• Wondering which camera, gear, computer, or software to buy? Ask in our Gear Guide.

Question about color grading and eyes going black.

H

harmonica44

When I add contrast in grading, I am going for a high contrast look. However, when I add a fair amount of it, actor's eyes start to go black. And if I feel I want more contrast, I cannot add more without the eyes going too black. But there lots of movies with high contrast in the grading yet the eyes still appear normal.

Any thoughts on this, or am I doing something wrong? Thanks.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
I don't think that's particularly bad? Given you're clearly not lighting or composing an image for anything other than practising colour grading.

But it doesn't help that you're not lighting the face particularly well. In all but the last shot, there are significant shadows over your eyes. If you want more contrast, light the scene with more contrast as well. You can also mask and track certain areas of your footage, if you want to grade them seperately. So you could track your eyes and colour them a little bluer in post (this is obviously time consuming, so you'd only do this if there was a good reason to do so).

Colouring is the final step in the image process, generally, and as per the saying used here often, GIGO. You need a well lit, well composed, white balanced (which none of these seem to be - unless you coloured them that way?) image in the first place to actually create a pleasing image. If not, the very best you'll be doing is making your image less bad. If you want to practice colour grading, you could ask to practice with someone elses footage (that has been shot a lot better than this), or you need to take the time to shoot a better (and flatter) image to practice with. Given that, is being a colourist what you really want to do? I thought you wanted to act/direct? (not that it's bad to learn other things..)

note: I'm not a colourist or a cinematographer.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
A couple of questions:

1. What kind of settings were you filming with in-camera?

2. Were you using natural light, or artificial?

As cheeseandchallenge was saying, you could (technically), fix the eye color in post but it'll be more time consuming and it might just look a little weird especially if it doesn't match up with the lighting on the person's face. Best to avoid that in the first place.

Lighting is one of the most important parts of filmmaking, so take time to really think about how you want to light the scene and figure out what works (and looks) the best for what your filming. If you are going for a "high-contrast" look, then you definitely need to make sure you light your scene well.

As for the test video, I thought the third shot looked the best because your face was actually lit properly as opposed to the others which were either: A. Lit improperly or B. Graded improperly.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hmmm, you keep asking variations of the same question about colorgrading.

1) The eyes are not black. Only the iris gets dark. Thats not weird as high contrast means that the shadow part and the highlight part of the image are getting squeezed thighter to move them further apart from each other to create a high contrast.
You can't have high contrast and an iris and pupil that look like a normal contrast situation. The darker the iris, the sooner it gets as dark as the pupil. Offcourse lighting can help to keep the eyes brighter, so iris won't blend that fast with the pupil. But it will affect the contrast on the whole face or even scene.
Maybe a 'china ball' can add that softer light. (The latter is just a thought, not a rule, not set in stone, not a must. At most something to consider.)

If you don't really know what contrast and affinity mean, read The Visual Story.

2) Did you calibrate your monitor? With a colorspyder or something like that?

3) Don't go masking the eyes. It will take forever and will only garantuee you will never finish anything.

4) I know you want everything to be perfect, but you are obsessing about contrast in way that it keeps you from doing anything. You are wasting time on 3 second selfies.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
cheeseandachallenge said:
I don't think that's particularly bad? Given you're clearly not lighting or composing an image for anything other than practising colour grading.

But it doesn't help that you're not lighting the face particularly well. In all but the last shot, there are significant shadows over your eyes. If you want more contrast, light the scene with more contrast as well. You can also mask and track certain areas of your footage, if you want to grade them seperately. So you could track your eyes and colour them a little bluer in post (this is obviously time consuming, so you'd only do this if there was a good reason to do so).

Colouring is the final step in the image process, generally, and as per the saying used here often, GIGO. You need a well lit, well composed, white balanced (which none of these seem to be - unless you coloured them that way?) image in the first place to actually create a pleasing image. If not, the very best you'll be doing is making your image less bad. If you want to practice colour grading, you could ask to practice with someone elses footage (that has been shot a lot better than this), or you need to take the time to shoot a better (and flatter) image to practice with. Given that, is being a colourist what you really want to do? I thought you wanted to act/direct? (not that it's bad to learn other things..)

note: I'm not a colourist or a cinematographer.
Click to expand...

WalterB said:
Hmmm, you keep asking variations of the same question about colorgrading.

