Need serious color correction help

[Nathan Quattrini]

I am finishing up my first short film, and having one major thorn in my side. I have one scene that was filmed weeks later, under different outdoor lighting, and god knows what else I did wrong (it was filmed in Aug 07 so I don't remember), but I need to find a way t make it work. I have tried several times to match it the best I could to the rest of the footage with nothing coming really anywhere close. Can anyone give me some direction, or even help me out on fixing it? I could upload the uncompressed video in that case to my ftp. I can`t offer money but I will definitely give you credit and a profile/link on the website.

This is a password protected video on Vimeo
password : nathan

Thanks in advance

[Bill Ravens]

Hi Nathan...

$64M question.
You don't say what tools(NLE's) you have in your toolbox.
I've had really good success with Avid Media Composer color correction tool. You can use an eyedropper to match the colors between different clips, and it works quite well. The tricky part is to use pure white/grey/black values to do the color matching.

You also don't say what your final distribution media will be. If you're going back out to a digital image on film, color timing is pretty complex and requires sitting with a colorist at the print house.

[Will Mahoney]

I assume you're talking about the non-matching shot in the middle?

It looks like the day was overcast as compared to the other footage. Your actor's face is more white/ashen/blue than it is flesh/red.

Here's a little tutorial I did about color correction using Adobe Premier Elements:
Will Mahoney's Blogs - Color Correcting, Deep Focus, Bright Sunlight and Classic Cruisers - Part Two.

Maybe there is a little tidbit in there to help you.

[Will Mahoney]

Ok, I bit and downloaded your footage. I'm playing with it now and I think I'm getting good results. I'll mess some more this evening and maybe post it tomorrow for you.

I've never tried to color correct someone else's footage and I must say that it is pretty fun. I should have footage for you to look at tomorrow.

Edit:
Ok, it looks like I might be done. I boosted Red and pulled way back on Blue. Then I crushed the Black levels slightly while lightening some shadows. I also boosted Contrast a hair.

http://www.vimeo.com/2290467
Password: nathan

How's it look?

[Nathan Quattrini]

Will - for some reason the video isn`t playing right. I was able to see about 4 frames of the portion in question, and it looked alot better than what I was able to do so far. Color correction is by far my weakest point in editing when the footage is this drastic. I look forward to the final result and I guess from there we can decide how to approach a final result in the film, either exporting for you, or if you could write a brief walkthrough of the specifics so I can learn from it rather than just handing it off and having you do it all. I am very interested in how it gets done so well.

For software I have Premiere and AE CS3.

[Will Mahoney]

Nathan,
No worries on it not playing right, I never could get VIMEO to display my stuff correctly. I prefer Exposureroom.com. Perhaps you can download the clip and watch it on your PC instead of over the net.

Check it out, I'm going to try and explain what I did to tweak your footage. I'm using Premier Elements 3.0, so my tools are way more limited than yours, and my tools might not be exactly the same as yours.

What I did:
Tweaked the colors using the "Color Balance (RGB)" control. I boosted Red from 100 to 109, left Green alone, and pulled Blue back from 100 to 96.

Boosted Contrast from 100 to 101

Lightened shadows and crushed the Black levels with the "Shadow/Highlight" control.
Shadow Amount 50
Shadown Tonal Width 60
Shadow Radius 30
Black Clip 18.00%

That's pretty much it. Hopefully you can use this information in Premier or AE and get your footage moving along. Good luck.

[Nathan Quattrini]

Hey Will,

I'll try these settings and play around with them and let you know, thanks for the help