I’m so impressed with how the coloring is coming along. It’s really amazing! You can so easily change the entire feel of a scene with color. Let me show you what we’re doing.

This movie is a thriller. There is a creepiness to it. It’s an “edge of your seat” kind of film. You don’t quite know what’s around the corner. So, typically, it’s good to show these things in darkness. But, our story takes place during the day. So, we needed to create a creepy, darkened shadowy feel inside the house.

However, when we shot a lot of the scenes, we lit them pretty bright. The reason we did that was to give us a lot of dynamic range regarding brightness (luminance) and color (chrominance). The nature of digital HD is that the dynamic range is pretty limited compared to film. So, we had to be careful that we didn’t go to bright (and blowout the whites) or too dark (and create digital noise).

So, with that mind, this is what our footage looked like right out of the camera:

Not too creepy. Pretty flat. No real depth.

And, no goosebumps.

So, we take the footage, add some shadowy vignettes, change the color a bit, lower the saturation (color) and crush the blacks, and get this:

Now, add some creepy music, some deep textural drone sounds, and viola!
Goosebumps!