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Color Correction Properly?

JBRpro

JBRpro

Hey, I just made this trailer for an upcoming film, and I color corrected it.

However, my friend came up and asked me if there would be a color corrected one, I felt slammed.

Is there a proper way to correct color? It's a zombie film so I figured making it bluer would be good enough.

Here's the footage I'd appreciate some help.
Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OehL2l-0tk
 
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it really depends on what you want from your color correction.

you seem to have done a decent job in making it look natural with a bluish tint.

but other ppl may have some stylistic ideas in their mind.

so ask ur friend what kind of a look he wants.
 
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Here's my general approach that I've adopted for CCing. I use the Primary/Secondary/Tertiary approach:

1) Primary: Goal - to make all of the footage fill the same colorspace so the further action you'll take will affect it all equally.
Balance all of your shots so the whites are white and the blacks are black... not just 0-100%, but correcting for color casts as well (using the eyedropper tools in your color corrector).

2) Secondary: Goal - to selectively modify your image to give the impression you want from the color palette (this starts with costuming and set design)
Using chroma mattes, pull the saturation out of colors you want to de-emphasize and punch it up in ones you want to stand out. I tend to separate flesh tones from the background to make skin look either healthy or sickly, then using an inverse of that matte, I push the background colors toward the color palette I'm shooting for with the backgrounds (in your case, the blues)
Here you can also desaturate straight reds (which tend to overdrive in DV due to the compression used) and greens for the clips above, where the green seems to suggest a healthy environment.

3) Tertiary: Goal - create an overall "Look" for the images.
Here is where you apply color effects that wash over the entire image, pushing or pulling the saturation and color cast where you want it.

Quick CC: Push your mids toward orange and your highlights and blacks toward blue. Properly exposed skin lives in the mids - so this will get you a single 3-way color correction that looks pretty cool without having to go through all the work of the masking... but the work will pay off when you're done...

NOTE: I've changed my previous definitions of Secondary and Tertiary as the color information will end up less degraded when it comes to selectively coloring things than if you were to alter it to begin with.

FYI: Know your color wheel. Adding one color to something removes the complementary color! Keep your eye on your scopes while you're correcting as well. Keep the whites from clipping and keep as much detail in the blacks as you can right up until the 3rd stage... also watch your histogram to try to keep it from breaking up too much as you push it. Be Gentle, subtle changes make a huge impact in the image. Watch movies and know that they look much like the footage you've got before they enter the grading suite.
 
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After watching both videos and a few others, I'd say it's all a matter of taste. There's one that showed a guy in a garage with 3 different effects, and anyone of them would have held up.
 
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Thought so.. ;)

It's helpful to see it though too, and it's nice that he talks a little about color theory, not just twiddle this dial and twist this knob and whamo sheer awesome. (of course there's some of that too..)
 
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Trust Will, he knows of what he speaks.

He sent me to that tut too and now look at me, my hair is darker, the whites of my eyes and teeth pop, and I have a decidedly orange cast to my face..

.. and.. I bought the software hahaha.
 
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Will Vincent said:
Watch this:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/videos/redgianttv/item/23/

(ignore that it's Magic Bullet Looks & Colorista, unless those are the tools you use.. pay attention to the techniques, and the stuff about color pallette how/why, etc.)
Click to expand...

That looked fantastic. I'm just curious though, you can still only improve something that is shot well? I've yet to see any of these videos take a poor poor quality video and make it look great.

I'm guessing these are in Final Cut Pro 5.0 and higher. I don't have these in 4.5.

Looked fantastic though.
 
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Heres a color correction tip

everytime you move the camera, change lighting, redo white balance, etc, fill the frame with a color card and record a few seconds. the color card should include white, black, and all colors of the color wheel(or at least the primaries, and secondaries). shoot your movie and edit it till your content. now, go back and only correct the few seconds of the color card till the whites are white, blacks are black, and all other colors sync up. or, if you wanted a scene to have less red and more green (they're complimentary!) you can use the card to accurately show just how much red vs green there is. after you correct each color card shot, copy and paste the effects onto the scenes in your timeline that correspond.

example. i shot a LS MS and CU of a dialogue scene. so i should have around 5 color card shots (give or take)
I start with a LS. move into a MS, cut to MS of other character, then to CU, and to another CU. so id correct the original 5 color card shots, the LS, the two MS, and the two CU's. I copy the LS corrections from the color card shot, and paste them onto the LS i used in the sequence. correct the MS's, and paste the corrections onto the MS's in the sequence, and repeat till your whole movie's been corrected.

afterwards, continue with secondary, and tertiary(if thats what you do) corrections. But remember, copy and paste is your best friend when color correcting, just make sure to name and label your shots so u can easily find what shots relate to each other.

Scopes are lifesavers, and knowing colors and their relationships (color wheel/color theory) is very good knowledge to have.
knowing these, and using this technique should help improve your correction workflow alot!

Any Questions? ASK! Hope this helped somebody..
 
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