Color Correction help

[chris_rw]

I feel a bit stuck on color correction I'm doing on a silly little mini-short film/fight scene. We shot it low contrast and saturation. I've color corrected the whole thing (100 or so shots) but I'm not entirely happy with what I've got. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what they'd do with this?

Here are a few stills from the raw:

 

[knightly]

To me, it looks a touch washed out (normal for low contrast, low sat). In your CC of choice, pull up your 'scopes (I like using the color/RGB parade) and lower your blacks until they touch the bottom, make sure you get the black point of some dark object that should be black balanced across the 3 waveforms. Then pull up the highlights looking for something in the image that should also be purely white and balance out the channels for that point and make it just barely touch the top. Then move the mids to bring the key side of the subject up to about 70% - 85%. Readjust the blacks and whites to 0 and 100. Now you can bump the sat if need be to get the colors richer, then adjust the black and white again.

Learn to love your 'scopes...they're your friends. After that, drop another corrector on the clip and dial in your "look" there. crush or expand the blacks, recolor specific sections of the image based on luma or chroma... next clip I'm currently correcting and grading a 20 minute short, lots of fun, but a dedicated coloring program makes it SOOOO much faster.

 

[chris_rw]

I definitely get all of the normalizing colors and such, I'm just having trouble figuring out what I want the 'look' to be with this. You can definitely go in a ton of directions with it.

 

[dlevanchuk]

I like the looks it has right now. Just need to have brighter/more vivid colors and do little more contrast as Knighly suggested.

 

[knightly]

Here's a possibility: levels, singled out the flesh tones and adjusted them to a richer flesh tone, then inverted the selection and pushed that bluer for the wall's sake. Then very light vignette to draw attention to the girl facing us, and desaturated outside the vignette slightly.

 

[Ernest Worthing]

I definitely get all of the normalizing colors and such, I'm just having trouble figuring out what I want the 'look' to be with this. You can definitely go in a ton of directions with it.

Think about the theme of the movie and the feel and goal of the scene. That will help you decide your look.

Some examples:

The scene is deadpan and honest to the moment: Just brighten up the colours a bit, a little contrast and let it stand the way it is.

The scene is a dream or a parody of itself: Add lots of diffusion/soft focus, really pop the contrast and colours.

 

[GuerrillaAngel]

I'd probably go with something like this if it were my film -- a lot more contrast and a bump up on the saturation:


This is a more surreal look:


For either, there is more you can do to get the flesh tones perfect.

Like you said, there are hundreds of ways to go here.

Good luck.