need some CC help/advice

Jay Rodriguez

Jay Rodriguez

Coffee Member
He guys, I need some color correction help here. These grabs are for a commercial that I shot but they look so damn dark, too dark and flat to me. I'd like to see what you guys can do to liven them up so that I can get some idea/advice on how to brighten and defind them more.

Thanks

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What NLE are you editing with, Coffee? That would have a bearing on how you'd go about adjusting the color.
 
haha, thanks dude.... I'm pretty over whelmed because i really like the commercial but the colors really need work. i tried playing around with it but i'm ready to throw this mac through the wall cause i'm getting sooooo damned frustrated. sucks when you don't have a mentor around with things like this.

EDIT: hey blaine, I'm in FCP 4.5
 
It looks like there are no lights in those shots at all. Needs something to pull the talent away from the backgrounds. The faces are almost the same greyscale value as the walls. Messing with the gamma curves will bring contrast back in and the illusion of better lighting.
 
aram, i know, it's horrible. the funny thing is that we had almost 2500 watts of light in there and it still came out that dark. it was the adapter that we used which just didn't work for this type of shoot.
 
I think the darkness isn't that bad and the gamma curve thing will help a lot.
Bringing the lights closer and throwing in some shadows would also make it seem like its brighter to the eye. Using B&W in the viewfinder helps with the contrast ratio during the shoot. From looking at the shots I can't really tell where the light is coming from except outside.
 
Apply your Color Corrector 3-way to each of the clips. Do the Window>Arrange>Color Correction thing. Then select the Waveform layout on the Video Scopes. Lower your blacks down toward the Black baseline and raise your whites up toward the White line without going over. This will brighten things up and give you some decent contrast. Switch form Waveform to Vectorscope and tweak your colors using the three color wheels. If you grab the dot in the center of the wheel, you can drag it with the mouse...it moves REAL slow. To move faster, use the command key while moving it with the mouse.

EDIT: The line on the Vectorscope pointing to 10:30 represents human skin tone.
 
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Okay, I didn't spend much time on these but here they are:

Sequence_1a.jpg


Sequence_1b.jpg


Sequence_1c.jpg


Basically, what I suggested, lowering the blacks, raising the whites and pushing the colors toward true skin tones.

Ignore the "scruntched" look. I didn't take the time to change the pixel aspect ratio.
 
Great link, Paul!! I forgot all about Ken Stone's website. All I could think of were the APTS books. That gives a great color correction in a nutshell. :thumbsup:
 
hey thanks paul... i've been there a ton of times before... for some reason, i'm just not happy with the over all image with this though. I think it's just because i've been playing with my new HD camera. I look at this DVX footage and it doesn't thrill me anymore mainly because of the adapter that I used on it... The DVX (imo) has such a better image without an adapter. Geez, my tastes change too much too fast. LOL
 
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