I watched some behind the scenes footage of Lord of the rings - two towers on TV yesterday. They showed how Peter Jackson was chooseing cuts on a scene where "Stryder" Viggo said something while smoking a pipe. The uncorrected takes looked like shit I mean really really bad! Then they showed the final cut and it looked awsome. I figured it all comes down to coloring in post.

Does anyone have links, books or anything remotly interesting about the subject so I can learn more about this?

If you haven't figured out what I'm talking about it's colorcorrection. And I know they have special colorist people trained but If I know more perhaps I can make my movies look alittle bit better!

what editing software are you using?

there are some cinema effects for premiere pro that are pretty neat from what i've seen and they are free if you register.

matthew

The footage you saw was probably not even coming from the
film itself but from a video feed.

Yes, color correction can change your picture dramatically. I
like to work with an S curve in my Vegas Color Corrector on
all colors to give it an apparent increase in exposure. From
there I tweak things like brightness, saturation and the colors
themselves.

I use vegas, but I feel this is a craft that is beond what software one use. Basic skills and knowlage in coloring. Almost like, it does not matter what crayon you use. If you are bad at coloring you can't do a good job even if you have great crayons.

I feel that some good tutorials on the subject would help me a great deal. If there aren't any, perhaps someone that feels confident could make one if they have some spare time?

It's a very subjective issue. There is a tutorial here @ DVi that
talks about the same things I did in my previous post.

See these two articles here at the site:
http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/filmlook/pappas1.php
http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/filmlook/broadway2.php

I have also written several posts on this site on how I did my
color correction for my Lady X (www.ladyxfilms.com) episode, see the posts at the
bottom of this thread's page (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14250&perpage=15&pagenumber=2)

Lots of the behind the scenes stuff and outtakes you see on DVDs are digitized at a low resolution because they often run out of space on the DVD. Also, some things have been transferred from a one light workprint to video, and those may eventually end up on a DVD behind the scenes thing. Most original footage I've seen looks good, although not as good as the final print with all the color tweaking they do. Sometimes, however, footage may be shot over or underexposed deliberately for an effect, or maybe without the proper filter, and those takes could get into the DVD. So you really can't judge much by that. I have a friend who did a really nice behind the scenes piece for a movie, and he was really hacked off because when it got to DVD, they ran out of room and his stuff was all loaded at a very low Avid resolution and was pixellated all to hell. Also, most movie editors work from low resolution digitized footage to save hard drive space, and some of that stuff may get dumped to DVD with no thought about the end quality.

Andreas, you are absolutely correct that you need to learn color correction techniques, just as you need to learn any art form. Most of the color correction skills used in digital video are the same as those used in Photoshop, so I highly recommend you check out Michael Kieran, who offers seminars in color correction, along with his excellent books. www.colorweb.com

Another book is "Color Correction for Digital Video" by Hullfish and Fowler. But Michael Kieran is better for really getting into the topic.

Wayne Orr, SOC