Colour correcting - what am I doing...???

gorillaonabike · Sep 10, 2012

I have finished a short, the final cut (thanks to everyone on Indietalk for their help leading up to this) has been praised by people who were astonished that it is half-decent. In addition, I am awaiting input about music etc... from a musician on here so all looks good.

Except...

Colouring.

What the h@ll am I doing? I have absolutely no idea!!! I've looked at the tutorials but I need to understand, well, something. Would anyone have a basic philosophy around this? A central philosophy that even a simpleton like me might understand.

wheatgrinder · Sep 10, 2012

Step 1. Make all shots look the same.
Same White Point. Same Max Brightness. Same Dynamic Range.

Step 2.
Create a LOOK for the above corrected footage. (not individual shots, but the entire short)

Step 3. Sleep on it (important dont skip this step)

Step 4. Decrees the strength of the "look" to where its almost unnoticeable.

moonshieldmedia · Sep 10, 2012

I love the "sleep on it" advice. So many times you'll wake up in the morning and realize how ridiculous your grade was that you stayed up until 3am doing.

In general, adjust the levels of your whites and blacks so that each shot in the scene looks the same. There are many ways to do this depending on your program or filter. Get the contrast of the image to a nice balance. You don't want the black or white objects in your image to lose all detail. Some shots will be darker or lighter than others because of lighting issues, in this case adjust the entire shot with a brightness or exposure filter.

Once all your shots within the scene match, you can get artistic with your color styles. No matter what colors you're adjusting make sure you preserve the skin tones of your actors. Skin tones usually gets adjusted the most in the mids. Each color that you want to adjust on the wheel, blues, greens, reds, oranges, yellows can all be adjusted within different parts of the shot separately, usually lows mids and highs.

From scene to scene you can use different artistic styles depending on the mood of the scene, but don't go too drastic with it and use just your best judgment.

ngoforth · Sep 11, 2012

The Apple Pro Training set of books is excellent. There is one for Color. Yes I know it's no longer supported, but the basics are the same for Davinci Resolve or for After Effects. The book comes with a DVD of material for correction - don't skip this and go right to your own project. Another good book is The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction by Steve Hullfish.

Be aware that correcting on a computer monitor is NOT going to get you a truly DVD/Blu-ray-worthy finished project. For that you need a special monitoring card (AJA or Blackmagic) and an even more expensive broadcast monitor. If your audience is the web, this isn't a problem.

jax_rox · Sep 11, 2012

Start with the basics of colour:

RGB, CMY

Find a simple colour wheel and look at what we need to add/take away for the primary colours (ie, if an image is too green we'd add magenta, for example). That's the basics of correcting, and correcting is merely bringing every shot to a relative mid point so they look the same.

Grading is a different ballgame and is where you start to really play with the colours, but again the basics of colour is the same.

harmonica44 · Sep 11, 2012

Well I am new to this too, but it would be good, if you would tell us what kind of color correction, you need or prefer for your desired look.

gorillaonabike · Sep 12, 2012

jax_rox said:
Start with the basics of colour:

RGB, CMY

Find a simple colour wheel and look at what we need to add/take away for the primary colours (ie, if an image is too green we'd add magenta, for example). That's the basics of correcting, and correcting is merely bringing every shot to a relative mid point so they look the same.

Grading is a different ballgame and is where you start to really play with the colours, but again the basics of colour is the same.

This is great, thanks. Personally, I find colour incredibly difficult and just the basics are a nightmare. Still, step-by-step...

D@mnit - why did I want to do film making in the first place.... grrrr....

itarumaa · Sep 18, 2012

In Adobe Premiere I use three way color correction and those 3 wheels in it to adjust the video colors.

Then I usually in adjust the saturation, contrast and brightness. I use basic values: brightness -15, contrast 150, saturation 150 and then do more adjustment to make sure different clips in a scene match.

I am not 100% sure if this is the correct way to do this, but I do like the results.

Caidh Mor · Sep 18, 2012

itarumaa said:
In Adobe Premiere I use three way color correction and those 3 wheels in it to adjust the video colors.

Then I usually in adjust the saturation, contrast and brightness. I use basic values: brightness -15, contrast 150, saturation 150 and then do more adjustment to make sure different clips in a scene match.

I am not 100% sure if this is the correct way to do this, but I do like the results.

The premiere 3-way color corrector isn't bad. It's not FANTASTIC, but it allows for lift/gamma/gain color influence and saturation adjustment, so you've got a decent amount of power there.

Feel free to use it, but only after you've properly corrected the white balance of your shots. Making sure that every shot in a scene feels like it was done at the same time and in the same place is paramount. You don't even really need to do much beyond it if you're just going for a natural look. Afterwards, feel free to play with your color.

itarumaa · Sep 18, 2012

Caidh Mor said:
The premiere 3-way color corrector isn't bad. It's not FANTASTIC, but it allows for lift/gamma/gain color influence and saturation adjustment, so you've got a decent amount of power there.

Feel free to use it, but only after you've properly corrected the white balance of your shots. Making sure that every shot in a scene feels like it was done at the same time and in the same place is paramount. You don't even really need to do much beyond it if you're just going for a natural look. Afterwards, feel free to play with your color.

Thanks for advice, I actually have a question, what filter do you use for white balance, since I think they are many options in Premiere.