Telling the Story - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 327

color correct it differently than if he's getting ready for the big fight? What
are some of your storytelling thoughts?”
Bajpal responds: “Rather than going into the specifics of that, I'll tell
you aesthetically what I need to get to and it could be any situation.
For me, there is a point where realism meets that something else and it
is very critical for me. When you're looking at [an] image, do you feel
like in that circumstance, in the moment in the story, are you physically
there? Does the image feel three-dimensional enough? If somebody is
a good storyteller, you forget that you're sitting in the chair and you're
transported into that world, so for me the rule of thumb, the guiding
principle in any and every circumstance of storytelling is to be able to
break that barrier down.
“You can do it in a very stylized way: for instance, if you're working in
science fiction, you could have very high contrast, all these punchy blues
and cyans and greens and all of that, but you're transporting that person
into that science fiction place, so you're transporting them into that envi-
ronment and it has to feel real because just by crushing that contrast and
painting everything in cyan, it may not have any soul. How you do it, I
couldn't tell you, often I don't look at the buttons, I don't look at the dials,
it just happens naturally, but the mindset is 'Are you able to transport that
person?' and it doesn't have to be realistic; in fact, more often than not
it isn't.”
Company 3's Stefan Sonnenfeld agrees that there is no specific color
that tells a story: “First of all, there is no strategic kind of sit-down
where we say okay, what are the complimentary colors and this is what
we are going to do. This is why you have to try things. There are acci-
dents that happen and I have learned through accidental process. That
is in my information bag and I can go back to that and that is where
some people without that process fall short. I can say I did this once
and it worked great, (so) I can try this. Sometimes guys like Tony Scott
will just let me do my thing and he will look at it and he will say,
'I never would have done that for this scene, but it works really well,
so let's keep that.' Whoever gets anything right on the first go? That is
another thing to remember. There is always trial and error. You have
to try things.”
Color Changes the Story
When Shooters' colorist Janet Falcon looks at the Artbeats image of the
Marines in the desert ( Figure 8.1 ), she believes that the image could tell
two different stories, depending on the color scheme.
“I look at this and I think, 'It's the desert and it's hot,' and it came
up really warm, so without any direction my feeling is that it should be
brownish, goldish, not so blue-sky.”