I have always had difficulty with color-correction, and have gotten in my head about it. What I decided to do with this video was to use some LUTs to make the process of color correction faster. I suppose a while back I might have felt that color correction was an expressive part of the process of filmmaking. Probably because I used to be a painter, and color correction shares so much psychology with the act of rendering in painting.

But part of developing filmmaking skills involves, I think, practice. And in order to get as much practice as possible, I need to streamline the process. And this involves streamlining color correcting. I am sure I am using all of the language wrong, but I used two LUTs. One prepares the LOG film to look more “regular” (REC709?), and the other lightly adjusts it to look “stylized”. Unlike in the before times, I’m saving the color-correction settings so I can re-use them in all future projects.

In the clip below, I decided to shoot two night shots with minimal indoor light, because I have always had difficulty with that. (And BlackMagic cameras are notoriously not great with low light). I also used two different lenses, because I wanted to see if the Lomo Minitar lens (with I got in the last year) rendered colors that differently my Takumars. It’s not that different! And I think these came out so much better than when I tried to color correct everything from scratch! Took me almost no time from shooting the video to color correction to compiling.

I’ve started this blog, using an old website, to work on my film skills while I’m in between albums. Unlike many indie musicians you might have heard of, I began releasing albums when I didn’t have the money to pay someone to make music videos for me. So, I started making my own music videos as part of the press process for an album release. Over the years, I’ve come to really enjoy the process of making music videos. The format is short enough that it doesn’t beg for an expensive production, but you have a lot of freedom over what it is that you choose to shoot. (Despite the fact that music videos have become a cliche in the modern day).

Nevertheless, there is still a lot more that I can learn from the process, so I decided I might try and give myself something like abstract film school assignments, and see what I can shoot in a given week. I’ll come up with an assignment – many will be very mundane – and see what I end up with. Provide some notes on what I learned, and what worked and what didn’t and go from there. Maybe by the end of this process, I will have expanded my skills for when the next round of music videos need to get made.

Cheers.