Telling the Story - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 351

Fig. 8.39 This was done
with just a primary grade.
Fig. 8.40 Data from Primary room.
“All I'm doing is seeing what my parameters are. I know what it's
going to look like clipped. I'm really seeing what I have in the image. So
now what I'm going to do is just add a little bit of contrast to it and start
letting the light fall off where it wants to be.”
I explain to Pepperman that the image has already been touched by
a colorist. “I was just going to say, balance-wise, it's almost there. There's
not much to balance.”
But I prod him to take the image further by pointing out that we're
telling a story, so the balance isn't necessarily important. “Right,” he
agrees. “And that's just what I was doing. I'm fine-tuning the balance
where I am comfortable. So I really want to see that smoke. I really want
to see that highlight. So I'm going to start kicking the highlights. I don't
care if his back blows out. As a matter of fact, I want his back to blow out.
I want you to see this really hard, edgy light screaming and kind of cutting
him out of the background. And I just want to bury the blacks to where
it's not going to hide anything but it's where it wants to be, which I'm
going to say is right about there,” Pepperman states as he looks into the
shadow areas to see if he's losing any important details. “There's nothing
back there, so I'm going to get rid of it completely. So I'm going to take
the black levels all the way down to about here.”