What do you think this look signifies?

[Moseph]

I've created this look just by experimenting with different filters, and I really like how it came out. Basically I replaced the luminance of a clip with it's own red channel converted into B&W, here's what I came up with:

Here's another one, this time replacing the luminance with the blue channel:

I really like how these came out, but to be honest I'm not sure what the best use of them would be. The only thing I can think of is that the second process can make some outdoor footage look way more depressing by turning a completely blue sky into gray / white. I've also found that if I need to add saturation to something, I can do it in a much more tasteful way by using this process. Any other ideas? I like to have a reason for why I color grade things a certain way. What mood do you think these looks can represent?
If you need it in full context, I have some much older screengrabs of the same shots with a plain 3-way color corrector here, about as natural as I could get them to look:
http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/...creenshot2010-05-20at13319AM.png?t=1292910319
http://i620.photobucket.com/albums/...creenshot2010-05-20at14834AM.png?t=1292910319

 

[Micah D]

I replaced the luminance of a clip with it's own red channel converted into B&W

how does one go about doing that?

 

[Chris Adler]

To my eye they just look like overexposed shots.

 

[Moseph]

how does one go about doing that?

It's somewhat of a complicated process to be doing outside of something like after effects, but here's how it goes.
Duplicate the video track and add AJW's channel balance to V1. Switch the color space to Y'CbCr and bring the Y channel down to zero. Then add the channel swap filter to V2. Change everything to red, green, or blue, except for the alpha channel. Switch the composite mode of V2 to Screen.
From here, you have a couple options, both of which I didn't touch. You can adjust the mix slider on the channel swap. This will mainly change how strong the changes in luminance are. And, you can go back to V1 and the AJW Channel mixer and adjust the Cb and Cr channels to your liking for an increased or decreased saturation. I left them alone because doing so gave me the most extreme example of what this process does, which I figured would be easier to decipher as not being "normal."
I should also mention that there's very limited possibilities for doing this. If there's too much red in the source image and you take the red channel, the resolution will be destroyed.