Color Looks

Color Looks

Have you ever seen unadjusted source clips or behindthe-
scenes footage from a favorite movie? It’s a striking
reminder about the bold and deliberate use of color in
modern fi lms. Look at the work prints or on-set making-of
video—the magic more or less disappears.
In older fi lms color looks had to be accomplished optically
and photochemically. Strong color fi lters would be used in
the camera’s matte box to reduce or enhance the effect of
the source lighting and color. The well-known bleach-bypass
method would be used to strip certain colors out in the fi lm
lab. Nowadays, a digital production pipeline has made the
photochemical approach rarer, although optical fi lters still
play a large role in shooting. Meanwhile, it’s becoming
more and more common for an entire feature-length production
to be graded through a digital intermediate, or D.I.
After Effects has an advantage over D.I. software such as a
DaVinci system in that it is a true compositing system, with
fi ne controls over image selection. After Effects was not
created principally with the colorist in mind, so its primary
color tools (as described in Chapter 5) are simpler and
less interactive. Third-party solutions such as Colorista and
Magic Bullet Looks, both from Red Giant, have appeared
to help bridge this gap.
Keeping in mind that your job as a compositor is to emulate
the world as it looks when viewed with a camera, it can
be effective to begin by emulating physical lens elements.