Apply your color-correction effect and look for the color chips below
the three-pane correction window. The two swatches are used to perform
lightning-fast color matching. The left side is used to pick the color
in the clip to change, while the right side is used to select the color
to match to. Make sure you right-click the chip and choose the 3 x 3
pixel average. If you don’t, and have grainy footage, you may be
picking up unintended colors in the selection.
Next, you need to choose which values you’d like to match. Your choices are combinations of Hue, Saturation and Lightness.
STEP 1: Match your colors
STEP 2: Pick your values
STEP 3: Match your clip
Click the match color button and voila, your scene changes to match the next clip.
STEP 4: Use the Curves tab as an alternative
You can also match shots with the Curves tab. Avid has a "Natural
Match" feature available in the curves interface. Check the box
"Natural Match" and choose your colors, then click the match color
button. The source clip will adjust to the target clip’s hue without
changing Saturation or Lightness.
A good set of eyes, room ambience, monitor calibration and professional
scopes are all mandatory. Remember to get as much input as possible
from your client, unless they happen to be colorblind (which actually
happened to me on one of my jobs). With a good set of tools, the black
art of matching shots becomes very colorful.
YOUR GUIDE
Michael Forrest
Executive Vice President, Post Production, and Online Editor
HD Pictures & Post
Michael Forrest was one of the first instructors certified to teach
Avid DS Nitris and was an early beta tester for Avid/Softimage. He’s an
Emmy Award-winning senior online editor and has worked with most major
studios in L.A. as a Media Composer and Nitris editor. He has also
helped design curriculum that is used as a model for multimedia
programs at colleges throughout the state of California. Some of his
recent HD projects include The Chronicles of Narnia, Hostel and Syrianna.
Project The Pacific and Eddy starring Dominique Swain (Lolita) and Ryan Donowho ( The O.C.)
Michael Says Keep In Mind...
Before you get started, you’re first going to want to sit with the DP,
director, editor or whoever is supervising the color session and set a
look for the establishing shots. Once you have the opening to each
scene set, you can spend your time unsupervised, matching shot to shot.
For this project, we used Avid’s DS Nitris finishing system. But,
you’ll actually be able to perform the same corrections using Xpress
Pro, Adrenaline or Symphony, as all share similar color-matching tools.
The Avid color corrector, however, gives you tools for some very fast
base corrections. Besides the "Autocorrect" feature that lets you
quickly correct contrast, white, hue and black levels, Avid also offers
the "Natural Match" and color match chips. In this tutorial, we take a
look at how these can efficiently speed up matching shots in a scene.
HD Pictures & Post, Inc. www.hdpicturesandpost.com
1810 Colorado Ave.
Santa Monica CA 90404
ph. 301.264.2575 x104
Michael@hdpicturesandpost.com
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