Colour Correction

October 27th, 2008

I recently went to Power Post in Halifax to do what is called an "Online Edit" for the Chris Cummings music video, "Welcome Back", with Power Post colourist, Reynold Gregor.

In production, often there are 2 types of edits, "offline" - which is where the entire sequence of your project is peiced together exactly how you would like it...its locked. The "online edit" is when the final bells and whistles are added to a project to get it ready for broadcast. Often high-resolution titles are added, its up-rezed to the best possible quality and most importantly, it's colour corrected!

A couple of people asked me. "Is colour correction that important?" Yes it is! It's one of the most important steps you can take to get your project looking professional. Most, if not every single thing you see on TV, and on the big screen is heavily colour corrected. Not only to correct errors in colour balance and exprosure, but to give the piece a certain feel.

For example in the series "Band of Brothers", they de-saturated a lot of the colour because most of what we see from the 1940's is black and white. They wanted to acheive the feel of what we are used to seeing from that time period, but still make it colour. So lowering the saturation works perfectly!
It also gave the series a certain 'dark' feeling to help convey what it must have been like to go through something horrific as war. Check it out (www.hbo.com/band)

Basically though, colour correction makes everything you produce, look a million times better! The image at the top of the page is a perfect example. The left side is not properly white balanced and is overexposed. Because there is still detail in his face though, the "chrominance" (colour) can easily be tweaked to give his skin a nice warm tone. The overexposure can be fixed by adjusting the luminance (black and white). First adjust the 'setup', which makes the blacks, blacker, and then raise the 'gain' which brings out your whites. Then the image has a nice contrast!

Don't be fooled though, not all images can be corrected properly. You always want to capture your image as best you can when shooting. The image below is a perfect example.



If you look closely on his forehead, there is no detail at all. The exposure from the sun is just too great for the camera to recognize any detail, so it just sees it as white. Therefore, when you try to correct it, no matter what you try and do in your colour correction tool, his forhead will remain white.

This of course can be corrected by closing the iris on your lens slightly, using a neutral desnity filter, cranking your shutter speed, or if you have a lot of time on your hand, bringing it into photoshop and correcting each frame of video individually!

So whether you be a filmmaker or photographer, remember every professional uses some type of colour correction on every piece of art they create, so you should to! You'll be amazaed at the difference!

Cheers!

The Hawk is Howling

October 6th 2008

Hey Everyone...

I guess I didn't keep my promise of my original blog which was to write more often. Its crazy to think it is October already! The summer just seemed to fly by without a chance to sit back and enjoy it. Although its easy to say that when the temperature is dropping as rapidly as it is now.

There was a summer though. It just seems like with all the things I had to deal with, especially regarding events that affected those I love the most, made it seem like the summer didn't even exist. Not really subjects I care to talk about in any more detail....sorry. Those who know, know what im talking about. But these events somehow managed to mask some of the magical energy that surrounds summertime.

I did spend a lot of time on my native soil of Prince Edward Island. Retreating (for the most part) with Julie and my family to our cottage on the North Shore. Out of all breathtaking the places i've been privileged to see from the Southern tip of South America, to the top of Scotland, right through to the heart of China and beyond, there are very few that touch my soul like this Island. This area of the North Shore just seems to run endlessly east to west. Most of the time with very few lucky enough to enjoy it. Standing on top of a fifty foot sand dune, the Atlantic disappears into the horizon seemlessley. I can't help but feel perfectly connected when I'm there. Everything makes sense...and I never want to leave it.


The days are long and slow and every night the sun sets over the ocean firing fireworks of orange, red, purple and blue streaks as it fades away. I always promise myself I'm going to take my camera for the weekend and dedicate my time to capturing this feeling. But my rubber arm is always twisted and the little man on my right shoulder tells me to "relax and enjoy it for yourself instead". Especially when 80 plus people from my father family show up for "The MacCormack Family Reunion 2008". What a weekend that was! So amazing to connect with that many people I don't see nearly enough.



Days filled with golf, booze, and beach, blending in with late night jams, dancing and debauchery....the good kind of course! So amazing to connect with that many people I don't see nearly enough. The MacCormack roots run deep!


When I do make it to PEI, I'm usually coming off an insane amount of time in the editing suite. A spell where I have way too many things to finish and end up taking them way too seriously. I always become so passionate about every little project I have my hand on at HHP. This typically winds up with me spending way too many nights at the office trying to get things taken care of. Slowly though im learning to take my job less seriously, because at the end of the day, its only a video, right? Ah....yeah....easy to say it now eh? Each little piece though, big or small is a piece of art in itself. I take a lot of pride in that. Sometimes to the point where I become very irritable and suddenly turn very short with guys at the office. God Bless them! They know when I'm stressed though, and they always give me my space.

I wish sometimes professionally I could me more like Greg. He never seems to be that stressed. Of Course i've seen him wound up, but its rare...very rare. I admire that about him. But alas, for those of you who don't know...I am not Greg....so....I can't expect to react like he does....although its still nice to try!

Im trying to think of work related things to talk about, but because I'm comfy at home right now, I don't really feel like it. We have been coming a long way though. It's starting to feel like we're really growing into what we envisioned. We invested in a bunch of new gear, including key upgrades to our computers, a portable dolly (which is amazing to have 24/7), a new camera the Sony EX1 and the Letus 35mm adapter. These two a fore mentioned new goodies are really fun toys! The fact that the EX1 provides such stunning full HD picture, combined with the depth of field proper prime film lenses on the Letus, is helping our productions really step it up a notch. I guess its like anything though. The better you get, the better your equipment has to get too. Or else, you're just treading water.


I am super pumped though that our music video for Chris Cummings "Welcome Back" is ready to go. I just put the final touches on it today. It will be pretty cool to see our work on CMT. I'll talk more about that in a video blog which will be up very soon. But big props to the director Warren Sonoda of 235films in Toronto (www.235films.com). I learned so much from him from day one, and even more when he saw my first cut of the video and told me to scrap it and start over again! Talk about humbling....But in the end it was definitely for the best. I really appreciated his honesty. (its the only way to go in this business) When he liked something, he let you know and when he didn't, he let you know. So when he gave the final thumbs up on the video, it felt really great! A huge relief, and happy that I could carry out the final stages of project that had some many great people working on it. Considering he has directed 135 music videos in his career and this was the first one he didn't edit himself...we deserve a pat on the back for that one. Not saying I'm satisfied though...Cause then how would we make anything better?

Oh and do yourself a favour and check out "Mogwai's" new album entitled 'The Hawk is Howling"...these guys are way too good!

www.myspace.com/mogwai

EnJoY!!!!

Cheers Folks!