Problems with Color Correction

[John Atala]

So, im editing this short film and the editing process is done. now im color correcting the whole movie, on the whole it did ok, but a certain scene has called upon my attention. the thing is that the DP shot it (with a PD 150, my footage is 29,97 NTSC-CCIR 601, 720X480 material) a certain footage uverexposing 2 stops, thus two clicks more bright. my question is, how would you people darken the footage and color correct it?

 

oh, the action is two actors sitting around a table, and light comming in from the window (moon) and a couple of light sources in the living room. the whole spirit of the scene is dark.

 

my guess would be burn the blacks on the 3-wat color corrector, throw some gamma in order to darken, and Use quicktime's HSL do darken even more, but something is lacking. minor contrast and brightness corections done as well.

 

how would you darken it?

 

please help!

 

jon :huh:

[Michael Nash]

You didn't say what system you're using for color correction. I'm sure that info would help elicit more tips from others who use your system. Posting a still would be even better as it gives people a chance to lend their own hand to it.

 

But as a general rule, most exposure corrections are done primarily with gamma correction; that is adjusting the mid tones and leaving the extreme whites and blacks alone. But you can go only so far before it starts to alter the contrast too much, then you have to tweak the shadows and highlights a little to restore a more straight-line gamma.

 

Personally I would adjust the midtones first to find the desired exposure, then massage the shadows and highlights to polish the look. I think crushing the blacks before you adjust exposure is kind of putting the cart before the horse.

 

But two stops over is a LOT in video -- enough to burn out highlights completely. Are you sure it's really two stops? But anyway, if highlights are clipped there's nothing you can do to recover detail that's gone. The best you might be able to do then is throw some color into the burned-out areas so that they don't look burned-out.

[John Atala]

yes, im sorry, my bad. :(

 

im using apple's final cut pro 4HD, and shake 3.

 

heres the still requested, its only got the widescreen filter 1.85:1.

 

thanks

the still is posted on my fotolog, the last two imags updated is from this one picture:

 

http://fotolog.net/jatala

 

im sorry, i cant seem to place the picture here, just click above.

[J Costantini]

Hi.

I photographed this film he´s talking about.

if you get to see the still image, feedback is welcome

 

thanks

[Michael Nash]

I could view the images but I couldn't manage to capture them into Photoshop. Are these images before or after color correction? They already have a dark, nighttime feel to them.

 

The moonlight feels a little too hot relative to the practical lamp in the BG. If you darken the whole image, the practical will look unnaturally dark. In the closeup, you could bring down the expsoure but then the fill side will start to go pretty dark and you'll lose the actress' eyes.

[John Atala]

The fact is that the footage diserves treatment regarding color and also darken it, no the footage isn´t color corrected, the way i saw it, i could raise even more the hilights and then darken the whole thing (mids and darks, if thats how you say it) also a little desaturation will also be welcome.

 

tell me what you think

 

thanks for your time,

 

jon

[Michael Nash]

Well, from the two stills you've posted I don't see any highlights to speak of -- only midtone and shadow. The hottest thing in the frame is the moonlight hitting the white wall, but that's also providing the midtone keylight on the woman's face.

So if you raise the highlights you make the key light on her face brighter, not darker. And if you lower the midtones to make the moonlight on her face darker, you also lower the highlights. You could raise the overall contrast to make the highlights brighter and the shadows darker; but that wouldn't make the overall image look darker, just more contrasty.

 

But assuming there are other angles in the sequence with more highlights, again I'd start by lowering the gamma to bring the midtones down to the desired exposure. This will naturally darken the shadows as well. Then perhaps adjust the levels in the shadow region a little bit to fine tune the look. I would only crush the blacks or clip the highlights as a last resort. In my opinion it's hard to change those levels without making them look artificially clipped.

 

Perhaps desaturate the blue only, so that the orange practical doesn't look artifically desaturated (unless you're going for a more bleach-bypass look.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Missed this thread somehow.

 

Oh yeah, that's pretty generally what video looks like before you've adjusted things. I played with it in Photoshop - which may be a bit misleading because you can do anything in Photoshop - and the problem you have given yourself is that the woman is significantly underlit compared to the wall. I'd have brought the practical over to the other side of her or backlit so she's actually pulled out of the frame a little.

 

I found it helpful to vignette all that blue on the wall almost to black at the left side of frame and lift the character a little - but what it really needs is backlight, and you can't really do that.

 

Phil

[Matt Short]

What are you using to CC? Problem shots like these I would take into after effects, create masks and correct each section individually. I did a quicky with this shot.

 

http://home.comcast.net/~mattshort1/_2_copy.jpg

[Michael Nash]

Oh yeah, that's pretty generally what video looks like before you've adjusted things. I played with it in Photoshop - which may be a bit misleading because you can do anything in Photoshop

 

I found it helpful to vignette all that blue on the wall almost to black at the left side of frame and lift the character a little - but what it really needs is backlight, and you can't really do that.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I disagree that "that's what video looks like" -- I also played with it in Photoshop and got it to look the way I would have lit and exposed the video! I don't think I would have had much trouble simply shooting it that way. It's basically just overexposed for a dim look. The white wall doesn't help, though.

 

If I can find a way to post the stills I can show you what I did. In Photoshop I used the "Curves" tool to lower the mid gamma about one stop's worth, then raised the shadow area back up to more of a straight line. In another pass I hit the curves again, this time pulling down the highlights (75% area) a little bit, while leaving the mids in place, and again raising the shadows just a touch. In theory you could do all this in one pass, but with curves sometimes it's easier to do multiple passes.

 

For color, I pulled down the overall saturation about 20%, then selected the oranges and raised the lightness and saturation a little to restore some glow to the practical. I did consider doing a separate matte channel to pull down the brightness of the wall, but I spent all of five minutes correcting both shots, just out of curiosity. For the CU I selected just the blues instead with the hue/saturation tool, which left a little life to the skin tones and fingernails while dulling the steel blue look. I did have to select the cyan in the cigarette separately to restore it to white.

 

I don't agree that she necessarily needs a backlight, although it would be an easy way to get separation in a dark scene. After color correction, I thought the closeup of the woman looked quite nice as I left just enough detail in the shadows to make out her eyes and hair, just a tiny bit.

 

Incidentally, mine came out about as dark but flatter in gamma than Matt's copy. That one looks nice, and a convincing night look. My rendering has more shadow detail and more glow from the practical. Lots of things you can do with this image and still have it look good.