Mixing Film And Digital Footage: Killers Of The Flower Moon

INTRODUCTION

Colour is a tool that plays a crucial role in cinematography and can be manipulated to craft a bunch of different looks. 

Some of these looks can be pretty heavy handed, like the quote unquote ‘Mexican filter’ - which punches up the warmth everytime the world of the story moves south of the US border.

Traffic (2002)

But other applications of colour, like in Killers Of The Flower Moon, is a bit more subtle, yet has an unconscious effect on how the story is taken in by audiences.   

The workflow behind this cinematography combines old school thinking with new school technology. This comes from the choice to shoot on both film and digital cameras in different situations, and by thinking about LUTs and digital colour correction in terms of old photochemical techniques.

So, let’s explain how these principles work by breaking down the cinematography in Killers Of The Flower Moon.

MIXING FORMATS

Killers Of The Flower Moon responds to the long discussed topic of film versus digital with ‘Why not both?’ This was a decision influenced by DP Rodrigo Prieto who needed to think not only about how this choice affected the look and feel of the movie, but also how it would practically influence the way they shot it.

“Part of the role of the cinematographer is to find ways so that the camera and the lighting really represent what they are feeling. What’s the energy of the scene? What should it feel like? A lot of the discussions were about that.” - Rodrigo Prieto, Cinematographer

For scenes that featured Osage characters or took place in that world, Prieto wanted to represent colour in a way that felt natural, which, to him, was best achieved by using a film negative with a film print.

COLOUR NEGATIVE FILM

The main film he used was Kodak’s 35mm 250D 5207 stock which shot scenes that took place during the day. Because 250D can be shot at a higher ASA rating than Kodak’s other daylight stock, it means that less light is needed to expose - which makes it possible to shoot both some interiors as well as exteriors on the stock. 

He swapped this out, during Osage ritual scenes,for the less sensitive 50D stock when he wanted shots to have a tighter film grain that was less noticeable. He also sometimes used 500T when filming night interiors under tungsten light. 

They ran this film through Arri’s newest 35mm cameras, the Arricam ST and LT. With the LT version being better for more compact rigs like Steadicam, or remote head shots, and the ST version being able to record at a higher 60FPS versus the 48 of the LT.

For one extreme slow mo sequence they also pulled out an old Arriflex 435 to shoot at 150FPS in the wide and a digital Phantom to shoot the tighter shot at 700FPS.  

BLACK AND WHITE FILM

A few select frames which needed to look like old archival footage were also shot on Kodak’s 5222 black and white film stock. To push this newsreel look even further without using visual effects or post production work they shot the film on Scorcese’s own 1917 Bell & Howell 2709 camera. 

It needed to be hand cranked for the motors to move the film past the gate which meant the frame rate would change depending on how fast or slow the handle was turned. This gave the footage that unusual feeling of motion that is associated with the format. 

So, apart from these exceptions, if 35mm felt like the right format for most of the movie then why did they also shoot some scenes with a digital cinema camera?

SONY VENICE

This mainly came down to a technical limitation of film. The most sensitive colour negative film stock that Kodak produces is rated at 500 ASA and is balanced for tungsten light. This pales in comparison to the low light capabilities of a camera like the Sony Venice 2 that has a dual base ISO of 3,200.

Since certain scenes needed to be shot in the blue - the small window of light after the sun has set but before the cool, ambient light disappears altogether - they needed a camera that could shoot and expose with a very small amount of natural light. 

Having almost three extra stops of sensitivity, meant that the Venice could maximise the shooting window after sunset and continue to shoot scenes quite late as the natural ambience started to disappear. 

This was especially useful as they were shooting on Panavision T-series anamorphic lenses that have a stop of T/2.3 - which is not a particularly fast lens that lets in a huge amount of light - unlike faster spherical glass such as the Master Primes with their T/1.3 aperture. 

So the Sony Venice was chosen instead of 35mm to shoot scenes that took place in low light such as dusk scenes where they only used natural ambient light or wide night exterior scenes. 

