It is scientifically acknowledged that colours have a significant impact on our feelings and impressions but, most of us are blissfully unaware of the effects of colour in our daily lives. Not so the film-makers who dish out feature films, ad films, documentary films, and corporate films. Colours are used to telling effect by modern movie makers. Previously, film and television producers used to invest considerable time, effort, and expense in the film sets and post-production for achieving the right effect through colors.

Color grading offers creative solutions for challenges thrown up during the making of a film. During a shoot, there are many factors beyond the control of the director and as a result the footage, that makes its way to the post-production suite, often leaves much to be desired. However, there’s no need to hit the panic button. With the aid of color grading equipment and a bit of help from a skilful video editor, the director can practically transform a length of footage from mediocre to magical. A professional video editor can color grade a video footage to convey a particular mood by emphasizing or muting certain colors. Film makers find a number of imaginative uses for color grading. For example, they use color grading to convey to the film’s audience a sense of the film’s location, thereby virtually transporting viewers to the scene on screen.

Underlying the creative aspects, film production is a very technical process. Technical problems during the production stages can sometimes lead to creative and quality issues at the post-production stage of film-making. When it comes to repairing the grainy footage obtained from night-vision footage, editors resort to color grading. Even bad quality footage can be salvaged with the help of color grading. 

Color grading can be achieved through many ways. Some software work on the hue, saturation and brightness (HSB) aspects while others act on the red, green, and blue (RGB) color components. In video film production, color grading is achieved through the additive color system. Here, color grading basically manipulates the composition of the primary or RGB (Red, Green and Blue) colors to obtain different color combinations. Sometimes, film makers adopt the painting by pixel approach to color grading and on other occasions, they prefer to target particular ranges of a color instead.

Many people mistakenly assume that color grading and color correction are similar. Nothing could be further from the truth. While color grading is generally used for aesthetic purposes, color correction is used for ensuring technical quality of footage shot on different cameras or on different occasions.

Contact Colorist : Sudip Shrestha for feature film color grading in Dubai. 
(Colorist at www.pixelhouse.ae - Sheikh Zayed Road )
(50+feature length film color graded, 300+ tvc- previously worked with Tambi Studios - Dubai)