Major Project Production Unit - Assisting The Colour Grade

We had a masterclass with Nathan Caws who is a colour grader from Ignition creative. He was telling us about the work he had done as well as how he thinks about certain shots and what he does to achieve the final look. This was really interesting and although Andreya is doing most of the colour grading I still wanted to take an interesting in how the transformation works. I also felt that if I wanted a few things changed with the colour grade I would have more of an insight to how its done. One really interesting point that he made was that a colour grade is not just ot make a film look nice, it has got to suit what the content is. For example a film set in space would be graded differently to a period drama and this would be graded differently to a horror. They all have individual looks and its generally followed by most genres. I originally thought that films chose a colour scheme that they liked and felt looked nice but actually its about making sure the film looks right for the type of film it is.

After the master class each group had a meeting with Nathan to see what suggestions he could make about improving the films. When we went in he watched through our film and made notes. He then went through a couple of scenes and explaned a few things that could be improved by using Davinci Colour Resolve software. On one scene the windows were a little bit over exposed and he walked through with us about keying around the window and adjusting the light behind it. He also showed us how to track a subject and then draw a vignette around them. This enabled the subject to be highlighted away from the background and then adjusted to make them stand out more. All of this feedback was really insightful and I learnt a lot about colour grading works.

Over the next few weeks, Drey worked really hard on colour grading each scene. After each scene she would then let me have a watch and I would then tell her what I felt could do with bringing down or up a bit as well as checking to see if skin tones matched. Drey would continue to work on each scene and right at the end I did an overall look of the whole film. She made a few adjustments to little things I noticed but overall the colour grading went really well. I made sure I was present when it came to giving feedback but also ensured Drey had most of the creative control when colour grading. Im really happy with how it all looks and feel its elevated the film even further.