I'm not really sure what its actually called, but id like to use the "Pleasantville" or "Sin City" style editing where everything is grey scaled except certain things?

I have Vegas 6.0 but I'm sure you're going to tell me to install Adobe AE, but if there are any easy ways of doing this, please send feedback. Thanks all.

I have Vegas 6.0 but I'm sure you're going to tell me to install Adobe AE

Sorry ... This probably isn't going to help. Unless you've got a mate with FCP.

Eureka do a set of cheap pluggins for FCP which do exactly this thing ... and you're right, they call it the Pleasantville effect.

alot of what they did in pleasantville was done with set and costume design...in the same way you would make sure to not have blue in the forground when bluescreening and green with greenscreen, you make sure to make a point of having only the thing you want red be red in the viewfinder when shooting. When you get into post, you make a copy of the source and redscreen in this example to knock out the red piece, then desaturate the other layer.

This would fall under what is technically called 'secondary color correction'

You should be able to do this with the built in color correction tools in vegas. Here's a tutorial:
http://www.wideopenwest.com/~wvg/tutorial-12.htm

Can one do color correction in Final Cut Pro? Or do you need the Vegas tool for this?

After shooting, I'd like to "warm up" certain scenes and "cool down" others using color correction. What's the best way to do this?

Final Cut has a great color correction filter that I use on just about every shot. It allows you to adjust luminance, saturation, and color balance.

If you need to separate colors within the frame for different corrections, you'll need to use layers and apply filters to isolate the regions you want to alter in each layer. That, however, is far more complex and dependant on the source material and your goals.

Color correction, across the entire frame can be reasonably straight forward. Generally, you do color correction last, after you've completed all of your edits ... so you get consistant color over an entire scene.

You might also want to have a peek at Graham Nattresses filters for FCP. They offer some interesting color adjustments/effects. See www.nattress.com for examples and free preview plugins.

yeah! that's what i wanted to hear =)

i am a film geek, as i'm sure most of us on this forum are (lol), and i think one of things that separates the caliber of films is the visual tone of a film. while i can't afford film (i'm shooting HD) or a SAG DP, i can get a good basic shot and then tweak the vibe of the scenes post production this way. this is very good news for me...

~

The MacPro Podcast has a useful tutorial on some of the features of the color corrector in FCP, used in conjunction with the wave form monitor for optimizing luminance and color correcting. It's an overview, but it is a great introduction for anyone who is new to FCP and wondering where to begin.

See: http://www.macpropodcast.com/

Funny enough I was looking at doing some of this for 'Ten Dead Men' so some great advice thanks guys!