For the grading I have prepared examples of three different shots, one from the comedy, one from the horror and one from the behind the scenes.

Horror

 

This is the basic shot without any grading.

Using the fast colour corrector I upped the shadows and took down the highlights as much of the shot was over exposed. I also re-adjusted the mids to gain more contrast.

 

The final grade I added some blue hues aiming to have a colder colour temperature for the image to make it more characteristic of a horror.

 

For the second version of the image I followed a similar process except I used RGB curves and a tint to give it a black and white effect rendering in a style which is perhaps closer to an old horror film.

Again adjusting the highlights, shadows and adding contrast.

 

Adding the tint to remove the colour.

 

Behind the scenes

 

I chose this shot because it was challenging lighting wise as the camera panned from facing the windows to the actors.

Again, using the fast colour corrector I made small adjustments to the highlights, shadows and saturation to adjust the image to  better fit the chroma waveform parameters.

I repeated this process with the RGB curves producing slightly different results.

There was no particular style of grade for the behind the scenes as I wanted them to remain close to the original image letting the other short films distinguish themselves through their colour.

Comedy

The original image, perhaps a tad too green.

 

 

 

Using fast colour correctors to adjust, highs, shadows, up the saturation and reds giving it a warmer tone in order to replicate a typical comedy/romance range of tones.

 

Same process with RGB curves this time putting more emphasis on red/purple tones by dropping the highlights of blues and greens and upping the shadows of the reds.

Question 2

“In 200 words or less please outline your goals, desires – what you want to get out of this semester. You will review this later in the course. You may rethink this dramatically – this is a good thing.”

You were asked this at the beginning of the semester. Now, could you review constructively what you got from this semester –  has the course lived up to your expectations, delivered what you expected, maybe even surpassed it?

 

A:

In hindsight I think the course has lived up to my expectations and the goals I was aiming for at the start of the course. I think that being pushed to explore a topic in a different way compared to the more traditional modes of documentary was beneficial as it forced me to look and interpret subjects from a different perspective. I think the abstract editing task was interesting I think it would have been helpful if we practised exercises similar to that but using different modes. I say this because even though I am glad that our final documentary was a bit different I think the the course didn’t meet my expectations in that I still would have found it interesting to produce even a small piece within the classic mode, just to get a feel for the process and how it differed.

I think the emphasis that was placed on the importance of sound in a documentary was also very helpful. I found extracts quite interesting particularly the ‘Idea of North’ demonstrated some new ways to manipulate sound. Overall I am happy with what I gained from this course and I think the feedback stage during editing was possibly the most helpful and insightful stage of the process.