Colour Management and Why It Is Important

Have you ever compared a print-out against what you saw on the computer screen and thought they look remarkably different? That’s a basic colour management issue.

In drama, colour is an incredibly important component and can almost be thought of as a character in the story. What can be paragraphs described in a book, can be condensed in a frame and colour is typically an element of that description.

Film production is broken up into several stages, but when you’re in the actual production stage (where cameras are rolling) and the post-production stage (where the sequences are edited and VFX is done) colour management becomes critical.

From Production to Post

During the Production stage, the Cinematographer is a key creative in determining the look of the show. They will decide the pace of the camera movement, the composition of the shot, the design and placement of the lighting and the balance of contrast and colour.

These decisions are critical in how the make-up, costume and set will be designed, how the film will feel, but also will determine editorial decisions.

One of the major challenges that follows these decisions made by the Cinematographer is the requirement for VFX artists to make their work blend in seamlessly.

The world of VFX is complicated and made up of many stages and departments. Some examples include animation, lighting and compositing as well as many more.

Each function uses software specific to their discipline and hundreds of hours of work. To avoid catastrophic disruption, it is essential that each department is looking at an accurate representation of the intended image.

Some of the ways to minimise errors include working with accurate monitors that are calibrated and working with a single file type.

Why is working with a single file type important?

We all know the pain of trying to open a Word document with a newer version of the software or in a third-party piece of software like Apple’s Pages. That lack of confidence of whether the font or formatting is correct, where you aren’t 100% sure what you are looking at is what the author intended. Well, those issues exist in post-production and VFX, only instead of it being fonts and bullet points, it’s colour and metadata.

This is further complicated through the hundreds of camera capture file formats and the dozens of VFX artistry and render tools where the likelihood of error is huge. This is one of the many reasons for using a single open file format like a PDF in post-production. The EXR file is that open-sourced file format that replaces the DPX as the file of choice in VFX. It means VFX softwares aren’t required to support dozens of camera files and consistency in representation can be achieved.

Monitor Calibration

Monitor calibration is also incredibly important as it ensures that visually artists are seeing a correct representation of the image. Misalignment of monitors is the equivalent of giving a bunch of people a dozen rulers where 12 inches measures differently on each one.

Accurate monitor calibration begins with a target colour space which in video is typically Rec709 (broadcast) or P3 for cinema, which ensures you line up with a projector. Once you have your target you display dozens of colour patches, which are measured by a probe. The probe is checking the colours displayed are projected correctly via a piece of software.

Any misalignment is corrected firstly through adjustment on the display and then through a monitor calibration LUT (Look Up Table). The LUT is an adjustment to create an offset between what is displayed and what should be displayed to compensate.

With the increased use of VFX, the global distribution of workforce and the many points of failure, good practice in colour management ensures the Director and Cinematographer are seeing images that represent their original intent and causes minimal disruption in picture post.

How Origami Supports Colour Management

In a fully cloud-based future, international standardisation of the non-creative elements of production and post-production, such as interchanging digital image files, managing colour workflows and creating masters for delivery and archiving is needed.

With a dizzying array of camera formats, lenses, file formats and technologies available at all stages of film and TV production and post-production these days, this is no mean feat.

Organisations and initiatives like the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and Academy Colour Encoding Systems (ACES) are working towards the creation and adoption of internationally recognised standards and benchmarks.

Origami provides comprehensive metadata for all pulled media. It is also Flexible enough to support fully-managed standardised colour workflows like ACES, but works equally well with non-colour managed and custom pipelines.

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