Cinematic Color Grading Theory

In my first year in Los Angeles, I spent 7 or 8 months as a Telecine assistant in the Valley. The shop was a really low budget operation without many clients, or much working equipment, and the colorist that trained me was a drunk. Most of what we did was one light dallies for low budget movies, which constituted about two hours of actual work each day. The rest of the day was spent discussing the art and science of cinematic color grading. The colorist would roll in about 10:30 every day. Teaching through his hangover, he imparted to me the basics of cinematic color, in theory and practice.

I subconsciously use that information on a daily basis, but I hadn’t thought about the philosophical and psychological concepts of color grading for some time, until I found this post on Mike Jones blog, Digital Basin. Mike Jones isn’t a drunk like my old mentor, but he’s got a great take on the psychology of cinematic color grading. The post is called “Colour Grading – Concepts and Paradigms.” Firstly, any reference to “Concepts and Paradigms” in regards to post production is automatically intriguing, because post production tends to be myopically workflow oriented, often avoiding the larger philosophical considerations behind the choices that we make in method and technology.

The post neatly packages the basics of video color grading theory, an art form that seems to have gone out the window in the age ofprosumer video production. Access to very powerful color manipulation tools (I use Color Finesse and Colorista pretty regularly) have created a wealth of color styling opportunity, but there’s an inversely proportional dearth of knowledge about how to apply those tools effectively. Mike Jones breaks down the use of these tools into a set of values that allow the intention of the filmmaker to inform color choices. That sounds like a basic concept, but its easy to overlook if you start fiddling with the color corrector before you’ve without a clear aesthetic plan for the project.