4 FILM LUTS

Although this traditional 35mm Kodak colour film was the basis of the look, it did deviate quite a bit from there to serve the story thanks to being combined with a more modern post production workflow.

Scorcese and Prieto did this by coming up with four different LUTs - which are pre-established looks that can be added on top of the footage that affect the colour, saturation and contrast. Kind of like adding a filter using consumer photo editing software. They used these different LUTs to support certain feelings at different points in the movie.

Instead of creating looks based on simple colour ideas in grading like warm versus cool, saturated vs desaturated or high vs low contrast, the way that they conceptualised and implemented these LUTs in the workflow used old school concepts based on how cinematographers used to work with selecting, processing and colour timing film - before digital cinematography.

The first of the four looks that they created was a ‘normal film’ LUT that precisely emulated Kodak 5219 colour negative film stock and produced natural filmic colour. 

This was used for early scenes with Osage characters and could be applied to the digital footage shot on the Venice or the 35mm film scans to achieve the same regular film development and print look.

The second LUT, mainly used to present the European characters and world, tried to emulate the look of very early colour still photography processes such as Autochrome and Photochrom which was developed in the early 1900s.

Autochrome has more desaturated colour than modern colour negative film, with a brighter, more washed out violet hue in the skies caused by more magenta in the blues, desaturated greens and yellows and reds that take on an orange hue.

The third LUT - used in the latter half of the film once the story gets darker and bleak - was based on a photochemical development process created by Technicolor called ENR. This is fairly similar to bleach bypass development and creates less saturated colours across the image and increased contrast.

The final look emulated three-strip Technicolor which has a more vividly rich, saturated colour, with deeper, punchy reds and greens - and was used for more magical, experimental moments in the story or the separate coda scene which breaks away from the main narrative timeline.

Oh and one scene also used a day-for-night LUT to make footage that was shot under direct sunlight during the day appear to be night time footage.

POST WORKFLOW

These LUTs were created by senior colourist Yvan Lucas at Company3, in collaboration with Prieto, before production began. Once principal photography started, they would receive either RAW files from the Venice, or processed and scanned digital files from the developed 35mm film.

The dailies colourist would apply the appropriate LUT to the footage in Baselight grading software and then proceed to do minor colour correction where necessary using another old school way of working called ‘printer lights’. 

This copies the old method used to colour time 35mm footage from the lab, by only adjusting primary colour and exposure variables. This could be done through software by raising or lowering the offset which is the overall exposure of the image, increasing or decreasing the values for the red, green and blue colour channels, and increasing or decreasing the cyan, yellow and magenta values.

Basically, making broader adjustments to colour and exposure without using more nuanced correction or masking tools.

Scorcese and his editor worked with these dailies while cutting. Then, right at the end of the process once they had the final cut they could come in and do more nuanced tweaks to the colour in the final grade or by doing things like isolating secondary colours or adding power windows and masks.       

LUT COMPARISON

The process of subtly affecting the colour will likely go unnoticed by 99% of the audience as the movie plays. Which is what you want - you don’t want it to be so overt and obvious that changes in colour become distracting.

However, if we compare these different LUTs side by side, especially the starting Kodak look and the final ENR look we can see that they are drastically different. 

The first normal film LUT is applied when the story is more comfortable, about the environment and follows the practices of Osage characters. The colours feel natural, rich and real with nice contrast, strong, deep greens and a comfortable range between the deepest blacks and brightest highlights - which shows detail in the shadows.

As the story progresses and we delve into the moral darkness, desperation and corruption of the story and behaviour of the characters the colour and life starts getting, literally, drained away from the image.

Compare the Kodak look to the ENR look in this frame which is shot in a similar lighting and colour environment. All that deep, lovely natural colour in the greens and blues, and healthy magenta in the skin tones has been completely sucked out and replaced by warm, very desaturated tones. 

Likewise, the contrast has been increased in the ENR LUT so much that the sky is almost blowing out to a pure white and the parts of the image in the shadow have lost almost all detail - which overall feels harsher and less natural.

This circles back to Prieto’s initial commentary on cinematography. That the images filmmakers create should represent the energy and feeling of the characters in the scene as the story progresses.