Color Grading The Bird Watcher

Since editing is coming to an end for my movie The Bird Watcher and it is almost ready to export I am deciding today that it is best to look at the color grading process I went through for each clip in The Bird Watcher.

When I first did the research behind color grading to get a better understanding of it, the first thing that was mentioned to me were LUTs. Essentially these were things where if you applied it to a clip it auto color graded it in a cool way for you. The only problem with these is most of them cost money and aren't very available. Either way I felt using them would take away from the process of making my movie, which I wanted to go through, and so I decided personally to just do the color grading myself.

The color grading in the first half of the movie is completely different than the second half where the climax is. I say this because I was made aware of an auto color grading option in Adobe which would just make the clip look cleaner. I used this on my clips in the first half of the movie as I felt there wasn't much color grading needed on the clips.

A clip with the auto color grading feature applied to it is shown below along with the auto feature circled.

On the other hand, the second half of the movie definitely needed some color grading. I say this because in the movie there is "An Hour Later" black screen which signifies Eric bird watching for a good amount of time but also it getting darker in the night. Since it was darker in the night, that meant I had to make the clips after the "An Hour Later" black screen darker. To do this I messed with the color grading settings a little bit to see what would make everything darker, but also look good. 

Below you can see a clip with the darker color grading applied. Also, on the left of the screen, you can see my color grading choices. For example, while I was color grading these clips to make them darker I mainly stuck with the light section under the "Lumetri Color" tab. While under light I mainly changed parts like shadows, blacks, whites, and exposure. Once I find how I wanted the clip to look, I applied to every clip that is in the second part of the movie.

The last thing that was color graded is the glitching clips of the missing person throughout the movie and the last clip with the missing person reaching out screaming "help me." The problem with these clips was that it was one of the last things we filmed. We started filming at around 6 at night which meant it got very dark near the end. To ensure people could see the clips I had to make it brighter for people to see but still keep it dark to give that eerie effect to the movie.

Below is what the clip looks like in the movie. The only thing I had to do was raise the exposure to 3.7 for each clip.

For the clip with the missing person reaching out, which can be seen below, I had to change a few things. I actually completely raised the highlights and shadows and then slightly raised exposure and whites. This gave the clip an eerie, tinted look which made the point of view of the missing person seem like he is slightly crazy, however also in serious need of help.