Colour Grading

Colour grading is the process of altering and enhancing the color of a motion picture, either electronically, photo-chemically or digitally. Due to the abilities of Final Cut Express we were able to colour grade our work. Just like professional music videos we did this for a number of reasons:

• The Use of colour Grading makes a film look physically better, this is often the difference between amateur work and that of professionals. Therefore it was only natural we wished to mimic this professionalism.

• Colour correction can be used to establish specific metaphors and symbolism in a music video. For instance the juxtaposition of naturalistic, bright colouring in scene with the people who skip school is juxtaposed by that of the person who has stayed at school. The character who sticks to the rules seems to have a terrible time, this is referenced by the use of dark colour corrections, and un-natural lighting.

• A rarely used reason for colour correction is due to continuity errors. One of the clips we wanted to include due to it's content had a clear continuity error. If you look below at a screen shot of the clips you can see circled as 1 clear shades of blue, these are shadows caused by the lighting, this was completely different to the other shots, to stick to continuity, By adjusting certain aspects of the clips colour I was able to create the illusion that red spotlights are being shone at the audience, thereby sticking with the correct continuity. This is shown in circle 2.

By Bradley Merle