Your cut is done, yet shots don’t match. Leonard Guercio explains how color correction integrates shots and scenes into one unified look for your movie.
So you’ve shot your movie, finished the final cut and had the music scored and mixed with sweetened dialog and sound effects tracks. Yet, despite your certainty that the story, performances and direction mesh very well together, you feel that something is still lacking. Chances are what’s missing is a unified look for the entire movie. If this is the case, color correcting your movie can help coalesce and integrate all the discrete shots, scenes and sequences into a coherent, unique visual style – a style that clearly communicates the overall look and feel you intended from the beginning.
Putting It In Perspective
The term “color correction” may be somewhat of an understatement – even though adjusting image color is one of its obvious functions. More precisely, the process is about color enhancement, overall image improvement and integration. It often starts with adjusting over and under-exposures and color balancing so that the individual shots have the desired appearance. What’s more, at times the process may have nothing to do with color. If, for example, you’re working in black-and-white, color does not figure into the correction at all. Yet, you can still unify the look of your movie by adjusting white and black levels, gray tones and contrast. In any case, “color correction” has now come to embrace all aspects of adjusting, enhancing and integrating a movie’s images into a unified, coherent visual style. Whether you’re shooting in film and transferring to videotape or shooting and editing entirely in video, balancing all the shots in a scene is key to preserving a consistent visual continuity.
A Good Start
Shooting a few seconds of an 18% gray card or color chip chart at the beginning of every new film roll or laying down several seconds of color bars on videotape provides you with a standard visual reference. Achieving proper color (or B&W) begins in the camera during the image acquisition stage, but color correction may be carried out in varying degrees throughout the moviemaking process. When adjusting color, white, black and mid-tone levels, it’s essential to have a properly calibrated broadcast video monitor to assess the changes you make. Calibrating your broadcast video monitor to color bars is the first step to ensure a more accurate rendition of the image adjustments you make. Using a waveform monitor and vectorscope will ensure greater precision to the set-up. Because your computer monitor renders colors differently than a broadcast monitor, you should never rely on your computer monitor alone for assessing color accuracy.
Two Paths
Essentially, there are two approaches to color correcting your movie. One: You can learn to master the art and craft of color correction yourself. Two: You can employ an experienced professional colorist to do it for you. If you choose option one, there is good news. Today, nearly all the major non-linear edit systems – like Final Cut Pro HD, Avid Xpress Pro and others – have very effective color correction tools built into their applications. Achieving an acceptable level of competency takes a lot of practice. With enough time on the color correction learning curve, you can become fairly proficient at enhancing your own images. Although, if you believe you have a really good film and can afford to do so, it’s wise to bring in a professional colorist. I can change a defective light switch in my kitchen, but I wouldn’t take on the job of re-wiring my whole house – I’d hire a registered electrician with good credentials. Moreover, having an unbiased person working to achieve your movie’s visual style can be a blessing, especially if that colorist understands the vision you and your DP have designed. Also, the colorist is most likely to be impartial to insider information about each shot and thus can concentrate on enhancing the picture as a whole.
Getting Down To Business
If you choose to do your own color correction, the best place to start is with your NLE’s help manual. (If this doesn’t work for you, there are several good in-depth books dealing with color correction in the popular non-linear edit systems. There are even classes being offered at film schools.) Begin by familiarizing yourself with basic color theory and the various tools in your color corrector. An expedient approach is to work from the general to the specific. For example, choose a master or wide shot, color correct that shot to your liking, next adjust the color of the medium shots and then the close-up shots to match the master. Do this with every scene and sequence until they all fit together seamlessly.
As a general example, here is an image from a concert performance I shot. Since I was merely documenting the concert, I was stuck with a lighting plan that was already in place. After white-balancing my video camera, the lighting changed during the course of the show. The singer was illuminated by the hall’s stage lighting, which was color-gelled to create a more dramatic effect. In the left screen shot, the image of the singer suffers from a bluish cast, and below you can see that the corresponding color wheel is weighted toward the blue. Opening up the color corrector tool in my NLE, I shifted the balance and hue controls giving the singer a more naturalistic flesh tone. The right screen shot shows the enhanced image of the singer. Notice that the corresponding color wheel is now balanced at center.
Seeing The Big Picture
Whether you choose to do it yourself or to work with a colorist, the overall effect of color correction should be seamless and go unnoticed by your viewers. In the end, creating a unified look for your movie is like all fine craft skills: it should not draw attention to itself but rather serve to connect the ideas and emotions of your movie directly to the minds and hearts of your audience.
Leonard Guercio is an independent filmmaker and an adjunct film professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.
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