I get asked form time to time why my movies look a little bit more cinematic than the average wedding video.  It is mainly the editing.  But the image has some important aspects that I’d like to talk about.  The HUGE sensor on the 5d mark II along with EOS L series glass produces mind blowing colour rendition and dramatic depth of field control but another aspect is colour correction and grading in post production.

Firstly each clip (there’s up to 120 in a four minute piece) is painstakingly colour corrected to match the rest of the edit in a coherent way.  Then I start a secondary process called colour grading.  This is adding a ‘look’ to the image in a creative way.  As a story teller you can use this tool to manipulate the viewers mood.

Here are some frame grabs from Cat + Jez’s wedding short before and after colour correction and grading:-

Vows shot before:-

After:-

Notice how a lot of the blues and greens were lost under the tungsten lights. The original image looks washed out, orange and video like. This was corrected and then the greens and blues in the shadows were exaggerated just a little to achieve a certain look (or grade).

Umbrella shot Before:-

After:-

This shot looked slightly under exposed so this was corrected,  the highlights exaggerated and the shadows made a little greener to match the context of the rest of the movie.

There are more extreme examples of colour grading in my past pieces but this is just my latest.