hmm, i certainly don’t recall it being that yellow, but it IS a flashback scene, so there’s that. it definitely adds to the weird feeling of the whole situation in the scene. anyway. i stand corrected.
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The Neverending Story does this too. Some nice printings use red and green, while the more common one uses italic and upright.
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The 2012 series Awake used extensive color correction to shift back and forth between 2 distinct realities.
One thing that’s not totally accurate in this video is that they lump all types of contemporary color grading into the term LUT… It’s true that LUT (look up table) is becoming kind of a shorthand for color-grading in general, but they aren’t uniquely to blame for these stereotypical looks… I’m not sure why they even mention it… There’s lots of ways to color footage without using a LUT.
The best way to counter this is to produce antifilters that undo the colour distortion. Directors seem to have a real hissyfit whenever anyone watches their films in any way other than exactly as they intended.
Digital color grading allows a filmmaker to do something that has always been a big technique of feature-length animation, the use of color schemes to communicate emotional beats in the film. Studios would literally have a timeline of the picture showing the color schemes during different acts in the story. Color styling was very important in hand-drawn animation, and being able to tweak the palette after animation was painted was a big advantage of digital ink and color technology.
Digital intermediates from a 2K film scan took this to a new level in the early 2000s. One of the first films with a fully-digital intermediate was ‘Panic Room.’ I also remember that ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’ took full advantage of this kind of control to make the picture look like it was shot in the '70s.
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The Mashable’s use of a low pass filter can also turn people into faceless masses. I’m open to the idea that Black Hawk Dawn, as shown in theatres, achieves this psychological effect, but the clips they show are of such low quality that they cannot show what is being asked of them.
And theater. We’ve been using heavy-tinting and saturated colors in live theater and other live performance to communicate mood, environment, & emotion for a few hundred years.
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These sorts of pernicious stereotypes are reinforced by tutorials such as this one.
The Spy
The grade during the scenes in Israel is extremely desaturated. Very little color is visible and, at times, it could almost be mistaken for being shot in black and white. Small intricate touches have been made by the colorist to maintain some aspect of color by keying certain parts of the shot. For example, the yellow dress in the image above.
For the scenes set in Syria, however, one can observe far more vibrant, saturated colors. This look helps subtly emphasize the new, luxurious nature of Eli’s life away from home. The beautiful landscapes, his flamboyant clothing, the elegant furnishings of his lavish apartment — all are vibrantly displayed using this color grade choice. As a spy in Syria, Eli is mingling with the financially elite, and these richer color choices effectively portray this world of wealth in which he’s now immersed.
…
White Lines
The sunny paradise-like character of Ibiza is in stark contrast to the rainy mundanity of Manchester. The grades cleverly chosen by the director for these two settings emphasize these traits. The core storyline of this series is based around escaping one location for the other, so it’s essential that Ibiza seems worthy of escaping to. Luckily, a highly skilled colorist — Thomas Urbye — has made the idea of fleeing Manchester for Ibiza hugely appealing.
Unfortunately, the author applied a low pass filter to the screenshots. which eliminates any information about specular lighting.
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Breaking Bad was not about Mexico nor was it shot in Mexico. It was set in New Mexico, one of the United States, and was mostly about white Americans. This somewhat undermines the thesis of this piece.
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It is not that simple as some people put it. There is a technical problem underneath that has nothing to do with racism, it was the reaction to that problem that was racist.
Things like shape and texture of a surface are created with highlights and shadows, but if the surface is too dark and does not reflect a lot of light to begin with the absolute differences are too small to be seen on film.
THAT is a technical problem that has nothing to do with racism but with technical limitations of photography.
Racism crept in (as it is wont to do) when those that should have solved this problem didn’t because they didn’t care. Don’t tell me they did not know, this problem with dark surfaces and dark skin was well known with photographers and cameramen from the very beginning.
The Shirley cards clearly show it is was assumed that all valued customers would be white people shooting white subjects and did not supply a solution for the dark-surface problem.
I especially point this out because some beginning photographers even with modern equipment can have problems photographing people with dark skin tones. That is not racist, CMOT chips are not racist and neither are studio lamps. Not caring about a problem, now that is a common denominator with racism…
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Yes! Sound design and visual post production tropes and every node in the process of ‘Pop’ film and imagery at the very least disregard respect for ‘other’ cultures and ‘genders’…
I’ve seen this first hand when working with a television lighting department. It was a real issue for a dark skinned brother to be lit wearing a white suit because all the colour temperatures of the lights for the cameras colour balance was a challenge - three point lighting (with standard colour temperatures) doesn’t work with black hair and dark skin… the culture in this situation was definitely not racist (the production people) but the technology of lighting is embedded with a preferred skin colour.
In very much the same way the universal live microphone of choice, the dynamic sm58, emphasizes the lower male voice with it’s frequency curve (Frank Sinatra’s mic)… you have to do a little work with EQ for women’s vocal ranges.
The starting point with the technology that we are given to use has evolved in a system that warrants all of media production technologies to be considered as having a cultural bias.
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When film photographers used older varieties of Kodak film, they likely had very little choice-- fujifim was a latecomer to the us market, When a digital colorist uses a Teal/Orange or Blue/Yellow LUT; they have choices galore. They take a lot information about the real world-- and discard what doesn’t match their unrealistic biases.
It is true that some semi arid climates have yellowish vegetation, except for a few weeks when the spring rains come. But the skies remain as blue as ever.
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House of Leaves also is into multiple colors (at least in some editions).
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Or then again you may just be watching on a incorrectly calibrated monitor. Second best post production prank is to walk into a room, watch for a second or two, say, “Is that in sync?” and walk out. Hours of second guessing will ensue. 
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That’s the point. When they had a scene set in Mexico, they used a “shithole filter” to tell the audience that it was Mexico and compensate for not filming in real Mexican locations.
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My TV is fairly well calibrated. I pulled out my bluray of Breaking Bad to watch the poolside meeting between Gus Fring, Eladio, and Salamanca. The yellow cast is subtle, but unmistakable. It’s not “golden hour” quality light, either.
The events specifically in discussion in the show take place in Mexico, not New Mexico.
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I seem to recall that “A very long engagement” was also graded into yellows and blues. Because of region coding, I haven’t been able to see it recently. But, the trenches were cold and blue, and the french countryside was a golden hue.
Best footage I can find of how it looks is a music video…
