The light in the close-up clearly illuminates our lovers; in the wide, the sun has moved and the inside of the car is dark.

This is a classic example of a problem from production (being able to light close-ups, not having sources large enough to mimic/fight the sun for wides) that can be massaged, without being truly fixed, in the grade.

I think what we ended up doing works quite well, but it definitely feels like a little bit later in the sunset process, after the sun has set.

In classic sunset fashion, we went for a gentle orange grade and some darkening on the raw footage; however, this can awesome look a little murky if you aren’t careful.  To compensate, we grabbed a secondary of only the brightest whites, which basically accounts for the tips of the clouds and a highlight on the building, and desaturated and brightened them.

By having a desaturated, bright reference, small in frame, the rest of the image can be darker and warmer without appearing too muddy.

This often shows up as the class “we shot RED for a-camera, but the director owned a 5D that we stuck in for b-cam,” which shows up in about half of my RED jobs these days, and will be the subject of a different post.

But on a job a few weeks ago I ran into another problem; two camera RED show with identical lens’, identical firmware builds, and nearly identical exposures.  And B-camera had a green cast.

It’s subtle, but in the image above you can see the brunette has a slight green cast to her images.  It’s strange, but not that strange.  As much as we would like to think that modern camera production is completely standardized, cameras are still complex things to make, and it’s possible that it’s just a variance between the two cameras. Or one camera got iridating by gamma rays from a sunspot or something.  In post, it’s too late to track down.

The interesting thing in this case was that all we had to do to get rid of the green was a slight gamma shift. I was expecting to do a color shift as well, but tried gamma first, since I have had experience with RED cameras having a RED color cast to the shadows, so I often try gamma first to see if a color cast is coming from gamma.  Lo and Behold, gamma shift fixed it all.

These stills are from a very beautiful feature I just graded with DP Marcos Durian called FIVE HOURS SOUTH, direct by Marc Bacci.  These stills are also interesting for how subtle are grade was for this scene; Marcos got it very close on set and we were mostly balancing and accentuating.

Crunchy blacks means taking the black level of your image down low enough that you begin to lose detail and information, sometimes going so far as to replicate an ultra contrasty, reversal style image.

Working with a client I’ve known forever on a feature, and we just set the black level for the opening, and to cater to his taste (always part of a colorist’s job) we aren’t crunching the black too far.

Partly, this is purely a matter of taste, but in this case it’s also narrative; this film opens like a romantic comedy, and crunchy blacks don’t feel light and airy like a rom-com, they feel heavier, like a drama, or music video.

So, as you can see from the image, which is the uncorrected image compared to the final grade (in the middle) and my first instinct (bottom), we haven’t gone that far with the blacks.

If you aren’t careful as a colorist you can fall into habits; one of the great things about new clients is having another taste to collaborate with.

colorcorrection.com Color Grading Reel from Charles Haine on Vimeo.

Music Video for English pop-star Pixie Lott.

Director:

Nick Frew

Length:

3 Mins

Capture Format:

Red 4K

Director’s Objective:

To bring out that glamorous California beach vibe.

Director:

Marc Bacci

Length:

90 mins

Capture Format:

Red 4K

Director’s Objective:

To enhance the dramatic tension of the film while maintaining the beautiful touch of the image.