Get the Look of The Batman with Lighting and Color - CINEMATOGRAPHY

[@GabrielD2002]

Those are some really great recreations, perfectly capturing the essence of Greig Fraser's works.

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much, Gabe 🙏 that means a lot

[@afrosymphony8207]

This demonstration really goes to show that the role of set design in cinematography cannot be overstated. Great job.

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much! And I agree. Set design is a massive part of the look

[@vinhdo1609]

This is the only one channel and tutorial tells people exactly how to achieve certain film look without jumping straight to Davinci and color grading but execute the proper lighting setup first. thanks so much

[@ScottJeschke]

I appreciate you saying that. Thanks for the kind feedback 🙏

[@xpressofilm]

Finally! someone who looks at the actual look rather than "faking" it in color grading! Thank you! Very well done!

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much! Appreciate the kind words 🙏

[@AnLe-yg9ln]

Appreciate 🥰

[@gf-is9ot]

Nailed it! Well done

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much 🙏

[@DarrellAyer]

I don't know if anyone has put in here, but when you go into clip attributes, you can adjust a clip's pixel aspect. Most anamorphic options are above square in the drop down, this way you don't have to stretch it by hand each time. Great looking work.

[@ScottJeschke]

Copy that! Thanks, Darrell! Appreciate the feedback

[@Dennis94913]

To summarize, its about keeping the contrast ratio tight, and pulling it down in post to get that dark look and shadow detail.

[@beatlesboy345]

Loved this, well done

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much! Really appreciate it

[@HereticVoice]

Banger work man

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much 🙏

[@KWIKFLIX2022]

awesome, i subbed, i have a question. I have been trying to light for dark scenes and don't really know how bright my scene should be to get a dark looking scene. Should my exposure in real life be low if im trying to capture a low light scene or should i light it pretty bright making sure its not underexposed so my noise level isn't hight.

[@ScottJeschke]

hey, thanks for the sub and the kind words! I would veer towards the latter. The Batman teetered closer to underexposing, with shadows lifted, hence the somewhat muddy image. This worked for this film, because they were going for a gritty look. Personally I prefer a clean look, so I tend to expose a little to the right and darken in post for a cleaner image and flexibility in the shadows. The main thing with exposure is making sure your talent is exposed to middle gray. Which varies camera to camera, but generally sits around 40-50 IRE. from there it's about ratios. Do you want the BG to fall off into darkness? Do you want window light clipped or falling off smoothly, etc. That being said, prior to that It's good to expose your camera to the set/ space, then expose your faces using light -- other way around, and your ratios will be all out of whack in the grade. The simple answer to your question though is don't worry about how bright the set looks, all that matters are the ratios in camera. Spielberg wore sunglasses on ET so he could see the set as it would be on film -- this is due to slower speed film (or low ISO) but it gives you an idea of how bright the sets were. A super bright key can be adjusted in camera to intentionally push everything else into blackness. So it's really about the balance and ratios that you want. Falso color monitoring is really helpful for seeing these ratios without a meter and give you some objectivity. Hope this helps!

[@MoBeezyVevo]

Spot on man.

[@ScottJeschke]

So glad to hear. Appreciate it 🙏👊

[@artdoneus]

Awesome video!!! Really like how you have method for lighting! Been trying to figure that out myself. You made it really simple thank you learned something!! Earned my sub!

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much!! I really appreciate kind words and feedback. I'm so glad this was helpful, and hopefully future videos will continue to be helpful as well. Thank you for your subscription and support 🙏

[@MORPHPICTURES-m7c]

You Killed this!!!🔥🔥🔥

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much, Joshua 🙏🙏🙏 really appreciate you watching this and offering this kind feedback

[@JohnBradford14]

Honestly, The Batman really made it apparent (if not obvious to me) just how over the shark the MCU formula is post-Endgame.

[@ScottJeschke]

Totally

[@Houstnwehavuhoh]

Yes!! Saw the short on IG and was hoping you’d do something here! Keep killing it

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much, Jarrett! Appreciate the kind words.

[@Houstnwehavuhoh]

@@ScottJeschke thank you for sharing! So helpful/informative. Always awesome seeing the approach. I also noticed you used Danny’s LUTs? He’s the man. But, I’m curious why you went with that approach instead of something like a film conversion (cineon to Kodak, etc)? Feel like I’ve seen you use that approach in the past with awesome results, but I can’t quite remember. Each project is different obviously, but I’m curious what brought you in that direction?

