Recreating a scene from the Social Network with Arri Alexa Mini LF
A friend of mine recently purchased a high-end cinema camera. The Arri Alexa Mini LF is a high-end cinema camera used on a ton of Hollywood films and TV shows and costs around 50,000 for just the camera alone. Talk about a pretty penny am I right? Well, one of my friends purchased this camera and wanted to do a film test. He decided to recreate a scene from the film the social network. In the opening scene where Mark is talking with the girl and he's being really rude and mean in the bar.
He didn't want to go with the usual green dark look but wanted a more blue look and wanted to match the TV show Euphoria on HBO. Well, he is not great at color grading, and since that's something that I do he asked me if I would help him out and see what the camera could do. I of course said yes and here are the results of that camera test.
These are the three images in different stages of the color process but I break them down a bit more in detail below.
This is the first image and as you can see it looks very flat and dull. That's the point since this is the starting point of any and all cinema pictures. This is what's known as shooing RAW or Flat. This preserves the most amount of information and detail in the highlights and shadows and allows for more color control later down the line.
This is the Base Grade or Rec.709. This si where you get the picture to look how it did on set when you light the scene and make it look normal. Rec.709 is the color space that all TVs, Phone, and Computer screens show colors in.
Finally, this is the color grade. This is after I go through and make all the adjustments and create the final film look and make it look how the director originally wanted it when he was coming up with the concept. As you can see it's a very big difference from where it was to where it ended up.
Overall this camera was wonderful to work with and I'm looking forward to working with my friend doing more colorwork for him in the future. If you have any questions about color grading or any part of the filmmaking process comment below!