Best Way to colour correct

Austinv

Austinv

Well-known member
Im working on a short right now and when it comes time for post production I would like to colour correct the entire film. I have tried a few different methods. I would like to know what is the most effcient way to colour correct using Premiere and After Effects CS3. Do I have to colour correct clip for clip or is there a way that I can take my entire sequence from Premiere and put it into after effects to colour correct??
 
Just import the entire movie uncompressed into AE and add an adjustment layer to it. CC the adjustment layer and it will CC everything.
 
That's pretty much how I do it too - I adjust each clip in Premiere pro so that the white balance and contrast is consistant in each scene and that the overall film visually fits together (in terms of colour) I then do any secondary CC that I need to do (making certain colours punchier, adjusting exposure in certain areas etc) in After Effects

Once that's all done, if I want a global colour cast or "look" (like MB looks for example), I bring in the whole uncompressed film into AE, add a new adjustment layer and apply the effect(s) to this
:)
 
Alright so what I do is what everyone else does then. I find it sort of time consuming though, anyone else find this?
 
There's unfortunately no automatic way to do it quickly (or well). It's actually what I do for a living and even on the big systems that do everything realtime it takes me about 5 hours to colour correct a 22 minute reality show (and that's kind of doing it quickly). A 90min film that doesn't even have a very involved treatment can take up to a week, but it's definitely worth the time it takes. Colour correction can dramatically change the mood of a scene, it can almost be a character on its own driving points of the story.

As far as using After Effects and Premiere, I would port the entire edit into After Effects (I think Premiere 2.0 has a function for this) and do all your colour correction there. You don't want to have anything in your Premiere timeline that needs to render (such as CC) because you end up recompressing your footage several times over and that drops the quality of your final product. In After Effects you can get away with only using Levels and Hue/Saturation to even out your footage and then you can apply an adjustment layer over entire scenes (or your entire film) to give it whatever look you want.

Hope this Helps
 
Wouldn't a 90 min movie be a massive file once exported from AE? How'd you go about putting that to disk? Wouldn't it be hugely compressed?
 
There's a great book called... uh... **runs to bathroom and back** "The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction" by Focal Press. They lay-out a few different workflows on different applications.
 
Sorry, the 90min movie was done on one of those big reatime systems. Yeah, that would be rather intimidating in After Effects, you'd probably need to use a different workflow for something that long.
 
pmark, how good is that book for those of us using systems like Vegas or Premiere, or is it only aimed at those with access to high-end or Mac-based systems?
 
Most everything converts to Vegas. Vegas has almost all of the tools, they just have different names. The book has greatly improved my CCing in Vegas, that's for sure.
 
Hullfish (the author) references Apple's Color extensively throughout the book. Mainly because it was affordable and convenient to use FCS. As opposed to having full time access to a Da Vinci. The heart of the book is the theory (Art & Technique) behind color grading. Once you understand the fundamentals of color correction you can apply it to any tool you use: Vegas, Avid, Premiere, AE, etc. Like riding a bike - once you know how to ride a bike it doesn't matter if the bike is a Schwinn or Trek, you can jump on either one and make it go.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top