After a long and tedious trial and error procedure, I finally got round to choosing a LUT that myself and the group believe suits the tone and the feel of the narrative. There were some conflicting opinions but I came to a compromise with Callum and Will as both wanted slightly different tones to shine through. It was about giving it a warm yet surreal feeling which simultaneously matches with the narrative of the project. I knew that there was still a lot of work to do with the colour grade, as certain scenes needed further manipulation to match up with the rest of the sequence, as some shots were better lit than others.
(Colour grade nearing completion)
The colour grade that we had all agreed on was the Amira Default LogC2REC709 LUT. This was actually the LUT that we had applied to our footage in the shoot week, which was quite frustrating considering all the time I'd put into trialling the many other LUTs I'd downloaded, but finally we'd found a LUT that fit our piece, obviously it needed manipulating ever so slightly so I did that. There were some slight issues however, as Aimee started the edit on her laptop with her premiere pro, when trying to used that saved premiere file on the university macs, it wouldn't allow it to open as the version on the macs is the older one. So this meant that I had to colour grade on Aimee's computer, which was very time consuming and pushed everything back as this also meant Andrew had to edit the sound on Aimee's laptop as well.
One of the main things was having a consistent aesthetic, so I did this by starting off with a peachy kind of tone, which Callum didn't really like. So after correcting this by slightly taking down the temperature and upping the highlights of the adjustment layer on top, it created on the image a very nice and balanced piece. I thought the peachy tone was quite nice if I'm honest as it was obviously not natural but that's what we were going for. It's a surreal sitcom so nothing is really meant to make any logical sense, but Callum wanted it to look like the Inbetweeners which I disagreed with as that series concept is completely different to ours and is way more realistic. But I went with what he said because he was the producer and Will and Aimee didn't really argue my case. So after sorting this out, it allowed me then to be slightly more creative and focus on the juicy parts of the narrative like the hallucination scenes.
LUT - Amira Default.LogC2REC709
Temperature - -9
Tint - 0
Exposure - 0
Contrast - 11
Highlights - -83
Shadows - 40
Whites - 55
Blacks - 0
These were the colour correction settings I had towards the end of this colour grade session, everyone was in agreement that this aesthetic should be the way forward for our project. For the next grade i'll be focusing on the key areas like the hallucination scenes, penguin scene and raid scene. I'll have really experiment and get out of my comfort zone with these scenes as to attempt to bring the surreal themes to the forefront of the narrative.
WHY
I felt this colour was significantly more appropriate than the rest I had looked at and tried due to it's balance between the natural and unnatural. It has elements of the surreal, but that will be further developed with adding more of a vignette effect to reinforce the narratives overriding tone of surrealism.
The reason why the temperature is so low on the settings is because of the white balance setting I had the camera on whilst recording. This created the peachy tones once I applied the LUT to the raw footage, so I had to bring down the temperature to balance it out and give it a slightly more natural yet surreal look, as stated before Callum wasn't overly keen with the peachy tones. I didn't want to play around with the tint of the grade, as that would only bring in high greens which I felt wouldn't fit in with our narrative, however saying that I might play with the tint once it comes to the hallucination scenes to see if we can make them more dynamic and energetic. Throughout the majority of our project the exposure wasn't really needed to be played around with as I got the right strength on the LEDs there and then on the shoot days. However once again it may be manipulated when I start working on the hallucination sequences, especially the plant scene as on the day of the shoot it was extremely sunny, so maybe bringing the exposure dial down a few notches would be ideal. The contrast was used ever so slightly only because people had disagreements on using it. I wanted to heighten the contrast as it made the image pop more and from reading how to great a surreal/psychedelic look on your image, the contrast should be heightened. Unfortunately my team didn't really agree with me and my hand was forced to keep it slightly more natural than what I was hoping to go for. I wanted the highlights to be pretty low as it brought out the skin tones of each character more appropriately, I felt this gave more of an identity to the individual characters which Will agreed. The shadows and whites were increased as this was to create more depth between the characters and their surroundings, it gave the image increased quality and authenticity. I left the blacks at 0 because I found that when I increased it the whole picture lost its saturation so I felt it was the right decision to not utilise that creative tool.
The reason why the temperature is so low on the settings is because of the white balance setting I had the camera on whilst recording. This created the peachy tones once I applied the LUT to the raw footage, so I had to bring down the temperature to balance it out and give it a slightly more natural yet surreal look, as stated before Callum wasn't overly keen with the peachy tones. I didn't want to play around with the tint of the grade, as that would only bring in high greens which I felt wouldn't fit in with our narrative, however saying that I might play with the tint once it comes to the hallucination scenes to see if we can make them more dynamic and energetic. Throughout the majority of our project the exposure wasn't really needed to be played around with as I got the right strength on the LEDs there and then on the shoot days. However once again it may be manipulated when I start working on the hallucination sequences, especially the plant scene as on the day of the shoot it was extremely sunny, so maybe bringing the exposure dial down a few notches would be ideal. The contrast was used ever so slightly only because people had disagreements on using it. I wanted to heighten the contrast as it made the image pop more and from reading how to great a surreal/psychedelic look on your image, the contrast should be heightened. Unfortunately my team didn't really agree with me and my hand was forced to keep it slightly more natural than what I was hoping to go for. I wanted the highlights to be pretty low as it brought out the skin tones of each character more appropriately, I felt this gave more of an identity to the individual characters which Will agreed. The shadows and whites were increased as this was to create more depth between the characters and their surroundings, it gave the image increased quality and authenticity. I left the blacks at 0 because I found that when I increased it the whole picture lost its saturation so I felt it was the right decision to not utilise that creative tool.
(Settings for the most recent colour grade)
WHAT HAS BEEN LEARNT & EVALUATION
- Slowly mastering the art of colour grading, and I now know what is needed for the whole project which is a great benefit for myself and the team.
- Listening to the team is important for this process, but sometimes I feel too many people are getting involved with the creativity and obviously not everyone will have the same opinions, so we're clashing and no one is really making a major point as to why we can't have it a certain look. Only stating it isn't the right look, not offering a solution.
- There's still a lot more to do, I need to focus more on the hallucinations and make them feel like and actual hallucination by amplifying the colours within the scenes.
- Overall i'm happy with the progress being made, but I can only go so far with it as Aimee and Andrew need it to finish the actual edit, I don't know who decided to make this decision in regards to using just one laptop, but its beginning to hinder our production pace.
- Slowly mastering the art of colour grading, and I now know what is needed for the whole project which is a great benefit for myself and the team.
- Listening to the team is important for this process, but sometimes I feel too many people are getting involved with the creativity and obviously not everyone will have the same opinions, so we're clashing and no one is really making a major point as to why we can't have it a certain look. Only stating it isn't the right look, not offering a solution.
- There's still a lot more to do, I need to focus more on the hallucinations and make them feel like and actual hallucination by amplifying the colours within the scenes.
- Overall i'm happy with the progress being made, but I can only go so far with it as Aimee and Andrew need it to finish the actual edit, I don't know who decided to make this decision in regards to using just one laptop, but its beginning to hinder our production pace.
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