Keeping to a colour pallet when the colours aren't available.

[Lewis McGregor]

Hey,

I'm looking for some advice on keeping to a colour a scheme when the colours aren't available.

This is our pallet.

I'm in no way a professional and our production is your typical indie gig with people covering multiple roles.

This area of colour however has always left me scratching my head while thinking for a solution.
Keeping to the pallet indoors is a breeze and the same for when we're shooting on location in the castle we have, but when we move to the seashore or to green-hill pastures and so on, the pallet completely collapses. What's the trick to keeping to the colour scheme (which is really important to the story)?

If anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated.

Lewis

 

[ericyoung]

Your palette appears to be 4 shades of monochrome grey?

Why does the palette collapse? If you mean you are not getting deep blacks or separation in tones, then you need to investigate coloured lens filters as used for black & white photography. Just google "filters for black & white" or similar.

 

[Lewis McGregor]

I've just noticed I've spelt palette wrong. Nightmare.

Thanks for the reply, Eric.

That little jpg palette was pulled from Adobe Kuler but there should be subtle hints of blue in there. I can see the blue on my screen?


This is the look we're going for

.

The palette falls apart when we're in locations like this

(but picture more of a winters days). Because the colours aren't naturally around at the location I'm having a hard time sticking to the scheme and the footage is disjointed from the rest of the edit, even when graded.

 

[Marc Wielage]

This is the look we're going for... The palette falls apart when we're in locations like this (but picture more of a winters days).

My guess is that the look you want is possible, given a great final colorist, great monitoring, and decent color-correction software. Just try to get something reasonable on set, and do some tests so that you can be sure you can always get the correct final result in post. Trying to get the precise look on set is meaningless and time-consuming, in my opinion. Get something close that will work for editing purposes as a "best light" for dailies.

 

[Phil Holland]

Hi Lewis, The example image that you provided was achieved through color grading and was not totally done in camera. Your monochromatic desaturated blue palette can be achieved in different ways through different grading packages. White balance, tinting, secondaries, etc.... Lots of ways to get there and different shots may require different techniques. I would start practicing working with your material in post if this is going to be left to you to accomplish. Find some tutorials online. If not, reaching out and finding a decent colorist is your best bet for creating high quality post color work.

Lighting consistently with one color temperature will help smooth out the process if you are trying to 100% match the example shown. However, with the beach example, since you are shooting in broad daylight, you are looking to do nearly a day for night correction. Which can also be achieved in camera through settings and filtration or done in post.

 

[Phil Holland]

I kept some of the skin tones in mine

https://vimeo.com/55837592

But he also gave us a limited palette to work from

 

[Lewis McGregor]

Thanks for the in-depth help guys!

Phil, I'll take on board what you have said, valuable advice.

 

[francisco santos]

Hi Phil,
That looks awesome! Can you provide me with some insight as to workflow in order to reduce the color palette. I would think that the first step would be desaturate than introduce colors via lift gamma gain etc. But everytime I try it my results suck! Im really interested in hearing how its done.

Cheers,
Frank