Better exposure and colour

As every good filmmaker knows, good lighting and colour balance is paramount if you don’t want to spend many hours in post production fixing exposure and colour issues.

A must have tool for video colour workflow is this new ColorChecker Video from X-Rite. For a while now we have found its the ideal reference tool for helping the get the footage just right. This two-sided chart provides colour, skin tone and gray references on the front side and a neutral white balance target on the back. It comes in a manageable 290 x 205mm size and is a perfect tool for our camera exposure and colour pre checks.

If used in conjunction with colour correction software like Blackmagic’s Davinci Resolve that attempt to automatically perform a primary colour correction before the grade, by analysing the footage shot of the chart it matches the colours to a know reference. Once this initial correction is done, grading can start knowing that your footage colour ref has begun from much the same point.

Highly recommend using one of these colour charts to get your footage to pop.