1) The eyes are not black. Only the iris gets dark. Thats not weird as high contrast means that the shadow part and the highlight part of the image are getting squeezed thighter to move them further apart from each other to create a high contrast.
You can't have high contrast and an iris and pupil that look like a normal contrast situation. The darker the iris, the sooner it gets as dark as the pupil. Offcourse lighting can help to keep the eyes brighter, so iris won't blend that fast with the pupil. But it will affect the contrast on the whole face or even scene.
Maybe a 'china ball' can add that softer light. (The latter is just a thought, not a rule, not set in stone, not a must. At most something to consider.)

If you don't really know what contrast and affinity mean, read The Visual Story.

2) Did you calibrate your monitor? With a colorspyder or something like that?

3) Don't go masking the eyes. It will take forever and will only garantuee you will never finish anything.

4) I know you want everything to be perfect, but you are obsessing about contrast in way that it keeps you from doing anything. You are wasting time on 3 second selfies.
Click to expand...

Okay thanks. I did them all under natural lighting cause I want to get use to shooting in locations that are too expensive to light. Such as outdoors or the parking garage. I want to do a project where I shoot the whole parking garage in one shot, so the close ups will have to be the same natural lighting, in order to match, right?

I do plan on lighting scenes, but wanted to practice at locations I could not afford to light, cause they were too big, if you want the whole location in the shot, in the future.

I calibrated the monitor as best as I could but not sure if it's an official, proper calibration. I know I could light with more contrast but say you want contrast in a shot, that takes place outdoors and it's all sun for example, or something like that.

Those shots were shot flat, and then I graded after. It does not look like it was white balanced cause I added the color in after. The only shot that was not white balanced was the one under the sodium lights, cause I cannot white balance sodium, as I was told on here before :).

I was too misleading, I don't mean they go completely black but they go really dark, where as many movies the eyes stay normal where as a lot of the scene has a high contrast in the grading. I am just practicing grading since I have to do post myself, and was originally going to get someone else to the light and shoot the project, while I do direct, and possibly do sound, but I will start some lighting myself and practice.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
harmonica44 said:
..................................

I calibrated the monitor as best as I could but not sure if it's an official, proper calibration.....................................
Click to expand...

I understand you did it without tools?
Then it's probably not proper.
Check this: http://spyder.datacolor.com/portfolio-view/spyder4express/
That's at least a starting point.

Btw, I was watching an episode of Dexter yesterday: a lot times the iris is just dark.
You may be worrying too much about micro-details, while you haven't figured out how to macro-manage your production yet.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You're right, I will add lights.

WalterB said:
I understand you did it without tools?
Then it's probably not proper.
Check this: http://spyder.datacolor.com/portfolio-view/spyder4express/
That's at least a starting point.

Btw, I was watching an episode of Dexter yesterday: a lot times the iris is just dark.
You may be worrying too much about micro-details, while you haven't figured out how to macro-manage your production yet.
Click to expand...

Why use that tool, when you can just adjust the monitor's colors in the settings? Or is the monitor capable of producing color that is not in the settings?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
harmonica44 said:
Why use that tool, when you can just adjust the monitor's colors in the settings? Or is the monitor capable of producing color that is not in the settings?
Click to expand...

The tool gets the monitor calibrated much better than (most) people can do by eye, and newer ones can keep it calibrated, even when environment conditions change (lights turn on/off, etc)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
harmonica44 said:
Why use that tool, when you can just adjust the monitor's colors in the settings? Or is the monitor capable of producing color that is not in the settings?
Click to expand...

Well, can you tell with your eyes when red is pure 255,0,0 or 254,2,8?
Can you tell when neutral grey is neutral grey? (128,128,128 or 125,125,125 or 128,123,132?)
The tool can measure it scientificly your eyes just guess.
You are probably a bit off, depending on what color is dominant in your environment.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
A trick I learned is that contrast is usually an illusion. When you look at a typical Hollywood flick, there's still a lot of details in the black that we loose when we go for that "S Curve" effect. Instead, try raising your blacks ever so slightly, then lowering the mids to create contrast. Even out the exposure with the highs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxwnYAUikms
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
WalterB said:
3) Don't go masking the eyes. It will take forever and will only garantuee you will never finish anything.
Click to expand...

You don't have to mask the eyes - but modern grading generally makes heavy use of power windows and keying to grade individual areas of the shot differently, essentially manipulating lighting in post. This is everyday common stuff for a professional colorist, and most good grading systems have tracking tools so that even moving elements can be masked without too much work.

Here's a good example in resolve lite, using qualifiers and a mask to isolate and adjust someone's face independently - ~16 minutes in is the mask & tracking section:

http://vimeo.com/68340708
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
@ItDonnedOnMe:
you are right.
But my response also had the person asking the question in mind: H44 always gets stuck in some technical detail that is not important in the stage his experience is in.
He needs to get things done.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top