Telling the Story - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 329

Again, for Falcon, it's all about context. “That's just a judgment call; if I
had to start somewhere,” she explains as she desaturates the image. “That's
what I'm trying to go for: this tobacco look. I could be wrong. That's why
clients are important. Because you need somebody telling you—like that
story you told me about where something's supposed to go,” says Falcon,
referring to a story I told in my other color correction book about how Bob
Sliga was working on an image before the client arrived. It was a beautiful
image of a woman in a flowing dress carrying milk jugs under a green tree
toward a big red barn. With no input from the client, he began by turning
into a pretty Kodak moment. But when the client arrived, he told Sliga that
the woman had cancer, so Sliga switched gears and took the saturation out
and changed the warm look to something more cool and depressed.
Returning to the image of the Marines, Falcon continues her assess-
ment, “I mean, it doesn't look like a happy moment. It looks like a more
serious moment.” With the context of “a serious moment,” I ask Falcon
what she would do. Her assessment: “You think less saturation. More con-
trast probably. Serious moments don't have to be low color, but I think it
definitely helps to convey a message” ( Figures 8.3 and 8.4 ) .
Fig. 8.3 The primary correction reduces saturation and lift while cranking up gain to create contrast.
Fig. 8.4 Data for Primary room.