The color correction of digital video is crucial to approximating the film look. This issue is related to lighting but is so important that it deserves its own section. The hue and tint of a given shot is crucial to its visual impact and emotional effect on the audience; the color can be tweaked to make it look the way you want in the process known as color timing or grading. These terms actually come from the film process but are now freely used in digital filmmaking.
Whatever you do, do not leave a scene lit with white light, unless the sterile white look is what the scene needs. Every scene and shot requires its own color, although of course there will probably be recurring color themes in your movie. You can shoot it “white” and then grade it in post using the color-correction tools provided with your video editing program, or you can use dedicated software such as Color Finesse or Magic Bullet. If you shoot a scene “white” in post-production you can grade it to make it look yellower (warmer), bluer (colder), greener or whichever hue you want. Notice how a scene’s mood changes when you change the hue one way or the other!
A cheaper way to color-correct your project is to do lots of extensive tests and then get the look as you shoot. You do this through creatively white-balancing your camera: you place a colored filter over the lens, press the white balance button, and then take the filter off. The camera will now shoot footage that has a hue complementary to that of the filter. If you want a blue look, you white-balance with an orange filter on the lens; if you want a warm look, perform the white-balance with a blue filter; if you want a greenish hue, white-balance with a pink filter, and so on.
You can get a specific shade of blue by using a specific shade of yellow filter – you can determine which filter will yield the exact shade you want by experimenting during pre-production. Some cameras even allow you to save white balance presets, so that all you have to do once you have found the hue you want is save it as a preset and then simply recall it when you shoot, without having to mess around with filters on set (but you have to use light of exactly the same color temperature during filming, otherwise you will get a different hue).
A brief note on mixing color temperatures
Using lights of different color temperatures can be used to great effect. This simply means using lights of different color in the same shot. This was used to great effect by James Cameron in the steel mill scene of “Terminator 2″, in which he used blue and orange light (motivated by moonlight and molten steel respectively).
The only caveat with this is that you must determine the relationship between the two different colors before filming, because it is not really possible, for example, to make the blue bluer without also making the orange bluer (i.e. less orange).
Adding film grain in post-production to mimic the look of film
Many software packages, like Magic Bullet, can convincingly add film grain to your video footage. You can modulate the level of graininess, and this effect can work very well if used correctly. Film grain is visually pleasing if the story you are telling is pure fiction or if you want a high-end look, for the reasons so eloquently set forth by DP Janusz Kaminski in the quote on the first page of this article.
Video color correction: timing/grading
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The color correction of digital video is crucial to approximating the film look. This issue is related to lighting but is so important that it deserves its own section. The hue and tint of a given shot is crucial to its visual impact and emotional effect on the audience; the color can be tweaked to make it look the way you want in the process known as color timing or grading. These terms actually come from the film process but are now freely used in digital filmmaking.
Whatever you do, do not leave a scene lit with white light, unless the sterile white look is what the scene needs. Every scene and shot requires its own color, although of course there will probably be recurring color themes in your movie. You can shoot it “white” and then grade it in post using the color-correction tools provided with your video editing program, or you can use dedicated software such as Color Finesse or Magic Bullet. If you shoot a scene “white” in post-production you can grade it to make it look yellower (warmer), bluer (colder), greener or whichever hue you want. Notice how a scene’s mood changes when you change the hue one way or the other!
A cheaper way to color-correct your project is to do lots of extensive tests and then get the look as you shoot. You do this through creatively white-balancing your camera: you place a colored filter over the lens, press the white balance button, and then take the filter off. The camera will now shoot footage that has a hue complementary to that of the filter. If you want a blue look, you white-balance with an orange filter on the lens; if you want a warm look, perform the white-balance with a blue filter; if you want a greenish hue, white-balance with a pink filter, and so on.
You can get a specific shade of blue by using a specific shade of yellow filter – you can determine which filter will yield the exact shade you want by experimenting during pre-production. Some cameras even allow you to save white balance presets, so that all you have to do once you have found the hue you want is save it as a preset and then simply recall it when you shoot, without having to mess around with filters on set (but you have to use light of exactly the same color temperature during filming, otherwise you will get a different hue).
A brief note on mixing color temperatures
Using lights of different color temperatures can be used to great effect. This simply means using lights of different color in the same shot. This was used to great effect by James Cameron in the steel mill scene of “Terminator 2″, in which he used blue and orange light (motivated by moonlight and molten steel respectively).
The only caveat with this is that you must determine the relationship between the two different colors before filming, because it is not really possible, for example, to make the blue bluer without also making the orange bluer (i.e. less orange).
Adding film grain in post-production to mimic the look of film
Many software packages, like Magic Bullet, can convincingly add film grain to your video footage. You can modulate the level of graininess, and this effect can work very well if used correctly. Film grain is visually pleasing if the story you are telling is pure fiction or if you want a high-end look, for the reasons so eloquently set forth by DP Janusz Kaminski in the quote on the first page of this article.
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