Film like color correction

Z

zerobytes

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I know this information has to be somewhere on this site but I've been searching for the past day or two and finally decided "ah, screw it! I'll just register and ask!" I've been shooting on my DVX for the past 3 years and have had a lot of success but I still feel like my footage looks a lot like video. I'm wondering if there are any suggestions on how to take existing footage and make it have more of a "film look" in post? I'm in the middle of editing a new film and just can't seem to get it right. Perhaps, it's just my shooting and post is the wrong place to be tweaking look....?? This link should lead to one of my past films if you would like to see what I'm talking about.

http://films.thelot.com/films/20412

I know it's on the lot but it's the only film I have online at the moment it's not a shameless promo (I promise) I'm really trying to get some advice on look - please don't feel any need to vote. I was shooting at 24p, Cinelike_v, sunlight and worklights, skin detail on, and white balanced to white paper. Chromo and the rest at factory defaults.
 
By watching your film I'd say it's mostly your lighting. Godd lighting will help make anything look somewhat filmic. Also, your exterior shots were really over exposed. I'd find a DP near you and try to bring him on board on the next film. You will learn so much from a good DP. I just noticed that you don't have a score either, that might help create a mood for the film.
 
Some color correction helps too
ORIGINAL
1173827318.jpg

CC'd
1173827346.jpg


1173827492.jpg
 
Wow you guys are quick!!! Thanks so much for the help Jay. On the CCing it looks like you darkened it up a bit but (forgive my noobness) I'm not sure what else - I definitely think it looks better. I once asked an editor how to CC and she just said "meh, whatever looks good." Any tips?
 
If all you are doing is eyeballing it, you are not going to achieve the best results.
Learn how to use a waveform monitor and vectorscope.
Stretching the contrast -- deepen the blacks and push up the highlights -- is a general good rule of thumb. That is, if you light it right to begin with. Use the mids to set the overall tone of the video afterward.

My two cents.
 
I don't remember what I did to it, lol. I desaturated it a bit, warmed it a little by boosting some reds/oranges and crushed down the blacks a bit. I "eyeballed" it. :)
 
Honestly, I really wasn't too stoked about your composition and shot selection either. One problem I notice alot of people have is they frame like they are shooting a home movie, i.e. very wide and shakey. personally, I try to frame as tightly as possible, and once i get something I'm satisfied with I then give the zoom ring a bump to go even tighter. Home movies are wide simply because the camera op doesn't know what's going to happen next, and is trying to capture everything. However, in a narrative piece the director should have the actions planned out as much as possible, so there's no excuse for shots being too wide.

Frankly also there was too many similar shots that just shouldn't have been there, they killed the tempo of the piece and I got bored very quickly. Honestly I thought most of the shots were flat and uninteresting.

My advice? i know you didn't ask for this, but start trying to make bolder choices in your shot selection, lighting, and subject matter. I personally always shoot for the bold choice, because hey, we didn't crawl out of caves and put a man on the moon because our ancestors always choose the 'safe choice'....

and hey, even if you fail, at least you've failed while daring greatly....
 
Another example of how some quick CC (took me less than a minute to do this) can really change the look of an image and make it 'pop'.

BEFORE:
1173843439.jpg



AFTER:
1173843473.jpg


For me, it's really a trial and error thing. It all depends on what you want. There is no real rules necessarily for how to make something look like film. You would correct differently if you were going for a Saving Private Ryan (desaturdated, bleach bypass, muted colors) look as opposed to say a Casino Royale look (bright and vibrant).

Hop into your NLE, open the CC controls, and mess around a bit. It takes getting used to, but it really helps to improve the image. Whatever NLE you use, try searching for guides online (ie "Avid Xpress Pro Color Correction", "Final Cut Pro Color Correction", etc).

Hope that helps a bit!

