Color Grading for Digital Projection Screen

[Arch Stanton]

I made a film recently that looked great on my monitor, but looked terrible on a digital projection screen. Admittedly, the film was dark to begin with, but just seemed exaggerated on the screen. Is there a color grading guideline when outputting to a digital projection screen? I don't have one to test with, but I've been using an LCD TV now as a reference point.

It seems like the areas which are underexposed, but visible, on the monitor are black on the TV. And the areas that are properly or slightly overexposed on the monitor are brighter or blown out on the TV. So, I'm guessing the TV (and maybe the projector too) have a much higher contrast ratio than my monitor.

[Mannie Bothans]

Check out this link that Knightly posted a while back:

http://splicevine.com/july-color-correction/


I recently attended a couple of screenings for a 48 hour film project in a nearby city. One room used the theater's antiquated projector and the movies were absolutely unwatchable-- all blacks were crushed beyond imagination. (The borrowed replacement projector had the wrong lens, so they had to use the venue's machines.) In the room next door, they had borrowed a new projector from a local Church and everything on screen was beautiful.