Applied Colour Science for Film Production

Colour grading – backed-up by colour science – is a central aspect of the motion picture industry. The international colour scientist Charles Poynton, PhD and the world-class colourist Laurens Orij collaborate to present a workshop that covers some of the deep fundamentals, and some important current topics, in colour science for film production.

By “film” we mean both photochemical film and digital film: Classic photochemical film is enjoying a resurgence, and in any event, the colour processes of film have set the cultural expectations of what a movie looks like. By “movie” we include theatrical motion pictures, but also streaming programming where a cinematic look is desired.

In this workshop, Charles Poynton and Laurens Orij will explain in detail camera technology and camera image coding. They will describe the “pipeline” of post-production and mastering, including the all-important scene rendering transform, and show how and where art is introduced using illustrative examples. The radiometric (linear-light) internals of modern grading systems such as Baselight and DaVinci Resolve will be explained.

The focus is also on the colour pipeline: To this end, the key aspects will be discussed – acquisition colour space, grading space, and various mastering and distribution spaces, particularly the DCI X’Y’Z’ scheme, with its standard DCI P3 primaries, and commercial HDR distribution schemes including HDR10, HLG, and ICtCp-based Dolby Vision.

The two presenters explain why BT.2020 primaries are not directly suitable for mastering or presentation. They will also introduce emerging modern post-production systems such as ACES 2.0 and OpenColorIO 2.0 and present recent developments in colour appearance models (CAMs).

Presenters
Laurens Orij is an accomplished colourist based at Crabsalad in Amsterdam: MONOS (Sundance World Cinema Special Jury Award winner), Close (Oscar-nominated and Cannes Grand Prix winner 2023), and All We Imagine as Light (Cannes Grand Prize Winner 2024).

Charles Poynton is an independent researcher and colour scientist based in Toronto. He wrote the book Digital Video and HD Algorithms and Interfaces, now in its second edition. He earned his PhD in 2018; his dissertation is entitled Colour Appearance Issues in Digital Video, HD/UHD, and D-cinema.

Host or Publisher Charles Poynton