Color Theory and Color Grading
Recently, DEKO 37 has been doing some color grading experimenting with RAW footage. We are using a Canon C200 to shoot this. It was surprising that shooting RAW footage took a lot of memory. For example, a 128 GB Cfast 2.0 card can only hold 16 minutes of footage. The great thing about shooting in RAW with the C200, is it 12 bit color range (where as the LOG footage is 8 bit in the C200)
Here are some examples of color grading we did for our experimental video production in San Antonio.
We used a few gold gels (purchased from Texas Scenic) on our key light. Our goal is to get a “Breaking Bad” look for a short film called “Bennie.” This is our second test on the set. We will bring in more lights next week (Ikan LED and Flex lights) to conduct a more thorough test.
Here is a test shot with the keylight and gold gel. The second shot was first color corrected and then color graded with a LUT. The LUT was good but I tweaked it to give me a better look. We used fake fog to get the smoky look.
Here’s another test I did with LUTS on my office mate’s desk. I didn’t use enough lighting which is why there is grain in the footage (RAW requires much more light than LOG or other formats). But this is the second color grading experiment I did so I like the way it came out. I went for a dark greenish/blue color in hopes to resemble the Matrix (I know it didn’t quite reach that color but it was close).
Last week we worked with LAMP Media Productions with an NDA client at JW’s Marriott. The shoot was fun. There were several gaffer’s, audio techs and camera ops there to make this shoot great. I learned what the difference was between the MP4 codec and XF-AVC codec on my camera was. The difference wasn’t that much.
The DEKO 37 team also produced corporate video at the San Antonio River Center Marriott for Hewlett Packard. We filmed employees conduct practice interview with mock clients. The clients asked the employees several tax questions and some political questions. After this, we put the interview on a flash drive and let the interviewee watch themselves. They were critiqued and given helpful suggestions to improve their customer service.
This weekend I am going to film Vanessa Del Fierro’s band, DP for a skit and prepare for TEDx San Antonio
Check out our work at www.deko37.com for video production in San Antonio.
