Colors! Grading and Correction

We have started production on our new documentary styled series that currently has a working title of “what now?” This documentary follows small businesses and small business owners during this pandemic. The series seeks to show the hardships that small business owners have gone through, are going through now, and what types of hardships they will encounter in the future as this pandemic changes. We also seek to tackle the issue of current legislation, or lack thereof in regards to small businesses and aid provided to them in times like these.

We are currently working on the first episode which is a sort of a set-up for the remainder of the series. The other four episodes will be very dialogue heavy with interviews with small business owners. This episode, or teaser, is more of a cinematic type of video with narration that explains the situation as it currently is, and what we will be covering basically. It’s a little bit more on the dramatic side, but that’s alright because for a lot of people right now this is a very dramatic situation.

With that being said I have had to make important creative decisions on what the series should look like. This is a mini-series about a pandemic, and a group of people that have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. Because of this, it is clear that the series should definitely be more on the duller side color-wise as opposed to having big bright colors that take up the whole screen and take the viewer’s attention away from the information.

There is a lot to be said about color grading. Before that, it is worth mentioning that color correction is a process that occurs before color grading in which you tweak your raw footage in any way necessary so that it looks “normal” as in what you would see with the human eye. Color grading on the other hand is when you take that “normal” footage and start working with it to try to paint a specific image, or give the footage a specific feel. There is a lot of information out there about this, and a lot of great examples. Some general instances of this are darker colors like blues and a lack of brightness in horror movies, a lot of blues and oranges in dramas/epics, a lot of reds in action movies, etc. A sad scene might be more blue, and a happy scene might be more yellow or orange.

This is a good educational video from Pixar artists that explain some of the science behind color selection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DXZvcfPVrk

This is a great video that shows how Pixar uses color the same ways in different movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfMU3YLVJhw

This video does a good job at going a little bit more in depth into the technical process behind color grading and why it is important to both filmmakers and viewers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZZgiSUyPDY

Attached down below are some of my color corrections for clips from the first series.