How can you make certain colors pop more, without grading

[Daan Werdefroy]

Hello everyone,

 

I have small studentfilm coming up. The story is about a mom and grown up son, who live together in the same weary appartement. The mom meets a guy and this guy appearence ends up splitting the mom and son.
The desaturated blue and grey in Edward hopper's painting "morning in a city" is a major influence when talking about the colors in the appartement.
http://imageobjecttext.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/hopper-morning-in-a-city-1944.jpg

Now I wanted to contrast their cold colored and desaturated environment with the guy's appearence by making him wear warm, satured colors. I don't want to play around to much with masks etc so I was wondering if there is a way on set where I can desaturate the entire picture afterwards and his colors would still look pretty good.

 

I will be filming this on a REDone

[Phil Rhodes]

You can selectively desaturate certain colours in most competent grading software.

 

That said, the right place to do this is on set, in camera, using production design. If you want him to be in warm, saturated colours while the rest of the image is cooler and less saturated, the best way to do that is with a can of paint, the right location, and appropriate costume.

[Daan Werdefroy]

You can selectively desaturate certain colours in most competent grading software.

 

That said, the right place to do this is on set, in camera, using production design. If you want him to be in warm, saturated colours while the rest of the image is cooler and less saturated, the best way to do that is with a can of paint, the right location, and appropriate costume.

I know, but I fear that saturating for example orange in the entire picture will influence the skin tones aswell. Or am I wrong?

 

The can of piant and costumes are being sought after. How could you apply this to the facial tones? I would like to tone them down aswell on the mother and son

[Freya Black]

 

Now I wanted to contrast their cold colored and desaturated environment with the guy's appearence by making him wear warm, satured colors. I don't want to play around to much with masks etc so I was wondering if there is a way on set where I can desaturate the entire picture afterwards and his colors would still look pretty good.

 

I will be filming this on a REDone

 

Cold coloured and desaturated seem in conflict to me.

 

For cold you could experiment with variations on CTB gel or daylight balanced light.

 

I think Phil is right about production design tho.

 

Freya

Edited March 18, 2013 by Freya Black

[Adrian Sierkowski]

David Mullen tells a good anecdote about a scene he shot, I sadly forget the film, but he may chime in (Northfork, I think?) wherein it was asked how he got a desaturated black and white American flag in a shot.. and the answer was to have a black and white flag made up and flown.

Things like this start always with the way you design, both in production design and lighting, and are then brought to full force in the grade. It's not a one or other thing, it's a symbiosis.

So in terms of your shot, yet you need to dress everything properly. However, if you also want skin-tones, then you'd use makeup to bring down the skin tones of the mother/kid and leave his alone. This will cause him to stand out more, if that's what you want. Or you can also tone down his skin tones like theirs and keep his clothing the same.

This really is 100% one of those situations where you need to shoot lighting and wardrobe tests and bring them through post to make sure they turn out the way you intend before you shoot the film.

[David Mullen ASC]

If you desaturate the entire image in post then everything will go down together, so the most saturated colors on set will still be the most saturated. So if you want the warm clothes to stay saturated and the face to become desaturated, short of using make-up on the faces to make them more pastel (which is possible) then make sure the clothes are very saturated. Then they will still look colorful in comparison to everything else even when you do the desaturation in post.

 

Get the look as close as possible in camera and it won't be hard to time it in post to finish the look.

[Stephen Selby]

Think about contrasts and colour wheel - if you want an orange to pop it won't if it is on a red background. Put orange on a blue background and it will pop.