ACADEMY LUTS GUIDE
LUTs have the ability to hugely enhance the final look of your film, saving time and helping you to achieve results you might not otherwise get. Think of themas a professional Instagramfilter. They can be used to fine-tune exposure, emulate all sorts of 35mmfilm stock or apply specific ‘looks’ to your footage. You can use themonmultiple sequences, which gives your project a consistent look throughout, and they’re able tomake Log or flat footage come to life by adding contrast or style. They also convert footage back into the standard Rec.709 colour space, and give editors the ability to apply complex colour grades and imitate the looks of major blockbusters. Many professionals shoot their footage in Log – it gives more scope for editing after because it retains themaximumamount of highlight and shadow detail. However, Log images varymassively from camera to camera, and can be extremely difficult to judge both when shooting and in post. If you are shooting Log, then the image in the viewfinder will be flat and lacking in contrast and saturation. Some cameras, likemany Sony cinema cams, need you to overexpose by up to two stops for maximum
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LUTS Our guide provides practical answers and hints for first-time LUT users
WORDS LAURA JEACOCKE
I t doesn’t takemuch time after you start getting serious about shootingmovies to come across the abbreviation LUT. Some think of themas magic wands that will change your footage fromvanilla-looking to somethingmuchmore cinematic. But it’s not as simple as that. LUT stands for ‘Look Up Table’, a set of values used tomanipulate the colours of an image. They’re often perceived to be waymore complex than they actually are – really they’re just amathematically precise way of changing the RGB values of
an image through the hue, saturation and brightness. Simply put, apply a LUT to your footage and it’ll look different. Used bymovie professionals for a long time, LUTs are becoming increasingly popular among all filmmakers, and it’s important to have an awareness of what they can be used for and when they should be used. There are 1D and 3D LUTs. Useful for the basics, 1D LUTs aren’t great when dealing with complex grading, but 3D LUTs map all the colour values together in one 3D cube. In short, 3D LUTs aremuch better.
“Some think of LUTs as magic wands – but it’s not as simple as that”
LOG C
REC.709
TEAL & ORANGE
ABOVE Just by choisng a different LUT, the look of your footage can be hugely altered for creative effect. This shows the effect of a Log C image, then converted to Rec.709 and with a creative LUT.
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PRO MOVIEMAKER AUTUMN 2018
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