Well…correcting color to be exact.
Color correction in film is necessary for creating a consistent flow of color between scenes in the film, making sure the finished product looks natural and visually appealing, and to help promote a targeted response or emotion.
When working on Super Human Anxiety, the Director of Photography, Autumn Palen, and I chose a very specific look for the inside shots of the elevator, especially for when the elevator breaks down.
It started with good production planning
When the elevator was built the Production Design team was given the task of giving it an older look. They used a darker wood paneling to give us the visual, and then Autumn and her Gaffer, Paula Crichton, worked to make sure the lighting in the elevator felt realistic yet also gave us depth.
The darker color space was our first challenge. We needed to be able to clearly see our characters in a broken-down elevator. It needed to appear dark but not actually be dark.
For this we needed a camera with a very sensitive light sensor – and we did! We worked with Canon Cameras to use their C70 Cinema 4K camera that captures more information (data) in darker light.
Then work with one of the best colorists in the field
Once the film was complete and picture locked, the film was sent off to colorist, Harry Locke IV. (You may recognize his name from the credits of Pioneers in Skirts as well!)
I sat with Harry to talk about my goals with the final image; referencing screen shots from existing content like — Only Murders in the Building — so he could visualize my intentions. From there, it was up to him to do a full color pass of this 9 minute short and then return it for feedback.
Since I was traveling we worked remotely at first. That forced me to come up to speed on various applications because each application for viewing color is different. Playing the color in my AVID editing software, versus Quicktime Player, versus VLC all showed something different – and sometimes REALLY different.
Needless to say, this is an important lesson for all filmmakers – no matter how beautiful your color looks on the official color correction monitors at the studio, it will always look different whenever you play it somewhere else.
And that’s okay! Sometimes, if you know exactly where something will screen, you can work towards that kind of monitor.
We used color correction to engage the eye of our audience
One fun trick we used was to darken certain areas so that our audience’s eye will automatically go towards the light in a frame.
Here is another before/after color. You can see that we started in a great space but then took it into a more stylized direction with the goals of the project.
Back to my point about good production planning…
You should shoot your film in LOG (S-Log for Sony, C-Log for Canon). LOG is how the camera stores all the picture information and allows you to do more with it during color grade. Shooting in LOG gives you more options for color – rather than marrying your footage to a picture profile right out of the camera.
So, looking at the split-image at the beginning of this article ↑ – the movie footage may look kind of dull & gray (left side) but don’t worry, the colorist will do their magic (right side).
Lesson from this article: budget to shoot in LOG and hire a color correction artist
Happy Filmmaking!
Ashley Maria
Hey! If you’re in the Los Angeles area, then check out this incredible show at the Academy Museum about Color: https://www.academymuseum.org/en/exhibitions/color-in-motion!
