At this stage, I think I’m all into post-production right now. We have pretty much shot all the necessary footage we need, it’s just the matter of us going back to our research idea and developing it. In my case, I started out from working with the uses of letter boxes, and realise there isn’t much to experiment in that field, and then moved on to colour grading and everything the revolves around it. Camera, exposure, resolution, file format, all plays a part into grading footage. And then there’s the creative approach of making something look good or making something look a certain way, or cue a certain emotion.

I’ve been experimenting with different grades to the footage, and as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, the thing I found most challenging was to match grade from shot to shot. My research shows various methods used by professionals in the field. I gathered that, there’s no hard and fast rule into colour grading, everyone has their own method around it, so long as it achieves a particular look the director or filmmaker is going for. Some resort to using LUT (another realm worth exploring) as a base platform and then working their way up from there, while others just worked from scratch doing a basic balancing, correcting, and then to the actual grading.

For me, I approached it the old school way, starting from scratch and then work my way up to colour grading. It might not be the best method, but for someone who’s never done this before, I think it’s a good starting point. I did a bit of research with using LUT and it got a little complicated when you have to take note of the various cameras and model that you’re shooting for the LUT to compensate for the colours straight from the camera. I do, however, would intend to use that approach maybe in my future projects for sure. Just not this particular one. For me, I approached it the old school way, starting from scratch and then work my way up to colour grading. It might not be the best method, but for someone who’s never done this before, I think it’s a good starting point. I did a bit of research with using LUT and it got a little complicated when you have to take note of the various cameras and model that you’re shooting for the LUT to compensate for the colours straight from the camera. I do, however, would intend to use that approach maybe in my future projects for sure. Just not this particular one.

During my internship as an assistant offline editor, I’ve managed to pick up a thing or two during my down time with the colourist working in the company. And he gave me some tips and tricks on getting proper exposure in post. One of the things I took away was to set my contrast in black and white, eliminating all colours from the picture. This takes away some distraction from the eye which might play some bias to some colours, hence making you think that region is brighter than other. It’s quite an old school trick than very few colourists use today, but an essential one to getting a proper exposure to the picture. It works for both video and still images, like how you would do colour grading or matching on Lightroom or Photoshop.

Also, the limitations of shooting on a DSLR really shows when you’re in post-production, as the grain would be substantial the moment you start cranking up some of the dials such as the blacks, or saturation, or even some of the colour wheels. But we have to work within our limits, and I’m a person of “less is more” kind of thinking, so I guess it’s good to work with some limitations before you go into the full blown RAW experience (pun intended).