{"id":17,"date":"2013-05-01T13:25:43","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T13:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/notonbluray.com\/blog\/?p=17"},"modified":"2022-09-02T08:50:12","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T08:50:12","slug":"orange-and-teal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notonbluray.com\/blog\/orange-and-teal\/","title":{"rendered":"Orange and Teal, or How \u201cRe-Mastering\u201d is Distorting Our View of Classic Films"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many films that are being released for the first time in high definition are being tampered with in an anachronistic way, which misrepresents both the original film-makers vision and drowns subtle genre traits in a tsunami of modern digital processing. The motivation for this is market pressure, both real and imagined, to produce acceptably \u2018modern\u2019 content. We must ask ourselves, should we be experiencing film as a historical artifact or as something that evolves with time and technology?<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/a>

Orange and Teal is credited with being more \u2018involving\u2019 than more natural color schemes.<\/p><\/div>\n

Historically film was shot on either Tungsten or Daylight balanced film. Natural variation in the film stock led to differences in color even within a single reel. This\u00a0meant that a single shot could be vary in hue between takes. Further complications associated with changing weather, time-of-day, and the difference between sets and locations meant that shots in a sequence could vary wildly in density and hue.<\/p>\n

To resolve these issues it was necessary to run through the edited film applying slight adjustments to the balance of the three primary colors would be used to ‘print’ the final internegative, which would be used to make exhibition prints. These ‘printer lights’ could be adjusted between 0 and 50, where an adjustment of either 6 or 8 stops (depending on the Lab) would equate to one photographic stop. Working out these adjustments took considerable skill, since it was necessary to take into account how over or under exposed the negative was at each point, as well as the characteristic response curve of the print stock being used. The result was an iterative process that often took several days or even weeks to complete.
\n<\/p>\n

This whole process, normally\u00a0referred\u00a0to as ‘photo-chemical’ color timing, was both expensive and inaccurate. Since the corrections had to be applied to the entire frame it was impossible to perform any kind of selective correction.<\/p>\n

Extreme color effects are possible in the photo-chemical space, often through ‘cross-processing’ where ‘positive’ (reversal) film is developed using ‘negative’ process. A good example of this is the film ‘Three Kings’, however this is risky. The produced images may be unsable, and negative insurance, which covers against the risk of the film being destroyed during processing, will be unavailable.<\/p>\n

The Birth Of Orange And Teal<\/h2>\n

In 2000 the Coen Brothers released \u2018O Brother, Where Art Thou?<\/i><\/a>\u2019, it represents a milestone in the history of film-making, the first time a ‘big’ feature had been through a digital intermediate. Every single frame of the film was scanned at 2k resolution, and processed in the then state of the art Pandora MegaDef color correction system<\/a>. The film is sepia tinted throughout.<\/p>\n

Digital color correction offered many advantages over traditional photo-chemical processes:<\/p>\n