-
A winter’s afternoon look in After Effects CS4…
Hello!
I’m trying to do some colour correction in AE CS4 and am pretty new to the whole colour correction thing. I’m trying to make footage shot on DV in some woods in daylight to look more like it was shot late on a winter afternoon, when it’s just beginning to go dark and the colours are beginning to become less saturated. I’m messing in AE, and have managed to create a good looking night time effect, but am having trouble getting these more subtle settings right – everything currently looks too blue.
I’m using levels, curves and hue/saturation to try to achieve this effect. Are there any settings that anyone has used before to create such a look that would give me a good starting point? The director has also said that if possible, he’d like a little green added to make it look more ‘swampy’ (as that’s where the scene is supposed to be set – is this possible, or would it look too artificial if I just bump the green levels up slightly?
Many thanks,
Jamie…
-
4 Replies
-
Thanks for that, Dave. However, I had nothing to do with the shoot, unfortunately. I’ve inherited the project as the editor, and so am trying to achieve the look that the director wants without the need for reshoots that the project budget won’t stretch to, hence my posting here in the AE forum…
-
You’re doing pretty much what I’d do so I can’t suggest anything better, but you might find some good advice on the DV Rebels Guide Forums – they have a specific section for colour correction.
—
Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk -
Do you have access to any third-party plugins?
Digital Film Tools (much of which is now Tiffen DFX) has day4night and nightvision filters as well as many other great CC filters that can make your goal easier. As Dave L. suggested, the key is getting believable placement, gradation and variety of colors (as opposed to an even blanket of blue or green tint over the entire scene).
Also, I don’t recall if its in that set or another (I have to search for it each of the rare occasion I need it), but one of the more popular plugin sets has a very good multi-layer fog generator that has helped me achieve better realism in manipulating similar scenes … not only would a subtle grey mist floating through the scene help achieve the swampy look, but the affect of the fog’s motion over the footage can help avoid the look of a static color cast evenly dispersed throughout the length of the scene.
Of course, if you don’t have access to third-party filters, anything that they can do can be done with AE’s built-in tools … just takes a lot more tweaking and, thus, time. Best of luck.
-
Thanks for the help, everyone. I’ll see what I can do about getting access to plugins, but it’d doubtful, to be honest. I’ll take all of your suggestions on board, though…
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up