Color Correcting Videos

A

andybiz_2005

Well-known member
Hi,

I've seen some wedding videos where everything (background) in the image is black & white & only the bride & groom standing in the middle are in full color. How do you achieve this cool effect in After Effects 6.5? What is this effect called & is it really tedious to do this for say a 30 second video clip?

I use Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 as my NLE & AE 6.5 Pro sometimes. I would really like to learn how to do this special effect as it really will enhance my wedding videos. Much thanks in advance.

Andrew
 
Wow! Then that would be really tedious! Doesn't AE have some sort of automated masking where you specify the beginning part of the clip & the ending part of the clip & AE will cleverly "fill" in all the blanks in between? What exactly do you mean by mask? Any other 3rd party s/w you know that makes it easier?

Thanks surf for your advice.
 
Yipee!!

I finally found the name of this effect that I'm trying to achieve. It's called the "pleasantville effect". Anybody knows how to do this pleasantville effect using Adobe After Effects Pro 6.5 for a wedding movie clip?

Thanks.
 
andybiz_2005 said:
Wow! Then that would be really tedious! Doesn't AE have some sort of automated masking where you specify the beginning part of the clip & the ending part of the clip & AE will cleverly "fill" in all the blanks in between? What exactly do you mean by mask? Any other 3rd party s/w you know that makes it easier?

Thanks surf for your advice.
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it has, but it does really not work with fast moving things. you have to correct it nearly every frame.
 
The color pass effect will leave you with only one color (i.e. red in a bunch of roses). Also note that anything else in the frame with the same color will also be
displayed in color.

The "Pleasantville" effect is somewhat different as it refers to entire objects (i.e. a person) being in color while the surrounding environment is not. This requires rotoscoping which is basically drawing a shape around an object to "mask" it from its surroundings. Then you can basically apply one effect to the background layer and another to the foreground layer.

While AE can interpolate between mask keyframes when rotoscoping, you may need to create a lot of keyframes (possibly 1 per frame for high-motion clips) for the mask to properly isolate the subject.

This website has some video tutorials that might be of interest:
http://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2006/01/rotoscoping-part-1.html
 
Actually it's not that bad using premiere. I tried it with a 15 sec motion clip and it only took about half an hour to keyframe it. Basically I had two identical clips on top of each other and then desaturate the clip on the bottom. Then I used an 8-point garbage matte and the Color Pass effect on the top. You don't have to key frame it every frame, although this would depends on the rest of the scene. In the scene I worked on it was especially annoying because I was trying to keep the color red and there was a person wearing red sitting right behind the object that I was filming. So if that happens to you then you have to keep the mask as close to the subject as possible. If there's no other color that's going to interfere, then you can widen the mask, which will make your life a bit easier.

Hopes this help.
 
This is my first post here so hi everybody! :) .. I've been looking around for a while, partly because the DVX100 is my dream cam (but I'm still saving up) ... I'm currently shooting with a GS400.

Funny that this topic comes up here – I'm currently applying exactly this effect to a short film that I wrote, directed and shot over the past half year or so. A short preview / example clip can be viewed here (9.6MB; better to download, not sure if it will stream; link will probably not be up forever, since I'm hosting it myself, but certainly for a couple of months or so).

I will gladly attest to the fact that it is indeed tedious work and takes forever, however I really love the way it comes out. After all if you really want something to look a certain way, you shouldn't easily be deterred if there isn't a one-click filter for it – just my opinion.

Since in my case, it's not just one color range I'm extracting, I'm doing it in After Effects, manually adjusting masks. It took me a moment to really get the hang of it, but after a while I developed a workflow that made it just a *bit* less tedious, taking advantage of keyframing and the like. I'm still spending something like a day on a minute of video though ...

If anyone is interested, I will gladly post details or a small tutorial or something. Let me know. If anybody else here has done this, it might be valuable to exchange ideas, since I basically worked out my workfow by myself and there might well be flaws or redundancies in it, too.

cheers!
nina
 
altaira said:
This is my first post here so hi everybody! :) .. I've been looking around for a while, partly because the DVX100 is my dream cam (but I'm still saving up) ... I'm currently shooting with a GS400.

Funny that this topic comes up here – I'm currently applying exactly this effect to a short film that I wrote, directed and shot over the past half year or so. A short preview / example clip can be viewed here (9.6MB; better to download, not sure if it will stream; link will probably not be up forever, since I'm hosting it myself, but certainly for a couple of months or so).

I will gladly attest to the fact that it is indeed tedious work and takes forever, however I really love the way it comes out. After all if you really want something to look a certain way, you shouldn't easily be deterred if there isn't a one-click filter for it – just my opinion.

Since in my case, it's not just one color range I'm extracting, I'm doing it in After Effects, manually adjusting masks. It took me a moment to really get the hang of it, but after a while I developed a workflow that made it just a *bit* less tedious, taking advantage of keyframing and the like. I'm still spending something like a day on a minute of video though ...

If anyone is interested, I will gladly post details or a small tutorial or something. Let me know. If anybody else here has done this, it might be valuable to exchange ideas, since I basically worked out my workfow by myself and there might well be flaws or redundancies in it, too.

cheers!
nina
Click to expand...
Nina,

Thanks for the helpful post on the Pleasantville effect. I would love to hear more details on how you achieved this. A tutorial would be fantastic.

Thank you,

Jeff
 
Proper execution of this effect takes time. Too much time for the thin margins of the wedding video business. Wedding videos should be cranked out at the same rate McDonalds cranks out hamburgers. McDonalds could spend more time on the presentation of their food, but it would take away from the bottom line. While I agree that a well executed stylized treatment of the video will improve the look, I seriously doubt that any B+G would cough up any extra cash for an effect that's so time consuming. IMHO, a more efficient use of time would be a little color grading and a pro mist filter (on camera or in post).
 
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