Perhaps someone (NotaMono?) can help me with this question. I was one of the camera men (GL1) for a team in the 48 Hour Film Project in Greensboro. While shooting, everything looked real good, both in the monitor and the LCD - very colorful and warm.

In editing, the Director and the Editor both wanted a less warm look and "color corrected". No problem, that's their choice. However, when the short was blown up to the big screen at a local multi-plex, everything looked very bright and washed out - especially backgrounds.

Is that a direct result of mini-dv being blown up - or is it a result of the color correction - or could I have done something different when shooting? We were shooting in a City building with flourescants, but we turned them off and lit the room (maybe too hot).

I just don't want to make the same mistake if I did something wrong.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

That happened to me before. The picture was lit warm and very nice, and I just wanted to color correct it to see if I could make it even better. Well, I made a dvd of it, and I projected it in my little theatre in my basement. It was projected on a 20X12 wall, and the shadows of the scene made it washed out. I then made another copy of it w/o the color correction, and it look beautiful. Most likely it would be the color correction.

It would be oversimplifying things to blame display problems solely upon color correction. There are various factors affecting your results:

1) Was the color correction done on a calibrated ntsc monitor? and did you send some color bars through the projector and calibrate it? This is a major issue.
2) the projector itself - the type of projector, its initial setup settings. If this was projected on the cineplex's own projector, it may have been optimized/setup for projection in the dark environment of the theater. but i've run into problems in the past, where projectors used for corporate powerpoints and stuff have been used. the contrast/brightness were way out of wack. though, calibrating it with color bars would fix the solution.
3) the format you output to after CC can have an effect as well (via colorspace, etc). though the extent of this can vary greatly based on different factors.

that's all i can think of at the moment

are you using an NTSC monitor while editing? If not, theres your problem right there. Don't color correct without checking it on an ntsc out. Worst case (this is what i do b/c i dont have one) is color correct 5 second segments in a seperate timeline of all the segments that are being corrected, render it and dump it back to dv. Then watch it on the television and check the levels. If it looks drastically different on projection than your television then the problem lies in the setup of the projector, and everything you show on it would be off.

Thanks for all the replies, guys. I saw the Editor's set up (Premiere 6.5, Mac system) and he was using his LCD computer flat panel, as I didn't see a monitor. He did burn to a DVD, as for some reason, he couldn't export it to either one of two cameras I provided (though those cams work with my PC and Premier Pro/Pinnacle 9). Some conflict issue, I suppose.

At least I don't think I shot it entirely wrong! Just sounds like a combo of situations.

Thanks again.

In my experiences with festivals and DLP screenings, what you describe is usually due to...

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Originally posted by reelbigfish:
2) the projector itself - the type of projector, its initial setup settings.

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Unfortunately, most small festival venues, and theaters willing to screen stuff like this care little about making your project look good (I.E. taking the 2 minutes to calibrate their projector). If this is the case, there's little you can do except making sure that...

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Originally posted by reelbigfish:
the color correction [was] done on a calibrated ntsc monitor

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and choosing a good...

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Originally posted by reelbigfish:
format you output to after CC

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Which will at least result in your project being mangled less than everyone else's.

Nota "Has so been there" Mono

Thanks for the reply, NM. There were some shorts that looked really good - really warm (which is my preference), but ours didn't.

Oh well. I think we all learned from the project and it was a great deal of fun. The national contest is giving Greensboro another shot at it for 2005 due to the tremendous response.

Have you participated in the 48 Hour Film Project Nota Mono? Just curious. If it fits your schedule, you should try it. It was a blast!

it's feels good to be quoted by Nota :-)