Cinematic looking photos that look as if they’re a still from an actual film are pretty cool. Kitschy? Yeah, a tad, but still cool.
If you’ve paid attention to movies you’ll notice that they seem to have a pretty unique color grading scheme; usually a kind of teal and orange pallette. In fact if you haven’t noticed it before, now that I’ve brought it to your attention, you’ll notice it enough to where it might drive you a little nuts. There are all kinds of ideas as to why films predominantly use a teal and orange color grading.
The ones that I think seem to make the most sense is that:
1) colors in the yellow/orange/red spectrum contrast nicely with colors that are in the blue/green spectrum. In my observation this is true. Complementary colors contrast nicely and add a vividness without hashing the saturation. You’ll notice that often times movies tend to be a bit desaturated yet still pop. I think it’s because of the use of complementary colors. I say often times; keep in mind that if you’re watching a Michael Bay flick, all bets are off. Everything, including the color grading seems to be turned up to 10. Anyway, human beings no matter their ethnicity tend to have skin that falls into that yellow/orange spectrum. The orange teal grading makes actors stand out.
2) this is, I think, a biggy. The orange and teal pallette tends to replicate so called golden hour lighting quite nicely and golden hour lighting pretty much rocks.
Here is a photo that I’ve sort of given the “cinematic” treatment.
Granted, it’s not full on “cinematic” in that I’ve kept it a bit brighter than you might usually see. Actual movies tend to have the blacks and shadows crushed a bit more than my attempt. Also, perhaps the skin could have been just a touch more orange. The reason I chose this image is because I think it looks intriguing from the get-go. It looks like a slice of a bigger story; perfect for a faux movie still. By the way, this photo was taken using off camera flash; 300ws strobe camera left with a 22″ beauty dish.
For more information regarding giving your photos a full blown cinematic treatment I recommend first checking this tutorial out. It’s a great tutorial that even if you don’t want to do the cinematic thing it’s full of great information regarding curves and general color grading. Then, to add that extra cinema touch, this tutorial goes into adding the black bars to the image, and explains the aspect ratios of movies. I mean, if you’re going to go cinema, you may as well do it right.