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> so they must have matched their photochemical color grading with digital color grading The VFX would be matched to what ever the spec would be. Your argume

> so they must have matched their photochemical color grading with digital color grading The VFX would be matched to what ever the spec would be. Your argument would hold more water if it wasn't the _editorial_ department that had the DI in it. In that video from the linked article is them playing back the film on a baselight with a blackboard 2 https://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/control/range_cn/index_cn.php#BB2 https://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/control/range_cn/index... (it might be a black magic board though) I mean yes, they _did_ do a photochemical grade. But the edit was assembled digitally, the shot conformed, sent to be cut manually, and then final grade was done photochemically. The Person who assembled the film in 65 said "I get an EDL from avid and assemble to the print" Conforming film colour in analogue is _massively_ hard. its time consuming and generally not fun to do. so it makes so much more sense to do that digitally. it would also explain the number of editorial team doing colour, because normally they don't do any of that shit.

tshaddox 2mo ago
Forgive me if my interpretation of this terminology is wrong. My impression is that "conforming" refers to assembling the final edit from the original source material, in this case literally cutting and splicing together film negatives according to exact frame counts output by Avid. What do you mean by "conforming film colour in analogue?"
- KaiserPro 2mo ago
  Sorry my bad. Conform is the process of matching edits with the "master" edit, generally. One of the odd things about the "movie pipeline" is that generally the thing thats passed between compmanies is not the actual edit, but an EDL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_decision_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_decision_list) which is a loosegoosey format, horrible in _many_ ways. But it means that you can assemble an edit from different media (ie proxies, or digital sources, or actual film.) and thats the same everywhere. in a finishing lab, you assemble the edit[1], and then apply a base grade. So you conform the edit, then "conform" the colour so the expensive colourist is not doing busy work infront of the director. Now, some labs might have different names for this, but where I worked, conform was the edit assembly (which was way more faff than you'd hope, EDL is a really really shit format for coordinating edits) then base grade/conform grade to make sure that everything was roughly a "neutral" grade. ie when you cut between two people talking at each other, one is not widly brighter/greener/darker than the other. In sound its like making sure the levels are the same between actors, so one isn't louder than the other. This might also be called match grading, but from what I remember match grading was for VFX people trying make sure they were producing stuff that looked right. Manual colour timing was pretty much dead back then, and that was 15 years ago. So going back and doing match/base/conform grade manually in film seems like a fucking stupid thing to do. So does doing a final grade as well, but as Nolan is the only director who manages to finish on time and budget reliably[2], perhaps I'll forgive his foibles. He seems to have actually done the final grade in analogue. [1] the finishing lab can often be a different company to the editor, so they will need to transfer the raw footage and the EDL (or hopefully something more modern, EDLs were shit when I was there and that was 15 years ago) [2] Every other director who's doing any amount of VFX seemed to always over run. they'd want clean up or changes weeks after the target end date. Nolan is the only director whos has 400+ VFX shots in a movie thats finished on time.

tshaddox 2mo ago

Forgive me if my interpretation of this terminology is wrong. My impression is that "conforming" refers to assembling the final edit from the original source material, in this case literally cutting and splicing together film negatives according to exact frame counts output by Avid. What do you mean by "conforming film colour in analogue?"

KaiserPro 2mo ago
Sorry my bad. Conform is the process of matching edits with the "master" edit, generally. One of the odd things about the "movie pipeline" is that generally the thing thats passed between compmanies is not the actual edit, but an EDL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_decision_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_decision_list) which is a loosegoosey format, horrible in _many_ ways. But it means that you can assemble an edit from different media (ie proxies, or digital sources, or actual film.) and thats the same everywhere. in a finishing lab, you assemble the edit[1], and then apply a base grade. So you conform the edit, then "conform" the colour so the expensive colourist is not doing busy work infront of the director. Now, some labs might have different names for this, but where I worked, conform was the edit assembly (which was way more faff than you'd hope, EDL is a really really shit format for coordinating edits) then base grade/conform grade to make sure that everything was roughly a "neutral" grade. ie when you cut between two people talking at each other, one is not widly brighter/greener/darker than the other. In sound its like making sure the levels are the same between actors, so one isn't louder than the other. This might also be called match grading, but from what I remember match grading was for VFX people trying make sure they were producing stuff that looked right. Manual colour timing was pretty much dead back then, and that was 15 years ago. So going back and doing match/base/conform grade manually in film seems like a fucking stupid thing to do. So does doing a final grade as well, but as Nolan is the only director who manages to finish on time and budget reliably[2], perhaps I'll forgive his foibles. He seems to have actually done the final grade in analogue. [1] the finishing lab can often be a different company to the editor, so they will need to transfer the raw footage and the EDL (or hopefully something more modern, EDLs were shit when I was there and that was 15 years ago) [2] Every other director who's doing any amount of VFX seemed to always over run. they'd want clean up or changes weeks after the target end date. Nolan is the only director whos has 400+ VFX shots in a movie thats finished on time.