The colour grading exercise was an effective way to gauge how the colour palette of a shot can change the mood, vibe, and even time of day associated with it. In this way, it had a similar effect to my ‘how music changes mood’ blog post, but of course by manipulating a different stylistic tool in post-production. The video below shows our original footage, followed by three different colour grades that I put together on Premiere Pro:

I attempted to create three dramatically different looks so it was easier to differentiate between what worked and what didn’t. I consciously set myself the challenge of colour matching the shot of Emily running with the subsequent close-up of the mobile phone. This particular shot was actually re-shot on a different camera, a different day and in a different location, and funnily enough they’re actually my hands instead of Christina’s. To me, these differences are obvious primarily due to the variation in colour (grass looks much more vibrant in the CU). With that, I wanted to see if colour grading would make the shots more continuous and seamless when put in conjunction with each other. In each example, you can see that I was able to achieve this level of continuity. This is reassuring for future shoots for when the colours across raw footage doesn’t match.

In the original footage, the colour palette is relatively cool and it appears around 10’oclock in the day. It’s a little dull and doesn’t look overly cinematic.

I then wanted to create a dramatic change to the original footage by adding a blue hue over the clips. This immediately transformed the shot as it now appears to be dusk and the mood is much more dark and eerie. While it may appear a bit over-the-top when juxtaposed by the original footage, I think this colour grade does a much better job of encapsulating the mood and time we were going for. It appears much more cinematic and would likely be the colour grade of my choice for this particular scene.

In the next clip, I upped the saturation and added a more warm, red/orange hue over the footage. Again, this dramatically changes the time of day and the mood. As it looks sunnier and warmer, it would likely be around midday, and the warmer tones suggest a more positive vibe. The hue also changes the colour of her skin tone significantly, which makes it appear quite unnatural. I know in Final Cut there are ways to isolate and adjust skin tones, and although I did not seek it out, I presume Premiere would have a similar feature. If we were using this colour grade, it would be necessary to take this step to make her skin tone look more natural in relation to her environment.

In my final colour grade, I went a bit crazy with green mid-tones and blue highlights. To me, this is purposely the most unnatural appearing of the three colour grades and looks almost alien-like. As the green of the grass is almost fluorescent, it detracts from the presence of main figure as the environment almost consumes her. I suppose this could be a look that someone might choose if they were going for something a bit less conventional, but for my practice it was a bit too left wing.

Evidently, this exercise taught me a lot about how colour grading can transform footage in terms of mood and time, as well as ensuring continuity. For our 1-minute screener for the upcoming Media Exhibition Day, I will endeavour to colour grade the footage as it makes SUCH a difference in terms of completeness and impact.