Alexis Van Hurkman - Color Correction Handbook: Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema

Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema

COLOR CORRECTION HANDBOOK
Professional Techniques for Video and Cinema
Alexis Van Hurkman

Peachpit Press
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Copyright 2011 by Alexis Van Hurkman

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Cover photo: Kaylynn Raschke
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ISBN-13: 978-0-321-71311-7
ISBN-10: 0-321-71311-7

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in the United States of America

To my wife and companion, Kaylynn.

I merely create the appearance of beauty.
You make the world beautiful
wherever you go...

This book is intended for developing colorists who aspire to mastering the art and engineering of serious color grading. It incorporates information and techniques that Ive found useful during my career as a colorist of narrative and documentary projects. It has also provided me with an excellent excuse to delve deeper into not just how to create the adjustments we make in the most efficient way possible, but why we make them in the first place, and how they interact with the viewers visual perceptions so that we can exert more direct and informed control over the process.

Although this book generally assumes that youre a paid professional whos working in client-driven situations, the information is accessible to anyone with an interest in giving their programs a creative polish, from the do-it-yourself (DIY) filmmaker to the creative editor whos looking to enhance her skill set.

It used to be that the ranks of color timers, telecine operators, and colorists for broadcast were a very exclusive and high-priced club. That professional color grading required half-million-dollar suites filled with dedicated hardware meant that there were very few such suites. Learning to operate such systems typically involved an apprenticeship (starting out as a tape operator) where you had the opportunity to learn at the elbow of the senior colorist before eventually graduating to junior colorist, grading dailies and doing night-shift work, and eventually proving your mettle and getting involved with more serious sessions.

This is changing. With the proliferation of high-quality, dedicated color grading systems on desktop hardware, the half-million-dollar investment has dropped precipitously, opening up the field to an ever-increasing number of boutique post houses that can offer truly professional services, not to mention individual filmmakers and production facilities that are daring to go in-house with their color grading.

As a result, editors and compositing artists alike are gravitating toward adding color correction to their already wide skill set. This is natural, and one of many reasons I think this book is an important offering to the postproduction community. There are no longer as many opportunities for apprenticeship with a seasoned professional, and the need for talent in this arena is growing as more and more producers that once would never have considered putting their programs through a color correction pass are coming to the realization that if the program isnt graded, its not finished.

However, even though color correction is becoming increasingly absorbed into the postproduction process, I make a passionate argument for the role of the dedicated colorist working within a specifically configured suite or grading theater. I dont have a problem with color correction being done in a home-office environment, but no matter where you park your gear, its essential (as I discuss in ) to monitor your image in a proper environment on an appropriate display if you want professional results. I liken grading rooms to audio mixing stages: For both audio and video, the best decisions are made by an experienced artist working in a carefully focused environment that allows a fine degree of control over the process.

Although its arguable that colorists are perhaps the smallest subcommunity in postproduction, a lot of applications are currently available that are dedicated to the task of grading. At the time of this writing, some of the more notable of these include DaVinci Resolve, Apple Color, Assimilate Scratch, Iridas SpeedGrade, FilmLight Baselight, Nucoda Film Master, Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse, and Autodesk Lustre.

Each of these applications differ widely in their real-time capabilities and their overall approach to the grading user interface (UI), yet they all share a largely common toolset so that once you learn the basics of three-way color balancing, curves, lift/gamma/gain contrast adjustment, HSL Qualification, and the use of shapes, video scopes, and grade management, youll have a very good idea of how to go about getting the job done in any one of these applications.

Furthermore, Ive deliberately chosen to focus on applications that are compatible with dedicated control surfaces, on the premise that serious-minded practitioners will come to appreciate the comfort and efficiency that these surfaces offer during long grading sessions.

In terms of the specific applications that I mention in this book, its impossible to do a comprehensive survey of functionality for every single application. Instead, Ive tried to include information thats applicable to the most widely used of the color grading applications with which Im familiar and to call out notable functions within specific applications where appropriate. For obvious reasons, I created most of the examples using one of four applications that I personally have had installed during the development of this book: Apple Color, DaVinci Resolve, Assimilate Scratch, and Iridas SpeedGrade. But Ive worked hard to make sure that the majority of the examples apply equally well to other grading applications.