.

00:53:53:00 - 00:54:22:22
Joey
And I think, you know, the last thing I want to say on the subject is I just hope if anything changes in the next few years as these tastes and styles and trends evolve, is, I hope, both filmmakers, colorists, everybody becomes a little less risk averse. We have been in the creative world, very risk conscious. I feel like in the past like 5 to 10 years of this was a successful thing.

00:54:22:22 - 00:54:50:11
Joey
It needs to be just like that. That's why we have so many remakes. That's why we have so many sequels. I want to see every part of the creative filmmaking ecosystem just be a little bit less risk averse. I'm not saying go out and make crazy stuff and bring back insanity and shoot everything on mini DV. I'm just saying, maybe take a little bit more risks when you're kind of thinking about the creative esthetics of things.

00:54:50:12 - 00:55:17:02
Robbie
Well said, my friend. All right, well good stuff. Just as a reminder, you can always head over to the offset podcast to listen to our entire library of episodes. All 55 or 56 of them. Hours of enjoyment to be had over there. You can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Just search for the opposite podcast. You can find us on YouTube in all major podcasting platforms, and then we'd really appreciate it if you consider buying us a cup of coffee.

00:55:17:04 - 00:55:39:12
Robbie
Support for the show goes to helping us edit these episodes. Distribute them so anything you can do, we really appreciate it. And of course, anywhere that you find the show, please like and subscribe. And if you wouldn't mind, mention it to your friends, your colleagues about the show. Maybe something that they will enjoy will appreciate it. And we'll definitely owe you one because we want more people to to join the conversation.

00:55:39:12 - 00:55:43:07
Robbie
So for The Offset Podcast, I'm Robbie Carman.

00:55:43:09 - 00:55:45:12
Joey
And I'm Joey D’Anna. Thanks for listening.