[@ScottJeschke]

@@Houstnwehavuhoh Thanks so much, Jarret! Good question. I just used it for the talking head portion and for some of the B-roll. Just to give the footage a quick look. I usually like using my own LUTs but in this case I just wanted something a little more standard for the talking head stuff. So I used a Phantom LUT and Danny's LUT at low opacity because they pair nicely. I should probably get more consistent, but I like to mix it up sometimes haha. I should mention that I did not use any LUTs for the recreation scenes. Only grades that I created in Resolve.. which I then turned into a LUT for my timeline in FCPX. Hope that makes sense. Thanks again for your question!

[@thornnorton5953]

This definitely captures the look. One thing I’m wondering is why you didn’t use color space transform to get slog to a working color space or display color space for a more accurate color reproduction.

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks! that's a good idea for next time. I just wanted to show getting the look from scratch without showing CSTs or LUTs

[@impatrickt]

nice lamps

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks, man! Love me some good background lamps haha

[@ScottJeschke]

Just saw you did a video too. Looks awesome. Can't wait to check it out :) Greig Fraser just shared it on his IG story congrats, man!

[@impatrickt]

@@ScottJeschke someone just texted me that. wild! cool that he’s watching KZbin though!

[@ScottJeschke]

@@impatrickt so cool! It's a small internet. Congrats, again.

[@rodrigo8269]

Nice channel Scott!!

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much, Rodrigo!

[@cinemabandits]

Kudos to you brother thank you for this.

[@ScottJeschke]

Thank you! 🙏

[@fulloffame]

Loved this bro!! Hope to see more

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much! So glad to hear that 🙏

[@cinema8films]

Great Video!!! Well done! Thank so much! What T-Stop were you at? ISO 1600

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much! F2.8 at 800 :)

[@cinema8films]

@@ScottJeschke appreciate it!

[@madebyjonny7637]

awesome work man, looking to do a similar thing myself.

[@ScottJeschke]

Thanks so much 🙏

[@yani2499]

It's called "The Fincher Tone".

[@chrisbutler8856]

Great video! The composition, lighting ratios, light quality and color grade all are super close! You also shot with a great camera and lens so quality isn't an issue. With all that said, like all recreation videos I see online, there is still some magic sauce missing and I can never pinpoint it. Some texture, grit, something I cant even explain with words- and it isnt a film grain thing. You're version still looks like a youtube type amateur-ish video (this is not at all a slight or to be disrespectful), while the movie looks like a movie. Why is that? Obviously they are using a much better lens but even in a lot of tech videos that compare super expensive movie lenses vs prosumer quality there isn't a gigantic difference. It mainly seems to effect bocca. It cant be an issue of sharpness either because clinical levels of sharpness don't even look good. Again, those comparison videos are done all by amateur content creators. Even when they use amazing movie lenses it doesn't look like a movie. It's super frustrating to try to understand what the tiny extra seasoning is that makes something look movie quality. Maybe it's just color grade? I've tried to analyze this kind of stuff for years and still can't get an answer. It's not even like this is a complicated shot so it should be able to be recreated relatively easy without a giant quality drop off. Long story short its always super easy to tell when a movie looks like a 'movie' and when it just looks like a 'youtube video'. I'm not sure if any of that makes sense but would love to hear your feedback because you are clearly super talented and understand the minutia of this kind of work!

[@ScottJeschke]

