Alriiiiiggghhttt — it’s 3 am and I’m hopped up on dayquilllll
Had a lot of fun doing the coloring for the final cut — it’s crazy how subtle and yet massive the difference is. At first, I seriously considered not even changing the color, because when I saw the final cut I couldn’t really think of what to change — adjust the brightness on a few, sure, but nothing major. 2 hours later I had not only adjusted every clip, but I had developed a whole extra layer of the video, just with the color scheme. So cool!! Now I look back at the pre-colored video and I cannot fathom how I almost didn’t color it. Small changes make a big difference I guess.
Here’s before and afters:
The scene I’m most proud of (both color and content wise) was the trash-trip scene. We had to do it in one take ‘cause I fucked up my shoulder and foot in the first take, so thankfully it was perfect — save for the exposure. We were worried it wouldn’t be usable since it was so blown out, but I think I managed to salvage it:
The most fun aspect of the coloring, however, was realizing I could ramp up the subtle color theme we had going on to underline the narrative shift. We already had a bit of a subconscious color scheme for the infomercials with the purple-ish tones, and since we filmed the chase on a cloudy day, the light was very cool. When I filmed the last scene with David, I opted not to white-balance, because I liked how the natural warmth of the light played with the sexiness of the character. So I just ramped it up. I had every infomercial scene tinted towards pink/purple and some warmer, and every scene outside of that was super cool (-67!) with a tint of blue. I think it created a pretty cool effect, but eager to hear feedback on it. Not sure if it’s too over the top, or if people even notice. I think it’s pretty drastic at the end — maybe should’ve toned it down in the final scene. Here’s the first switch, as Rod runs off set:
Overall, I think we did a really kick ass job considering how much time we spent on this. Everyone did awesome work, Lydia’s cuts, Idit’s spot-on graphics, and David’s music… that damn song is on loop in my head, it’s so perfect.
Now to get to bed so I can wake up and make cupcakes for the last class tomorrow!!!
Still super super grateful that I got paired with these lovely humans, and super sad now that I realize this is the end of our group… Oh well, there’s always more-A-mor where that came from.
