Color Grade #1

Since I haven't had time/energy/motivation to write anything for this blog in four months (thanks, Twitter!)I'm going to start posting some before/after pix of color grades I'm working on. This is an area where I have very little practical expertise and am hoping to increase my skillset via practice, practice, practice. So, without further blah bleh blah, here's #1:

Before:


After:


Shot in MiniDV (NTSC) with natural light.

Here's the list of ingredients (all in Final Cut Pro), in order:
1. Color Corrector 3-Way: Slightly crushed black and brought the whites into line via Mid and White adjustment. Pushed everything in the to Reds/Mg ever so slightly, trying to remember the adage that slight adjustments are the best ones.

2. TMTS Custom Diffusion: This is also very subtle, really more noticeable in the motion than in this softer, de-interlaced JPEG.

3. Vignette: This one is less subtle and I might back it off a bit, or opt for two instances, one for focus and another for true lens vignette.

All in all, this was about 20 minutes, maybe less. If I go back for tweaks I'll update the post to track the progression.