As Shane was shooting the Terminator webisodes to be released in the week before the release of “Terminator:Salvation” there was an established look that he needed to match. He went through a learning process to get his 5D to match the feature film look.

When he got to post production, he discovered that footage from a Canon 5D must be treated a bit differently. His post has lots of details of the process and, from my read of it, makes the case for shooting as flat as possible to give yourself as much room in post as possible. Give it a read and let me know what you think.

Looks like some shooters have taken this another step and are shooting SuperFlat so they can color correct in post. And another group religiously believes that you need to get it right when you shoot it.

What’s right for you? Here are the basics of these two perspectives…

Shoot it flat

• If you take down the sharpening and saturation and reduce the contrast you’ll get more usable data recorded.
• You can do more color correction in post with a flat image before getting too many artifacts.
• Most all video is captured with compression. Deal with the artifacts and learn how to get the look you want in post.

Shoot it right

• So much data is lost when the camera compresses the image and sends it to the card that you can never really do much with what’s left.
• If you want to grade in post, use your footage to pull chromakeys, or composite layers with it in After Effects you have to shoot with a RED or some other camera system that offers a 10-bit uncompressed 2K image.
• Spend the time on the set with a good reference monitoring system and get the look you want in-camera so you avoid all the artifacts produced by heavy color grading.

What both agree on

• Out of the box all DLSR cameras shoot a crunched image with too much contrast, too much sharpening applied, and over saturated colors.
• You need to shoot tests using your lighting in situations as close to your production requirements as possible and take those tests through the rest of your workflow to see what’s really going to happen.
• If your only distribution channel is the web or even standard DVD’s you can get away with a lot.
• If you plan to distribute on Blu-Ray or project in theaters you need to be very careful as artifacts that are invisible or tolerable on smaller screens (including your killer 60″ plasma) can jump out and kill the image when projected on a 50 foot theater screen.

My experience

I prefer a mix of these two approaches. I like to get the image as right as possible when I’m shooting. I almost always end up grading my projects so I fall on the “flat” side of right.

I recently edited a project shot live with three cameras. One of the cameras had the white balance incorrectly set. I had to use all the tools available to try to match the color of that footage with the other two. This is not a rare problem so I knew I could fix it.

Then they lost a light fixture in the middle of a keynote presentation. Then the light came back on. The light flickered several more times over the next few minutes then stayed on until the end of the presentation.

I’ve also fixed lighting problems in post but I’d already used so much “push” getting the white balance corrected on that one camera that there wasn’t much room left to correct for the change in lighting.

So, getting the shot as right as possible in all regards will save you lots of work later. But you’re likely to always need to do some grading so I believe it’s wise to leave the image a bit flatter than you want and work with it later.

Then, of course, I’m always delivering on DVD and the web. If I had a project headed for theaters I’d want to take lots of test footage all the way through the process and see what really worked.

And that’s what I recommend you do so you’ll know what works for you.

Links:

Flatten Your 5D – the post that started it all – ProLost

Flattening Your D90

Flattening the Flat Look – Eugenia’s blog

HDSLRs – Flatten your Flat even Flatter – a collection of links about the subject at FreshDV

Check out the video below to see what’s going on.

Nope, I’m not an affiliate and I never met the guy. I’ve used Color to correct problems for since it was first included in FCP and moved to a new level when I started using it to enhance good video. I’m learning how to take it to the next level and this tool is doing it for me.

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Here’s a link to an online resource for learning lots more about color grading. Plus they have an online resource for downloading free presets you can use in Color either to do the job or as a good starting point for your own special look.

Take a look how what you can do…

The second image shows a subtle effect of punching up the shadows in a scene. Even something as simple as this will lift your production values above the normal video. And when you’re lost in the middle of millions of online videos every little bit helps.

The warmth of the second image is a bit more dramatic of a shift but it’s no more difficult to achieve. This is where grading gets into the same level of impact as the pacing of your edit. It can make or break your production. Worth learning more about…

http://www.coloruser.net/grades – for downloads

http://www.coloruser.net/forums – for information

Join up and get to it!

You’ll also find excellent tutorials about Apple Color over at CreativeCow.net. Here’s a link to one about using vignettes in a moving shot.

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Here’s an excellent tutorial on color correction using pretty well every tool out there.

Color Grading Effects Demystified

I am going to revisit the topic of color grading inside Final Cut Pro. Although Color is a great tool, it’s not right in all situations and can be very challenging on many machines. Quite frankly, an awful lot of color grading is done right inside the NLE timeline. I am writing this from the point-of-view of Final Cut, but the processes can be utilized with any editing or compositing tool that can apply a stack of filters to each clip.

What’s amazing is how he’s able to get almost the same look with different tools. I’ve always found that there is seldom one way to do anything. Rather than collect a bunch of tools you never really use, it’s more important to learn to use one tool to the max, get everything out of it possible. Then add another and do the same.

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Look at all the different effects the image can have just by deliberately changing the color values in the video. It’s called grading from the film industry and it has always been a key part of a professional workflow. The problem is that professional grading could be very expensive.

Now pro level grading tools are built into many editing applications and easily available from 3rd party software companies like Red Giant. This is a demo of a tool called Mojo and for $99 it’s one powerful color management tool that works right in your FCP timeline. For that matter, the plug in works in P

Here a tutorial showing the key parameters.

Here’s a link for more information about Mojo – http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/mojo/

More color tools coming through the rest of the week…

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Most people spend time lighting for the best possible look, finding the perfect camera shot, editing sequences again and again, layering awesome audio under everything then render and deliver, right?

Wrong!

You left out one of the most important steps in a professional work flow – color grading. And it can raise your production value as much as anything else you can do. And if you’re looking to add some mojo to your project, this is the place to start.

If you take a DSLR out of the box and start shooting you’ll get a factory preset look. Spend a few minutes with the manual or playing with the menu’s on the camera and you’ll discover more preset looks. A bit more time and you’ll learn how to create your own presets.

One of the most important things you can do is create a preset that is flat – take out the extra saturation, extra sharpening, extra contrast and other extras added by the manufacturer to make sure their cameras shoot stunning images.

Yes, you want stunning images but if you shoot them that way and need to correct them later you’ll wish they were not so stunning. That’s why it’s good to learn how to shoot flat images. Here’s brief tutorial showing how this increases the dynamic range of the Canon 7D.

How to increase the Canon 7D dynamic range (Tutorial) from Luka on Vimeo.

Click here to read Stu Maschwitz’s excellent post showing how to do this on a Canon 5d. Should work on a 7D just as well.

Click here for a post showing how to create this preset for a Nikon D90.

Now that you’ve got a good flat image, what can you do with it?

Now you can learn how to creatively modify the color – actually the entire image – to clean up or fix imperfections in your footage, increase the impact of the images in your project, and increase the production value of everything you create.

We’ll spend the rest of the week looking at tools, tutorials and ideas focused on color grading to make your video look more like film than ever before.

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