Color Correction Help

L

lotus182

Member
I have zero knowledge of color correction and I've been activly searching for some info on it. I posted an ad on Craigslist out here in LA for someone to help me with my short in the color correction department...but I have gotten no responses. I want to learn to color correct myself so I can do it in house. I looked on Amazon for books on color correction...but the reviews of the only 2 books I found were terrible. I primarily edit on Premiere Pro 1.5, but I am upgrading to 2.0 soon. I also have FCP 5.0, but I hate it and I hate my Mac so I never use either! Does anyone know where a beginning colorist like myself can get some serious info on color correcting in Premiere Pro 1.5 or just any info on color correction? I would be eternally grateful. My short is due at a film competition by April 11th and we're just starting to edit this weekend and we're still shooting some of the stuff for it. Please...someone help me!!!
 
Thanks guys...those links were very helpful. I've messed around with what I've learned in these tutorials. I still would like a little more knowledge about basic color correction though. I don't really understand the shadows/midtones/highlights stuff. I'd also like to learn to read the Vectorscopes and Waveform monitors. I'd like to be fairly educated about proper color correction techniques. These tutorials are very informative and give you the basic know-how to navigate Premiere Pro 2.0's color correction setup, but I still would like some more info on the standard aspects of color correction...anyone got any more good links to CC info?
 
Try finding books about Digital Film or the Digital Intermediate. These books won't provide you with the how too's of color correction but they will provide you with the information about why we need to color correct in the first place.

The kind of content your looking for are:
Basic Film and Optical Measurements
Exposure and Film Densities
Intemediate Materials
Spatial Resolution
Dynamic Resolution

From that you'll learn about densitometers, Vectorscopes and Waveforms. When you get into the digital aspects you'll learn about the differences of working with 8bit linear and 10bit logorythmic etc..

If you can find it check out Film in the Digital age.
 
I have a related question. What is the general strategy with cc? I would think that consistancy is extremely important.

lets say you shot a scene and you want to cc it. Of course, you have to cut out unwanted footage, maybe rearrange some footage, leaving you with a timeline of many different clips. Would you first output this into one big clip and then cc it as a whole? or would you cc each different clip?

thanks!
 
Depends on what your using the footage for. If it's a $4M feature film you CC every shot, if its your grandmothers birthday video you might do a scene to scene color match or nothing at all.

Typically for features and broadcast TV originated on film you do a one light transfer of all the rushes and once editorial is complete they will go back and CC every shot.

Obviously there are a lot of variables, lightong, exposure, film stock etc.. A lot of "independent" film makers rely way too much on post CC rather than test for the right exposure and develop a look prior to shooting.

You can google DaVinci or Pandora to see what information they might provide about color correction. There's also a professional users group, the TIG but I'm not sure of you can log into that without being a member.
 
its a shame you dont want to use final cut, cause i'm pretty sure it has a digital vecterscope built into the program. you might want to fire up your mac just as a learning tool, because the hardware is crazy expensive.

"mr. pibb plus red vines equals crazy delicious"
 
mcshyd said:
its a shame you dont want to use final cut, cause i'm pretty sure it has a digital vecterscope built into the program. you might want to fire up your mac just as a learning tool, because the hardware is crazy expensive.

"mr. pibb plus red vines equals crazy delicious"
Click to expand...
I'm sure all NLE's have vectorscopes and Waveform monitors. I think the original issues is "yeah, so there's a waveform, what does it mean?"

And yes, Mr Pibb plus red vines does sound good.:love4:
 
well, I've only seen it on FCP, but then again, i ain't looking for it. I was suggesting that he look up how to read a waveform, and then practice cc with it in fcp.
 
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