One of the most overlooked aspects of making a film cinematic is how the video or film has been processed with color grading.
Weather it’s a bleach by-pass, faded, under or over exposed look. The choices are endless to create a mood and consistency throughout a story. Too me, grading is much more important than the camera or lighting on set. It’s what creates a unique style, something most cinematographers lack.
Sure you can do a lot in camera. But because video lack the organic structure and feel of celluloid film. It’s so much easier and more precise to create a look in the computer. Playing with contrast, structure and color. Don’t get me wrong, it does matter what and how you shoot, but giving yourself the best material isn’t necessarily the same thing as something that looks great straight out of the camera.
To me cameras are only one part to achieve a look or more importantly, to capture a story. That’s why I prefer to shoot with cameras that has raw capability over compressed formats. It doesn’t matter how many stops of dynamic range a camera has if it compresses the image in the end. Bits are lost and will forever be destroyed. This creates artefacts in the grade and shooting in S-log or similar LUTs doesn’t solve that compression.
Compressed footage is often sharpened in camera or there’s a noise reduction algoritm that at first glance might look nice. But when compared to uncompressed raw that’s professionally graded, it looks very unnatural. It’s better to leave that processing that many cameras does for you to the grading. If you don’t, it will often create a video look that I at least try to avoid.
Here are some tips for becoming better at color grading...