Hey, Chris, thanks for your feedback! This may sound like a cop-out, but honestly I think it comes down to dollars and cents. There's a reason why movies pour so much into the budget. And it's hundreds of variables that go into that "je ne sais quoi". For instance, the look of skin in movies has a drastically more professional look when there is a professional makeup artist. And some of that look gets wrongly appropriated to cameras or film stocks, when sometimes it's literally just the way in which a face was painted by a professional makeup artist. In this shot I'm not even wearing makeup. Next, is production design. All the money that gets poured into that just adds so much rich texture and depth to the image, even if it's not clear. Next, I would say quality of light. The light stay use have higher quality fixtures, and CRI ratings w very highly rated color reproduction as well. They also use much more complicated diffusion techniques and most films. Several layers. I don't disagree with you, but, I would say the principles of what I'm doing are the same, just way scaled down. So if it looked exactly the same, all Hollywood movies would be doing what I'm doing. Save that $. To your point, about lens and camera quality, I definitely think mine holds up to Hollywood cameras in many ways. But again, there's a reason why they use the gear that they use. A large format Alexa just inherently has a much better sensor and image quality than something like an FX3. Not to mention that typically they are shooting ProRes 4444XQ or uncompressed raw, versus the MP4 files that I'm spitting out here. So my conjecture is money. Money for professional artisans in all departments, whether it's production design, the image quality of expensive cameras, the image quality of expensive highly specialized lenses, professional makeup application, and lighting fixtures with very high quality of light and color reproduction. Lastly, in the case of the Batman, this movie, was actually shot digitally, then printed to film then rescanned, which gives it a very unique look that is extremely difficult to replicate digitally. I know you are speaking more broadly though. Of movies versus recreations in general. And then, yes to your point about color correction. These films have literal color scientists building highly complicated, highly accurate lookup tables and grades for the finished film. Which does go a long way I think. None of this is a defense of my process. I hear and agree with what you're saying. But I suppose my answer is all of the above. Higher budgets for more specialized, and high fidelity equipment, and artisans. I appreciate your thoughts! I'm chasing the same thing :)

[@turbotaquitogoogle8095]

I'd argue it's mostly production design in this scenario.

[@appads]

@@ScottJeschke nice job. I'd venture to say that it isn't about the money or most of the things you listed above. You were 80-90% there in achieving the look you were after, and I think you had all of the basic elements in place. To my eye, it comes down to some small 'practical' tweeks: better specular highlights, better shaping on the face, and more shape / less-flat lighting in the background. The framing and camera angle were also a small factor. A less obvious factor that I think influences the percption of the "quality" vs the original is that the performance/look of the subject subconsciously influences our perception of the scenic "look" you're trying to mimic. In terms of grain etc, I'd say those are fairly minor. We're watching this on KZbin, which destroys most of that anyway. Additionally, I'm watching this on my phone, and I can see the important differences even on a minimized view. In fact this is a good way to check aspects of your image and composition which I always do: view your footage in small thumbnail view in your timeline as opposed to full screen or even split screen. Compare to reference in this view as well. You could also probably get your image a bit closer to the reference in post with a bit more tweaking and secondary grading. Anyway... Everyone's a critic ;) I don't want to detract from the really nice work you did.

[@w500nm]

It’s just more specularity, a lot of KZbin videos just use a softbox to get soft light but very little specularity, there needs to be soft and slightly soft light to get that look

[@chrisbutler8856]

​@@appads When you say better specular highlights, how do you define that? Aren't specular highlights 'hot' parts. I thought most of the time youre trying to get light on skin to look as soft as possible to get rid of the 'artificially lit' look. Even if someone wanted to go for some hotter parts of the face how do you accomplish some soft and some hotter parts? When you look at the behind the scenes photos for a lot of the batman there is just one keylight. Are you thinking the wrong diffusion was used?

[@elizaj2371]

👏

[@BrianTheActionJackson]

Design the look for all my films.

[@ScottJeschke]

🎥

[@jeffreyhaines]

This content is great. But, I'm upset you've resigned to comparing yourself to 56-year-old Geoffrey Wright. With gentler lighting, a shave, and once you've turned that cap around, you could totally pass for a sitcom high school bully!

[@jeffreyhaines]

Also, one thing they did really well with The Batman was that "Godfather" chiaroscuro look, without making the darkness unintelligible. I saw it on a crummy projection, and I wasn't once frustrated by it being "too dark"

[@ScottJeschke]

Haha highschool sitcom bully is the Pinnacle of my ambitions

[@ScottJeschke]

@@jeffreyhaines , totally was thinking about the Godfather too! When I saw that movie I always felt that the lighting and cinematography were ahead of their time. Not a lot of movies were doing soft, low-key, warm lighting like that. It kind of makes the movie timeless. You could release it today on HBO, and no one would be the wiser. That sucky about the projection. I had the same experience when I saw Parasite. It's the most frustrating thing ever, and sadly the movie theaters don't care. It really should be something that's inspected, and standardized at theaters though. Especially at these premium prices. Love the way The Batman looked, but I definitely had the feeling that anything less than the best projection would make it pretty unwatchable.