Color Grading

[extrapenguin]

I got an idea for a vid last week and, in a manic rush, did the clipping and timing over two days, with some later tweaking to timing. Now it's basically done ... except it could probably do with color grading. And: How??? Fellow vidders, how do you figure out color grading? Is there some equivalent to Lim's Demystifying Vidding (mostly about clip choice/transitions) for color grading? Do people just go "okay, I want this to be Sad, I shall google the Sad Colors and grade it Blue"? I've tried searching for tutorials, but they all seem focused on the How, when I need help on the What.

*incoherent screaming*

Comments

[china_shop]

I know nothing (have vidded; never colour graded) and am lurking in the comments to see what people say. (Btw, you could crosspost to vidding, if you wanted to cast a wider net?)

[extrapenguin]

Oh yeah, that community exists! I've crossposted there. I used white balance + gamma + saturation to make the clips I time-dislocated fit better with their surroundings, which I think is roughly enough for this vid, but some day I really need to figure this out properly.

[aurumcalendula]

tbh, I think the only time I've done color grading is when I'm trying to fix something (i.e. trying to make The Terminator's washed out Blu-ray color grading look more like it's DVD color grading).

[extrapenguin]

I've thankfully not run into that sort of thing (yet), but it's nice to hear I'm not the only one who doesn't mega color grade. I guess I have some amount of impostor syndrome lol.

[reshiel]

I vid things with a lot of feelings, so hopefully this may help a bit?

- "okay, I want this to be Sad, I shall google the Sad Colors and grade it Blue" Tbh, yeah, this is basically it. Identify the overarching mood/emotional tone/'feel' of the song and the vid, then color accordingly.
- That said, I don't immediately associate 'sad' with literal blue (despite all the sadness=blue idioms in English) - when a person is sad, it feels like all the color and excitement has gone out of the world, so I'd probably try for a 'washed-out' feel via desaturation and grey/sepia tones. Riffing off the blue a bit, highlighting the cool colors (blue/green/purple side of the spectrum) may give the vid an overall calmer/quieter air, but that depends a lot on the specific footage you're using (see below)
- So i guess uhh... think about when you feel that sort of way, how do you see the world around you? And then think about how you might color grade to get that same effect.
- The emotional tone is often already carried by the contents of the scene and the music you chose, so I also think of coloring as enhancing what is already there, rather than 'putting this filter over this vid to achieve this emotional effect' - a lot of the time, just color adjusting the scenes you chose to be prettier (via the usual photo/video beautifying tips and tricks) will make the vid look great already. (To that effect, I find it easier to color scene by scene, instead of applying one effect to the the video as a whole - what works for one clip may not work for another.)
- Overall, I find upping highlights/lowering lowlights across the board usually looks nice

I hope this helped a little bit! Good luck with the vid.

[extrapenguin]

think about when you feel that sort of way, how do you see the world around you?
I think this is the step I'm having problems with, lol. I know, from theory, that e.g. red is associated with rage, but I do not think in color or visual stuff, but rather motion. I know how tragedy moves, but not what color it is, if that makes sense?

I am mostly okay with vids that don't do much with the color, but sometimes I see people who do lots of things with color and people seem to like that a lot? And I want to exorcise the idea out of my brain, but I also want other people to enjoy it. Plus I want to, idk, extend my repertoire of tricks? And coloring is something I don't consider myself to have a great handle on.

[annathecrow]

This reminded me of a site I once bookmarked for art reasons where someone made color palettes of Wes Anderson's movies, and as I was looking for it I found this article on color in cinema that seems on quick glance to be something you might be interested in. I didn't have time to read through it properly or watch all the video, but it looks very in-depth.

(This was the site I remembered, btw.)

[extrapenguin]

Oh, yes, that's good! The reference sheets at the bottom especially. Thank you for the link!

Moviemaking gives a much greater control over the color palette compared to vidding (choice of what goes in the shot vs editing already shot footage), though now I wonder how much I hate myself wrt selective coloring...