When I told the grader, less contrast, I meant for the whole thing, not for him to mix it up so much.
He didn't mix it up. You screwed up due to your lack of understanding.
I do realize that contrast looks different at night, than in day
Why do you insist that it looks the same?
I showed it to tell me that there are mismatches in the look of the movie and that sections of it look more faded, particularly the night scenes and they find it distracting. The colorist faded a lot of shots, and they find it distracting.
Were you at least fair to the grader to let your audience know that it was you that caused that problem? I'd bet you played the hapless idiot. You know the kind? The one that walks through a glassware shop knocking everything over and then complains to the owner that there's a mess on your way out. You're a wreck.
Of course it's distracting. You've instructed your grader to reduce the contrast. On the day time scenes, it looks like you've massively overexposed, so the only way is to raise the blacks (I'm glad your grader ignored your instruction on that one). On the night scenes, if you reduce the contrast, you're going to either make it brighter or darker. Either is wrong, but he lifted the blacks to match your instruction and not it looks like an ungraded image which requires more work.
When you steer your car into a wall while pressing firmly on the accelerator, do you blame the builder of the wall?
the customer is always right, right?
It's a nice saying. It's just like, "Build it and they will come". If you think it's true, then my opinion of you just lowered. Didn't think it was possible. Next thing you'll be telling me the Yeti is real.
Do you notice the difference in color between night and day though?
Yep. We did. I had a quick look at matching the shots last night. It's likely that with the way it's been shot that the grader is performing damaging control on your film, which reduces a lot of options. Your over exposed and under exposed shots make it hard to fix, let alone creatively grade and match. Then again, some idiot decided a youtube double degraded video would do for a source of a screen capture.
The audience says that the ngiht scenes look TOO faded, and that's a problem.
Yep it is. The real question is why did you make it like this?
And this is a separate issue. If you knew even the most basic fundamental concept about this topic, you'd know that.
You cannot just say it's night and it's normal.
The faded image isn't normal, but that's what happened when the grader followed your instruction. See. You're his customer. The customer is always right, right? You were the customer and you were so wrong it's not funny. Regretting saying the customer is always right yet?
If the test audience tells you that something is wrong, it's wrong.
Going by your logic, your video is perfect as is. You were the initial audience watching the video. You noticed something was wrong, so that makes it wrong. You go back to your grader, where you're the customer, and the customer is always right. You tell him how to fix it. Remember, customer is always right, so he does it. You receive the video. Since you were the customer and the customer is always right, your instructions were correct and your video is now perfect. What's the problem? Gotta love this fantasy land you live in. Pigs fly backwards too?
upload your image to picasaweb
I didn't know about this site. How did I miss it? I finally learned something useful from this thread. Thanks ray.