PS: I also used the "eyeballing" method. You will need to read up on vector scopes and waveform monitors and how to read them properly to get the best results from your color correction.
 
oh fun, i love doing this

1173846323.jpg


Your footage is not focused to me, so i couldn't really do anything
 
Thanks for the help guys! Really this has helped a lot and it's really interesting to see your different CCs on the shot (thanks for pulling it over Jay). I'm in premiere so I will definitely fiddle with the look some more. I also get that you guys would recommend moving it to 16:9. Jay, I'll check the lighting forums and get a better DP for my future stuff. THANKS A BUNCH!!! I'll also google vectorscopes and waveforms as it would be nice to have some guidelines when doing it. I've pulled up the curves before and then I kinda got lost and found the color sliders/wheel to be so much easier. As for that bleach bypass look Bryant - can that be done with premiere packaged CC or do I need to drop some $$$ on a plugin - I'd like to try that look on the film I'm working on.

Anchoryanker - you get a paragraph all to yourself here. Thank you for the review of my work! That really wasn't the intention of this post but I'll never turn down an honest crit - especially since the only crits I've really gotten are from fam and friends on this one (and those don't count. Honestly, I didn't think it was good enough to solicit community feedback and posted to the lot with a lot of encouragement.) And, it's been my experience that on creative forums (writing and what not) people only give the nice job stuff so I especially appreciate your honest appraisal - that's how we get better right.

Again, thanks for the time and the replies Y'all. I'm inspired.

zb
 
Well bleach bypass is actually a way of processing the physical 35mm negatives, but some similar effects can be done with and without plugins. Different plugin programs, a popular one being Magic Bullet (http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/magbulsuit.html) can produce a mock bleach bypass effect.

Another way of getting close is to simply drop down your saturation till you get the desired effect. Of course, you would tweak it further after that, but dropping the saturation gets you most of the way there I'd say.

I'll drop that saturation on your example frame and post it back here in a minute to show you.


EDIT:
Ok, here we go. Your clip didn't have too much color to begin with, but you get the picture.

BEFORE:
1173843439.jpg


AFTER:
1173850638.jpg


As you can see, it's definetly more muted in it's color rendering, and yet it still retains some information (note the hair is still slightly blond and the bricks still show some faded red). I auto curve corrected the image (a simple single button click), and then simply dropped the saturation by about 50%. Like I said, just go through and tinker around with different settings. It can be pretty fun actually seeing all the looks you can put together, even without plugins. Enjoy!
 
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no problem, I'm not knocking ya there, zero, I saw a few shots that had potential, it's just overall I sorta had a "blah" feeling......

here's a link to a thread with a few screen grabs from a project i'm still working on, the audio is giving me fits but hopefully I'll be finished in a week or so......


http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=85190&highlight=edgemar+studios


I'm sorta infamous in my film classes for giving my honest opinion, but we won't grow if we don't get honest feedback....
 
Very cool Bryant! The minute I got to my computer I went to town with it and I'm already seeing a big time improvement. thanks for the advice!

Anchor! I agree 100% again, thanks for the honest crit!

zb
 
I actually liked many of your shots in the opening sequence. Creative use of some extreme angles and interesting overlay of the titles. Some random thoughts...

Overall, the pacing of the film was slow. The lighting wasn't great (the blue window was an amtuer giveaway), and as mentioned there were problems with overexposure. Your compositions may be the biggest thing that smack of video. They could have been tighter, and more traditional compositions. The height of the camera placement is very important. Most of the time it should be level with the talent. Too much shooting things from the side, need to get into the scene with over the shoulder shots. The shots didn't have a lot of depth, could use some better staging of foreground, talent, background. More attention paid to shallow depth of field. The locations were a little blah, great locations can really make a film.
 
Thanks for the pointers. I'm shooting another film this summer and will get more into the action (as there will be a lot more :D) Just to make sure I understand correctly. You're saying that I should get away from 2 shots or other wide shots as much as possible and focus more on CUs? Or at least focus on the actor from more of a "head on angle". The DOF thing makes perfect sense and I'll try and focus (big groan) more on that when shooting.
 
BryantStanton said:
Another example of how some quick CC (took me less than a minute to do this) can really change the look of an image and make it 'pop'.

BEFORE:
1173843439.jpg



AFTER:
1173843473.jpg


For me, it's really a trial and error thing. It all depends on what you want. There is no real rules necessarily for how to make something look like film. You would correct differently if you were going for a Saving Private Ryan (desaturdated, bleach bypass, muted colors) look as opposed to say a Casino Royale look (bright and vibrant).

