As I previously mentioned, there were a number of issues my shots suffered from on Friday. The two most prominent of these were over-exposure and the chaotic and stupendously misjudged use of a lighting reflector.

Looking at the first of the above previous shots, it’s clear that the golden hue created by the lighting reflector is a distraction, creating a lack of realism and obviously diegetic lighting.

In the 2nd shot, the reflector is actually somewhat beneficial, yet it’s let down by clear over-exposure, as well as a heightened gain giving the shot an unwanted grainy aesthetic. The car window effect is also simply too dark, and it renders the actors nearly invisible.

Correcting the front-on shot

I tried fixing this a number of ways, the first was to brighten the scene by reducing shadow and increasing contrast. Yet this failed, due to the tint of the window eliminating the ability to see the two actors no matter the contrast.

Another way I tried to fix it was by using the secondary colour corrector, and attempting to reduce the over-exposure of the scene by turning the white-appearing car bonnet back into its original silver. This had no effect whatsoever, and I decided that without years of Premiere Pro experience, fixing the exposure was going to be impossible.

Given that the low ND filter had allowed sunlight to push through the white balance and place a distracting cyan hue over the frame, I attempted to fix this by injecting yellow highlights into the shot. Yet all this did, no matter what level, was either have no effect or increase the unrealistic golden hue which the reflector had already exacerbated.

Finally, I decided that the only way to save this shot would be to reduce the contrast, shadow and saturation to 0%, rendering the shot completely black and white. Then, I slowly increased only the contrast, in an attempt to create a gritty, Prisoners-inspired black and white effect. Yet this, also was unsuccessful, as it rendered the shot too unrealistic, and overly-stylised.

It was with these continued unsuccessful ventures that I decided it was simply easier to reshoot this scene then attempt to fix it. All attempts suffer from the same problem of making the shot overly-unrealistic, and nothing I did was able to reduce the graininess that the gain effect had caused.

Correcting the side-on-shot

As I mentioned before, in terms of the camera angle, focal length and framing I am very happy with how this shot turned out. Yet it is let down by the frustrating golden hue effect caused by the reflector. Setting up the three-way colour correction effect, if was time to try and fix this once and for all.

 

My first strategy was to reduce the golden hue by pumping in its opposite colour, cyan. This was actually quite successful in reducing the hue problem. The scene does not suffer from an obvious replacing cyan hue, and the effect of paleness it creates on their faces. Considering I was trying to achieve the emotion of sadness at the time, I’d say this was quite successful in creating an emotional mise en scene.

 

My second strategy, as recommending by my tutor, was to leave out the use of highlight, midtone and shadow colour correction wheels and instead work on the input and output toggles below it. The result increases shadow input to reduce the golden hue of the shot successfully, whilst still keep its warm effect in essence. The result was a rather nostalgic mise en scene that I found quite aesthetically pleasing. Whilst it doesn’t hold the same emotional effect that the previous colour injection did, it achieves something entirely different. My entire goal was to see how I could increase or decrease the emotional context of a scene by manipulating certain production elements. I have discovered, that by manipulating differing colour effects, I can turn a scene from  a depressing and cold context, to one that is lamenting and nostalgic whilst also being sad.

Despite the occasional lack of success, I am definitely happy with how some of the colour correction experimentation worked out. Not only did it fix my shots that I deemed problematic, but it also changed their contexts as well, which was an appreciated bonus.