Color Help

Contrast in snow is different than contrast in summertime footage. Instead of balance black v white, you need to balance mid v white instead to bring out snow detail. As for colors, I'd make them cold since its stormy out.

1. Use the histogram to make blacks as dark as you want them but still retain video. Rremember, black colors are supposed to be sort of washed out in flat light, which is why crushing them will look gross in those conditions.

2. Crush the mids until you start seeing snow detail. The overall image should be underexposed.

3. Raise the whites to compensate and balance the exposure. Go as high as you can before clipping. If the contrast gets too "sharp," then you've lowered the mids too much and need to tone it back a little.

4. If there's a distracting amount of clipping, apply Broadcast Safe > custom settings > check the luma box only. Lower the max output until it's not impossibly white, then adjust the Clamp Above and Feather settings until the transition between detail and clipping is smoothed. Remember, this should be subtle. Too much and it looks possibly worse than it did before.

5. Make blacks blue, mids red/green/cyan (skintones), and adjust whites in the magenta/blue/cyan area to make it look naturally cold.

6. Apply output levels adjustment. I don't always do this, but if I want the film look it's necessary. With this I just raise the blacks to make them milky while still being crushed. In other words, relative to other tones they are crushed, but overall they aren't absolute black. Not so useful in flat light, I've found.

*detail.

After watching it again, I wouldn't even touch the blacks. They look perfect. In fact, you may even have to raise them depending on how heavy you get with the mids.

wooorrd!

Thanks dude, that was really helpful.

I will work on it a bit and post the results.

Damn landis. Thank you!