REFLECTIONS: Color Grading
After finishing the edits and visual effects for each scene, i sent it over to Adobe Speedgrade using Adobe's Dynamic Link:
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| File > Send to Adobe SpeedGrade |
The first thing i did was balance out the shots's exposure to fix any continuity errors. After that i added a series of Primary filters to stylize the colors. The main things i did were:
- For the first scene the whole image was tinted to a more extreme blue color. This not only set the dark mood we were going for but also helped sell the light source as being the LED light from the computer.
- For the second scene the colors start out vibrant and saturated, bringing out greens and blues to show the utopian nature of the digital world, showing that it's a place to escape from the coldness and darkness of the real world. As the scene progresses however, the colors fade away in to a darker, colder look. This is to reflect the character's decent in to a darker place. As a side effect it also may portray reality seeping into the digital domain, since i'm using the same color palette as the first scene.
- For the third scene the colors are a more mild, but still dark and cool. Blacks are crushed slightly so that Rob can blend in to the darkness a bit more, to show that he's confined. This also removed some of the keying errors.
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| The main SpeedGrade interface |
After those primary corrections, i added some secondary corrections on top to make the skin tones look a bit more natural. This was done by isolating the skin tones and making them a bit warmer.
Then, to some of the shots i added an extra primary correction layer with a mask to brighten or darken certain areas of the image, in order to emphasize certain parts when needed.
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| Here i'm brightening up the eye slightly, since that's integral to the story. |
To increase the contrast slightly, and to also make the image look a bit more film-like i applied a LUT (Look Up Table) to the entire image.
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| I chose this look up table because it was subtle, yet effective |
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