I’m guessing that most of you have heard the term “color correction” when talking about video post production (or even still photography retouching) but not everyone may be able to describe exactly what this task entails beyond fixing color problems. Well, Digital Media Services is here to provide a tangible description for you.
First of all, let me say that I personally feel the term color correction is a bit of a misnomer; much of what a colorist or post-production specialist does with the color of a scene is manipulate the colors to create something besides the “correct,” natural color, which, technically, is creating distortion. However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Much of our reaction to a scene in a film or video presentation is based on the “look” of the scene which may include color and brightness cues, among other effects. Visualize a scene of Central Park with grey skies, drab, desaturated colors and little variation between the dark and light portions of the scene. Does this scene make you think of a fun, summer morning or a dreary, winter afternoon? Manipulating the color of the visuals can help sell the mood of a scene without relying on being too literal with the storytelling.
Of course, sometimes correcting the color of a scene is exactly what needs to be done. Scenes shot outdoors in bright sunlight using film formulated for indoor tungsten lighting may need to have the color balance adjusted during post-production. The same goes for video footage shot with an improper white balance setting on the video camera. Other common tasks while performing what’s considered primary color correction may include maximizing the contrast by making sure the portions of a scene that are supposed to be truly black are as dark as possible (without crushing the blacks and therefor losing detail) and making sure the portions of a scene that are supposed to be bright white are indeed as high on the brightness scale as possible (again, without blowing out the whites and losing detail). Of course, sometimes a director wants a real contrasty look where the blacks are crushed and the whites are blown out. An example of the use of this technique may be when creating a silhouette where the background is properly exposed or even over-exposed and the foreground characters are underexposed so that little or no detail of the characters can be scene, just their silhouettes. Take this scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example:
Secondary color correction may include alterations such as selecting a single color in a scene and changing it to some other color or selecting a particular portion of a scene such as the sky or someone’s face for color manipulation. An example of when to use secondary color correction may be when an actor is supposed to be wearing red suspenders but was mistakenly given green ones. A colorist can often isolate the particular green hue of the wardrobe malfunction in the scene and change it to the desired red. The little girl seen in the red coat in Schindler’s List demonstrates an example of what can be accomplished with secondary color correction; by isolating the particular hue of the coat, it can be allowed to stand out from the rest of the colors in the scene, which have been completely desaturated to create a black and white scene:
In summary, color correction not only corrects color but manipulates the color, contrast and brightness levels in order to obtain the desired look of a scene. Now you know.
