The colour grade is something I was proud of with this piece as it was very subtle but I think very intriguing and powerful. The original shots weren't really able to be completely controlled by my camera. The camera I have is meant for stills and so the video side isn't all that professional in terms of how you can control the image. The quality is amazing but the controls you have over what you are capturing are limited.
The main problem here is the white balance and colour temperature of the image. Basically colour temperature is measured in Kelvin. This is a universal, scientific measurement that is used in the science world to accurately measure temperature of objects without going into minus figures but used in cameras to determine the overarching colour of a scene.
You adjust the white balance and colour of a camera from scene to scene as the lights in each scene will have a subtle colour change. You then use an adjustment of kelvin to change the point of white in the camera to try to level out the colour from scene to scene and keep it consistent for grading in post.
This is a tricky task on the Canon DSLR's because they don't have very fine, incremental adjustments available. The camera is controlled by a jog wheel and that steps up the kelvin level in pretty large jumps and so fine adjustments are impossible without a 3rd party OS hack (like magic lantern).
Magic lantern wasn't installed on my card however, because it can be a bit dodgy on my camera (as it isn't a top of the range model) and so I thought it best to just go with the standard settings. This came with the caveat of having to put up with the cameras basic white balance options. The closest I could get everything in camera to white wasn't quite there and so still meant that there was a green wash over the image as evident here:
This look wasn't really what I was going for. I wanted to go with a more subtle, warm look to the image. For that I wanted a subtle orange/brown wash to the image. Something reminiscent of tea perhaps. I didn't want it to seem obvious and jarring, my main goal was to create a nice looking image with a subtle shift not to overtly wash the colours out.
To fix this the first step is colour correction. This is the act of fixing the image and making all the images in the same scene look the same. Differences can occur when changing camera angles, changing lights, changing lenses, or even just shooting on another day. Light is a difficult thing to control without somewhat of a budget and equipment. Most of the images I captured were close to each other and didn't need much work but there were a few that needed them. For example this shot:
This shot is very bright and also has that hint of purple I mentioned in the last post. I needed to get rid of that purple and also darken the image to match with the darker, greener images captured by the other lenses I used from different angles. Once that is done and uniformity is created then I can grade the piece.
Colour grading is the act of styling the images and creating a colour space and feeling throughout each of the shots. It is different to colour correcting because you aren't matching and standardising the images, instead you are colouring them all to suite a certain style or atmosphere. In my case I wanted to go for a brown look that was reminiscent of tea whilst also darkening the image somewhat and adding contrast to evoke a sinister, mysterious feeling. With all that in mind, here's an example:
Before:
After:
As you can see the first image has a lot more green and is more washed out. After my colour correction and grading the image looks far more intense, sharp and impactful. In the grading process I added sharpening and a curves adjustment to really make the image punch through the screen and adding depth and impact to the subtle wash of brown I incorporated. I am really happy with the colour grade I gave this piece and it is becoming something I really enjoy doing.
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