Medieval look
by daniel persson
on
Sep 22, 2009 at 1:07:58 pm
Hey everyone,
I am about to make a short 3 minute film to demonstrate both my creative skills but also an actors talent. the idea is to show a lady riding a horse with a lot of anger and agressiveness and then she enters a church to pray. we hope to make a look and feel that reminds of jeanne darc, kingdom of heaven, braveheart you name it type of movies. We have costumes, a horse and everything but i am wondering if people have any idea of how to get a old medieval/ dark age look? I have been looking at a lot of big hollywood production and i think that they accomplish it by shooting on real 35mm film, the colours are greyish and cold, and fog or smoke is used alot, but i dunno what do you think? Do keep in mind that this is indie low budget.
Re: Medieval look by Mark Suszko on Sep 22, 2009 at 1:41:22 pm
What editing system do you have? You can have a lot of fun in Final Cut using blending modes and multiple copies of the same track in a stack, with color tints and gradients applied and the opacity varied. Or you can color-correct and grade in fewer steps using the included Apple Color.
If you're in a hurry, Magic Bullet Looks or Nattress Film Effects offer wonderful instant plug-ins that will do a nice job, plus they still let you tweak and modify for a more custom look.
I don't know what you'd mean by a "medieval look", specifically. Indoors, any lighting not immediately by a window would be by torches, tallow or wax candles, so that would be very smoky and reddish-orange and dim. Crush the black levels. Outdoors, the sun could be doing anything, depending on the day and the season, but if you want to suggest cold and dreary/foreboding, I imagine you want to color correct towards a blue cast overall, and desaturate the color.
Re: Medieval look by daniel persson on Sep 22, 2009 at 1:48:47 pm
I use sony vegas pro 9 and also magic bullet looks. What do you mean by blending? make the picture have different colours, f.x. some gray some cold blue?
By Medieval look i mean that you believe in the picture, that you feel that this is the old middle ages. As opposed to modern hdv with no DOF. I am just interested in what tips you got for making it as believe as possible, aside from the fact that location, costumes etc. is just as big a part.
