Hi, my Darling,
Happy Tuesday Night. I hope your day was good, and I did see a photo you were tagged in, with you and I am guessing a member of a new client band. There was a wooden deer in the pic, too. Maybe you are working on a shoot. I also neglected to mention yesterday that I saw your post about the color grading you did for the your friend's entry at the Wisconsin Film Fest. As we know, color can set a mood for a scene, and at CSUN the professor was just discussing the use of color desaturation in Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice" to achieve the mood he wanted. Back in the days of film, when I worked at Metrocolor there were guys called "Timers". I don't know why they called it "timing", because it was very similar to modern color grading, and these guys at the lab had the final say on how the finished prints of a film would look. They worked closely with the directors and cinematographers to set, in general, the dominant color of a print (i.e. some films look more "red", etc), and then they could do all kinds of things with the tones of colors, in order to refine things for the final look of the film. This was done because, even with all the preparation undertaken by cinematographers, directors and lighting crew, even at the best of times the film as shot, when the negative is developed and first printed, did not always look exactly as the director intended.
Hence the job of the Color Timers in the lab. Timers worked harder than anybody. They were the big shots at the lab, and when a big movie, like a Spielberg or Star Trek, was nearing deadline, these guys would literally set up a cot in their section of the lab, and just stay there and sleep there until their job was completed. They were not "on the clock" in the sense of regular lab employees, but rather were invested as contributing artists in the film itself. Timers always got listed in the credits in movies.
So yeah, I am glad to see you are doing the color grading for this film. You have the technical skills at all aspects of the filmmaking process, and now that you are gaining experience in all of these skills, make sure to take some time, just here and there when you can, to analyse the artistic dynamics of, say, a certain color scheme, or use of a dominant color, or the use of desaturation, or anything to affect the mood, the emotion, of a scene or even an entire movie.
The use of color is one more technique in your bag of tricks to enhance whatever feeling you are trying to get across. Color is mood and emotion just as sound is. All these things combine set a tone, and of course you already know that. All I do is remind you to analyse the inner workings of it, to see for yourself why certain schemes do certain things, and to see what it is they do.
Today while Pearl was at Golden Agers, I watched "Whiplash". I know I am always way behind on movies that everyone has seen, and I am often about a year behind on Oscar winners and other popular films because I have so many of my own favorites to watch, and many are older, like Westerns, Film Noir, et al.
I know "Whiplash" was much lauded by critics and it won an Oscar for the lead guy in the film, I wanna say JJ Abrams but I know that's not his name, lol. Anyhow, I did think his performance was very good. Maybe not Oscar caliber, but well done. The drummer kid was good as well. But the movie as a whole I thought was really not all that great, to be honest. The main problem? Bad script, as is the usual culprit nowdays. I don't know if you've seen the movie, and I won't add spoilers, but it boils down to 105 minutes of a music teacher spouting violent verbal abuse at a student until that student finally, at the end of the film, performs to his full capability. I found it aggravating to watch, and there was a lot of useless or ridiculous plot stuff, like a girl who is in the film for no reason, or a horrific car accident that the drummer emerges from to run straight to a performance he is late for. So in all, a movie with an interesting premise, a good "look", good performances and subject matter that initially holds one's interest, but which is undone after about thirty minutes or so by really bad writing. You might disagree if you saw it, and I know a lot of people loved it....
And now for Guitar Solo #5 on my list : I was listening to a few today, and it came down to two different guitarists for the fifth slot. The other one will be mentioned tomorrow, but today my selection was the solo from "No Trains To Heaven" by the great Bill Nelson, from the album "Axe Victim" by his band Be Bop Deluxe. I first heard the album, and thus the song and guitar solo, when I was hanging out one day in 1974 at College Records. It was pure smoke from start to finish, but it wasn't a heavy metal solo like I was used to. It was played over chords and a bassline that had a '50s rock 'n roll feel, but the guitar was running these very fluid melodic lines, with incredible inspiration, tone and feel. The guy playing it was on fire, and it turned out to be Bill Nelson, who would ultimately go down as one of the greatest players in the history of rock guitar. The measure of a great guitarist is that they sound like nobody, and nobody sounds like them, and that they can take the listener on an incredible ride with their playing. That's Bill, to a T.
Well, that's all I know for tonight. I will see you in the morning. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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