Ash Ketchum

I don't watch a lot of Hollywood movies on Blu-ray, so I don't know what's normal. And very few recent Hollywood movies (i.e. from the last 40 years). I have UNSTOPPABLE (2010) and now, newly purchased, RUSH (2013), and that's basically it. I watched RUSH last night. The color looked really weird to me, like it was artificially enhanced via computer. The green of the grass as they raced past the countryside looked as if I'd amped up the colors on my set. It never looked natural. I didn't see this film on the big screen, so I don't know how it would have looked there. Anyone else notice this? If so, was it noticeable on the release version? Or was the color tweaked just for the Blu-ray? I checked the DVD (which came with the Blu-ray) in hopes of getting screen grabs that illustrate what I mean, but it didn't look noticeable enough on the DVD to make a case for it.

Is it common practice to tweak the color for a Blu-ray release?

I have to admit it took me out of the movie. Kind of like watching a colorized b&w movie.

Solid Snake

Wait. How many moviess from this new century have you seen?

I'm not asking to be a prick.

The movie had manipulation to it in its visual. I don't have the BD but I'm assuming it represented the film as it was in theaters.

gryffinmaster

It's frowned upon for the colors to be tweaked on Blu-rays, but it occasionally happens.

However, the cinematography for Rush is itself highly stylized.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/HPjWmHciU08" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Solid Snake

I had to see wtf unstoppable was. Couldn't remember it.

But yeah. Rush was very stylized, in many ways. I really liked that one.

Ash Ketchum

I've seen more 21st century Hollywood movies in theaters than I have in any other formats, although I've seen quite a few on cable, I just don't purchase them. I've purchased way more Japanese anime and Hong Kong movies from the 21st century on DVD.

Solid Snake

Ok. I'm actually amazed that the films colors threw you off.

hanshotfirst1138

The film was shot digitally too, and when I saw it at the cinema, the visual aesthetic was very stylized, occasionally washing out colors, saturating them, etc. They were obviously stylistic choices. As far as changing the colors for home video releases, it shouldn't happen, but it does. Various directors like Michael Mann, William Freidkin, and most notoriously James Cameron have applied changes to the color timing of their movies, like the infamous teal and orange washes. But as far as this movie, I think that the visual decisions themselves were just pretty stylized.

Shannon Nutt

This. There's a noticeable visual look to stuff shot digitally as opposed to film - not just in terms of grain, but in terms of color. I can almost immediately tell if a movie was shot on the Arri Alexa or RED (or something else) depending on the look of the movie. The Arri, for example, almost always seems to washout the color a bit, particularly during indoor (or set) locations.

Ash Ketchum

I just watched one of the Making of features on the Blu-ray and the contrast between the colors in the clips from the film and the colors in the behind-the-scenes footage is quite striking. The behind-the-scenes clips look much more natural--which is how I would have preferred the film to look.

PhantomStranger

All Hollywood movies have a new, digital color-timing applied to them in post-production to even out the film or enable a certain aesthetic. This happens to the 2K digital intermediate, which for all intents and purposes is the movie's master print. Certain tints have become wildly popular for some genres, such as the often-derided teal-and-orange look common to action blockbusters.

Studios have done audience research, apparently genders and even age groups respond differently to certain colorist changes.

hanshotfirst1138

Of itself, the concept of color timing certainly isn't anything new. It was done photochemically for many years before the advent of digital intermediaries and computers. Now it can be done more drastically and precisely, of course, and be changed more easily, but it's hardly anything new by any stretch of the imagination. I do admit I find digital color grading in many films a bit much, but I'm sure that depends and many other filmmakers do it more subtly and naturalistically.

slop101

I'm okay with some color tweaking in films here and there (though they do this to ALL movies, and most TV shows), but seems like these days they really go over the top with it and the most realistic application of natural colors are actually in animated movies.

Ash Ketchum

Thanks. I'm sure I've noticed it, at least subliminally, on many other movies, but it was so blatant on the RUSH Blu-ray that it kind of stunned me, like I was watching CGI-created backgrounds and not location filming.

PhantomStranger

I think it's the ease and simplicity of changing a color timing using digital tools that has brought the trend to prominence. Photochemical changes were more difficult to pull off, so a filmmaker really had to have a purpose for significantly altering the natural grading of the film stock.