Even a year later, I'm still irritated and frustrated with Ridley Scott's "Napoleon".
In the featured image you can see a simple but dramatic difference. One half is the a screenshot from the original Napoleon, the second half is my own adjustments, using nothing but Brightness/Contrast, Curves and Gamma Saturation in Premier Pro. Not After Effects, or even Da Vinci - just good 'ol PPro.
Here's the original screen grab, from about 2 hrs 12mins in.
I'm not entirely sure why I missed how dark this image is in the cinema. Perhaps it was when I closed my eyes for the umpteenth time after yet another random, unnecessary inaccuracy/stupid plot beat.
For context, I'm working on a new concept video for The Coward. It uses clips from various films and TV series to help communicate the idea, narrative and tone of my short film. The Coward is set in 1814, while the Battle of Waterloo was in 1815. Naturally, 'Napoleon' should be a great source of footage to help give a sense of the battles of the era.
It does not.
There is a whole separate series of posts to be done on that single observation, but for now I will focus on one data point:
Waterloo was fought during the day. It was not a twilight, pre-dusk, night-time or whatever the hell time the above image is supposed to convey.
I've seen BTS footage of that filming sequence and it was ALL shot during the daytime. So Scott made the conscious and deliberate decision to post-process the final look into one f-stop above midnight. In a cave. In the Mines of Moria.
'The Coward' is set during the day (same as Waterloo in the actual Napoleon script - there's no scene heading in there saying "Ext. Battlefield - Night"!) so to actually use anything from Napoleon I must reverse Ridley Scott's bizarre grading choices. I'm not a colorist so I kept it simple:
This is a very, very basic color & light adjustment. Even just After Effects would give me better control.
Here's the final image:
And the original again, for reference:
There is only one appropriate meme reaction for this:
