Correcting Shots - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 302

discuss how to match the interview footage from earlier in the day to the
footage shot near dusk.
For this chapter, though, Chris Pepperman tries to turn the washed
out footage into something broadcastable. “The first thing I'm going to do
is take the blacks and the mids and start crushing at the same time. So the
midrange is going to give you all the facial tones.”
I tried to gauge how low Pep would take the blacks and mids, asking
him, “So you're taking it down until you see some noise that you don't
like, then you stop?”
“Exactly,” he confirmed. “When it gets too crushed. Right there, it's
too crushed. So now I'm going to bring the midrange up a little bit to
where I like it. Right there. And I'm going to bring the black levels back
up to where I like it . . . right there.”
As Pep takes the blacks and mids from one extreme past the proper
point and back into a comfortable range, he follows the same “focusing”
analogy that I've espoused in previous chapters. “Now I've got to balance.
I'm going to overall balance the image. And what I'm doing is looking at
the vector and the waveform and I'm touching the peds, the gammas, and
the video and I'm just balancing everything.” As he gets closer to what he
wants, his eyes move from the scopes back to the picture monitor as he
tries to find a pleasing skin tone. “I'm seeing that it's still a little blocked up
now, so I'm going to come up on the peds.” He confirms that by “blocked
up,” he mean that the blacks are too dark. “So now I'm coming up so I can
see all of his hair.” Pep's visual clue that the blacks were blocking up came
when the hair above Brian's forehead started to lose detail. “I'm looking
at the front lock of hair. I'm not looking at his eyes, because his eyes are
going to be darker. He's not getting fill light into his eyes, so if I were to
bring up his eyes, everything else is going to go. Like his eyes are good
there, but it's too flat. So I'm looking at his hair, his eyebrows, and that tree
in the back. So I'm kind of liking where that is right now. I'm also liking
overall balance. I might warm it up a tad in the skin tone.” He cuts back
and forth between the original and his current correction. “So we're seeing
a significant difference ( Figure 7.62 ). Now let's get into the nitty gritty.”

(a) (b)

Fig. 7.62 a) Pepperman's Primary correction.
b) Data from Primary room.