Hop into your NLE, open the CC controls, and mess around a bit. It takes getting used to, but it really helps to improve the image. Whatever NLE you use, try searching for guides online (ie "Avid Xpress Pro Color Correction", "Final Cut Pro Color Correction", etc).

Hope that helps a bit!

PS: I also used the "eyeballing" method. You will need to read up on vector scopes and waveform monitors and how to read them properly to get the best results from your color correction.
Click to expand...


Perhaps not, but there are key ingredients that detemine whether or not things are shot and look like the ywere done on Video:

for one, blown out whites. If you compare over exposed whites on video as opposed to film, you will notice that since video has much less range, it is also more contrasty, making your transition to white just plain ugly with 4:1:1 color space.

What you can do is lower your saturation a touch, depending on what you shot with in camera, if that is the desired result you want. That is to say, if you are going for the 35mm look prior to it going through some color grading and eventually release ( watch lord of the rings, colors are more vibrant than anything ive shot on digital )

Watch your whites and exposure. Take your levels and bring your whites down a bit more to grey, just so that the whites soften up a bit, then you can play wit hcrushing your blacks, playing with your mids and hi's, again just watch those whites cause thats the video signature really....

unfortunately the problem with that still, in comparison, is that you over exposed his face making this more difficult to grade. If things are over exposed, its is more difficult to pull them down in digital, where as darker images can be brought up more simply, however the nyou introduce more noise into your picture. Aim next time for 70-80% exposure on the face, that will give you more room to play with it later on.

Here is my go at it, notice the blown out areas and the adjustments made. Don't go too harsh on crushing those blacks, cause your image is already very high in contrast. By the way, wuts with the super low quality still?


Before
1173843439.jpg


AFTER

correctedimagelg2.jpg
 
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lol, I think the lq still is a screenshot that Jay brought over from an flv online. (thanks again jay). One more quick question - do you guys color correct after the edit or before? Scene by scene? Shot by shot? My guess is that you'd have to do shot by shot, but I'm curious if it has to be that tedious? This helps more than I can tell you guys! thanks for the info - I'll have to repost this film when it's CCed. Already I'm seeing leaps and bounds!

zb
 
zerobytes said:
You're saying that I should get away from 2 shots or other wide shots as much as possible and focus more on CUs? Or at least focus on the actor from more of a "head on angle". The DOF thing makes perfect sense and I'll try and focus (big groan) more on that when shooting.
Click to expand...

Like someone said earlier in the thread, get the framing tight, and then possibly even kick it in a little tighter. Granted, there is such a thing as too tight, but it's always the tendency starting out to go too wide, so you have to fight that. It was a big problem for me when I was getting started as well.

You usually need wide shots and 2 shots to establish a scene, but DV doesn't have tons of detail like film, so those shots don't hold up well. So, have an establishing shot, but as soon as possible, get into the CU's and OTS shots. CU's look good on DV, and disguise the deep depth of field that's part of the format.

It's best just to study films and see what techniques they use. Like I said, I think most filmmakers make the same mistakes when they get started: handheld instead of tripod, wide instead of close, camera height at chest level to the operator when it should be level with the talent. Those are really common mistakes, and I've made them all.
 
personally, I get it completely edited before i even start thinking about CC.

As for what joshua said about your opening shot, yes, I though a few shots were coming close, but not quite there. One of the most useful things I've been told about composition is that it's very hard to get too tight, but very easy to go too wide.


ETA: PaPA, that looks pretty good!
 
If I'm bumping this too much needlessly please let me know. I am super excited about the progress tho. Here is what I've been able to come up with:
This is the original image:
CC explore.jpg

Here is after some color correction. I desaturated and de-hued a bit and boosted the blue and green channels slightly. I upped the contrast and dropped the brightness just a smidge.
CC explore done.jpg


And here is an attempt at Bleach Bypass. I really upped the blue and green and desaturated even more.
Bleach Bypass.jpg

I'm not sure how to do anything but eyeball right now tho. I tried the color curves but I ended up going back to the sliders. Is the vectorscope right in premiere? Is that the color curves? Also, I couldn't quite get the "crush the blacks" and "grey the whites" - is that mostly done through brightness/contrast? Are you sick of my noobness yet :embarasse? This is really adding a lot. Thanks for all of your help!

zb
 
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