Colour Grading

Colour Correction/Grading Practical

One key element of a successful movie is the grading and colours of the scenes. For example looking at the before and after of the picture below, you can see how overall the original image on the left looks very bland and cold. The whole picture is one colour of a blue except for the horse which means that it does not stand out and so looks very boring too look at. Typically you have a colour palate which you chose from to alter your image, from there you can alter the contrast, highlights and shadows. The image below has the colour of image blown out meaning its a more prominent colour in the image, this gives it a variety of colour, contrast has also been increased making the difference between colours more rich satisfying the audiences eyes. As we've established that lighting and colour correction are extremely important, our group had some shots which were already at a good standard but correcting them just made them much better. 

The lighting in the subway was actually already really nice, the lights at the top gave it an artificial feel and overall there is a lot of colour in the scene for the audience to look at ; contrasts between the blue, red and white really bring out the scene. All that was needed for this scene was to add an extra bit of contrast and to play around with the shadows. Also since the feel of our urban drama is to have more of a sad vibe, we decided to turn down the global lighting to make the shots seem darker.

After some slight changes to the shadows, midtones and highlights you can see the changed scene below. The intensity of the lights has been weathered down giving it a more darker feel, paired with the use of shadows it heightens the effect. Overall the scene is seen as less warmer and more cold which is something that we wanted to go for.

Since we filmed our opening credit in the span of one day, we didn't have the choice of filming with one set lighting choice, that paired with the unreliability of the weather meant some shots were lighter or darker than others. Of course since our opening credit was a montage of a journey of a homeless woman it gave us some leeway into which some shots can gradually get darker as of course it would signify a later time of day. These two scenes below simply had their global lighting lowered to match and give it a realistic look. Colour correction was also used to try and wash out the colour of blue on the character to give it a more distressed or old look to the clothes, we also didn't want her clothes to be too eye catching and more dominant over the scene.

 To evaluate, the use of color correction and grading gave our opening credit a more professional feel as well as one that would satisfy the audience more. Using the different options to cater to different scenes is a skill that is easily adaptable and transferrable to other sources of media creation such as posters or trailer and is highly valued.