Jim's kind of a one man show so Myriam and Colin were armed with cameras and really just along for the ride. After capturing the footage, Myriam sat down for a few weeks and came up with the final edit. The picture was then sent to me for some color correction and grading.
The biggest problem was fixing several scenes which were too dark. There was very little data to work with, but I managed to extract Jim's face from the background and use the color shift to create the overall look for the video. The correctly exposed shots were desaturated to match the corrected shots which takes the shine off the images and makes it look a little more underground.
The remaining problem past that point was getting Jim's scene in the subway to match the rest of the video. Those glossy white walls were lit up like Christmas so I applied some grad-exposure filters to even it out. The end result brings out the greens of the fluorescent lights and draws the viewer's eye towards Jim instead of the bright wall.
You can view the fruits of my labor below.
DD172 Presents Jim Jones "Letter to the Game" from DD172 on Vimeo.
For my first colorist job it was definitely a challenge, but I think I may have a bit of a future in color grading if I keep it up. Of course I color correct all my own films but working this way in a more collaborative environment is really quite fantastic, I'll definitely be looking for more of these type of gigs.
