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Enhancing the color of tree leaves to create a rich summer look
Hello color correction artists. This weekend we will be shooting the exterior scenes for a short film I am producing. I am anticipating some issues that will need to be (and hopefully can be) addressed in color grading.
The film is a 25 comedic short. The color palette of the production design is intended to be very vivid in a cartoon like fashion. I liken the color palette to a box of crayons. We did a couple of photography concept shoots. We did one outdoors back in July and this photo represents the look we are going for in the film:
https://www.briceburton.com/p9720715#h219aa18dHere is another concept photo of some more characters in the film:
https://www.briceburton.com/p9720715#h1c77096dAs you can see, more of that saturated, vivid, cartoonish color scheme.
Ideally, we would be shooting the exteriors in June when all the vegetation is bright green and lush. Alas, we are shooting on Sep. 17-19. There has been a drought in Kentucky that has made the tree leaves dry out. Some trees are roasted, brown, leaves fallen and everything. The majority of the trees are hanging in there though. But, the overall color cast to the hills is more of an “olive drab” now than a “lush green”. When we shoot, we will avoid burnt up or yellowed trees. My question is this: “Can we isolate the tree leaves and enhance their green-ness in color correction?” I am mostly thinking about whole hill sides of trees in the background.
We will be doing moving shots such as crane and steadicam. The film will be shot on the Red One in 4K. I would like to isolate and enhance the green color of the leaves without introducing a color cast to the rest of the shot.
I welcome any advice or thoughts from those experienced in color grading
-is this goal readily achievable, further considerations during the shoot, etc? -
8 Replies
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I’d say “no problem, but..”. I’ve done similar things before. Autumn for summer. Looks cool, looks great, but somewhat synthetic.
It’s possible. Just spend enough time with it.
Good luck!
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[Jason Stogsdill] “Can we isolate the tree leaves and enhance their green-ness in color correction?””
Answer is a “qualified” yes… in almost every sense of the word.
Think of the grading challenge that you are setting yourself up for as an uncontrolled “green screen” with: a ton of noise, in-camera vignetting, motion blur and so on, and most of the obstacles that you will be facing will be familiar, if you’ve done a pile of platework. In a greater sense, a secondary correction in most grading applications is accomplished with whatever combination of Hue, Saturation, and Luminance plus garbage-matte (user-shape, keyed, or geometric) alpha you can pull from the picture.
In COLOR, this is somewhat complicated by the Secondary source being the pre-metadata RAW file (if you are using the RAW/RDC-workflow), and usually that image is shockingly undifferentiated in terms of contrast, either in luminance or chrominance. Most people would move on to either a different grading system or do the secondary corrections in the COLORFX room which is fed from behind the metadata Primary corrections. Its not as efficient as the actual Secondaries tabs, but what’s a boy to do?
jPo
You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?
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Thanks for the response. Good to know that you have done similar scenarios with success.
Too synthetic looking is what I am worried about. Our goal on set will be to avoid having trees in the shot that will make the colorist’s job even harder. I hope that enough thought and work from all angles will give a good result. -
Hello Mr Stogsdill,
Sounds like an easy key / qualification. To be sure send me some raw frames and I will see what I can do.. If everything in the shot is green it may take some time. If the only green is in the trees then no issue at all.
Best,
Darin Wooldridge
Freelance Colorist / technical strategist
Technicolor Digital Intermediates
818-653-3918-cell
DI.Colorist@me.com -
Thank you Joseph. I appreciate the explanation of the possible hurdles. I’m not at all experienced with grading. I just want to make sure we avoid pitfalls on set that make the colorist’s job even harder. I have done green screen composting, so that makes sense.
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(whoops, just read Joseph’s post that covers most of this.)
If a shot is moving, things like shadow and highlight movement come into play which will make a solid key on a busy image(leaves) harder to achieve. If you can’t get a solid key then any correction you add will cause noise. Since Resolve can mix keys in any number of ways, you should have an easier time with this. Mixing keys in Color isn’t as easy.
In order to save money and time in post, I suggest you do a test before going out to shoot in Kentucky. You may find out what you think looks good on camera may not be what’s best for grading a shot like that. I’ve encountered this a “few” times dealing with people unfamiliar with shooting for VFX.
twitter.com/illyalaney
Motion Design, Color, Editing
SWGC Incorporated -
From what he said, I’m thinking most of the image will be greenish brown.
twitter.com/illyalaney
Motion Design, Color, Editing
SWGC Incorporated -
There will be some different types of green in the shot. The grass is still a nice, lively green for the most part. The drought as just caused the trees to dry prematurely. I was surfing some google images to make comparisions
I would say that the best case scenario trees look somewhat like this:
https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/hort/info/treeshrub/tree/oakbur.jpgI found this little image that shows several different stages of a tree. The first frame in the upper left is what most trees are colored like now. I would like to adjust them more towards the brighter green color as shown in the upper right frame:
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.findhow.com/resource/images/home/how-to-care-for-a-june-berry-tree.PNG&imgrefurl=https://www.findhow.com/home/how-to-care-for-a-june-berry-tree.php&usg=__GtdeA2j2JmH_0JGjOd2_MRmIAiQ=&h=147&w=215&sz=76&hl=en&start=284&zoom=1&tbnid=jHialEHmafQ__M:&tbnh=117&tbnw=172&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djune%2Btrees%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1669%26bih%3D1080%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C4805&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=1085&oei=AZyOTOf2FYb9nAet8qTTCQ&esq=undefined&page=12&ndsp=26&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:284&tx=127&ty=26&biw=1669&bih=1080
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