Secondaries with the Pros - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 260

captured on film, so he didn't really mean to light it like this, so he looks
for the colorist to help him make it look better.
Bajpai relates his experience with many DPs: “That's where it becomes
a matter of trust and faith in that I am not intending to relight a DPs work.
That is not the idea. The idea is to enhance it and in that enhancement, if
you look at this image versus where it started, the light's already in there—
the lamp is already lit that way—so when you're looking at that and you're
looking at this, it is more like what that lighting needs to be in the context
of that scene or the emotional feel that happens to be in that scene.”
The DP isn't the only concern for the colorist. For example, with actors
and actresses, he needs to be concerned with maintaining continuity in
the look from week to week. If this image were of a star actress, the color
of her hair would be critical.
Bajpai agrees, “Absolutely. No question about that. It's very important.
I did Sex and the City for a couple of years, and it was just as important, I
mean the producers were more concerned and if the shade of dye on the
set were different from one day to the next, I would get phone calls. It's
very critical, especially with blonde hair. We can finesse the hair based on
the tool set. I can tweak the shape of the mask ( Figures 6.90 and 6.91 )
and take out the red so I won't affect the redness of the face. And then at
the point, the yellow-green part can be separated and I can go in and take
out the green” ( Figure 6.90 ) .
Despite the windows and qualifications of various vectors (greens
in hair and reds in the skin), Bajpai considers this primary color correc-
tion. I ask him for clarification. His answer: “I don't necessarily like to
call these secondaries. These are like layers so in any layer, what you're
doing is shifting that pixel value. I go along with people when they call
Fig. 6.90 The initial qualification of the hair, in order to remove some of the green cast.