CineHaiku: Colour Grading

ROLES:

Mia: Performer/Directing

Dorsa: Producer/Editor

Alyssa: Cinematographer

Abbie: Sound Recordist/Mixer

Today I was in the editing suite with my favourite editing buddy (Alyssa, the cinematographer) to work in collaboration for the colour grading. Here are some screenshots of the process with an explanation of our final decisions on the grade at the end. (Note, the remainder of this post from this point on was written on the 25/10)

Here's one of very many takes of shot #1

Now, I know what you might be thinking... this is very blue. Sadly yes, we made a mistake on set where we filmed the majority of the forest shots with the wrong white balance. Still looks quite beautiful though! Here's the same shot with the colour grade fix!

Lots better!

I won't lie, it was kind of difficult, but looking at the before and after definitely brings me some satisfaction -- I'm surprised we pulled any colour out of that!

Anyways, here's before and afters of the take of the first shot we did use:

This took colour balancing, selecting the skin-tones and trying to make them more vibrant (in order to match the pomegranate shots in the second section, as they were recorded with a different white balance), altering the temperature of the shot to make it warmer and try and get rid of that blue coldness (being weary not to make it too warm like a sepia filter), and just going back and forth between the first and second section to make sure everything matched!

Third shot before and afters:

The only real difference here is that the second one is colour balanced, making it look like how it did when we filmed it, thus the slightly pink sky as the light was slowly appearing... sadly, at the time I'm writing this, its a little too late to go back and change it, but I think I prefer it without that slight pink in the clouds. Persephone is supposed to be in the underworld, and perhaps that slight pinkness makes it a little too romantic (can't say I can take all the credit for noticing this, though, someone else had pointed it out to me after we went ahead and submitted, at least I know for future though)

I did try out some other things though...

Thought this was an interesting idea, but it looks a little tacky, after all, this shot was beautiful, I kind of didn't had the heart to touch it too much. Anyways, the idea of the red-blood-water did not come through because of majority vote within our group.

That is all my notes on the colour grade, now, I'm looking forward to the crit tomorrow! :) Well done to my group for pulling through!