- What's going on guys? Welcome back to another epic video, and this time I'm gonna
do a video standing up, because that's my default. Even when I'm on my phone, I've
got to pace back and forth. My wife makes fun of me,
but it is what it is. So we're gonna give this
a try and see how it goes. Today, we're gonna be
talking about color theory, and this is gonna be a crash course, but it's not gonna be, you
know, me just sitting here, reading you find print and
all the beautiful articles that have been written on it, because you can Google that stuff. So what I'm gonna do is
going to be my typical style, where I'm gonna morph this information specifically for filmmakers,
and at the end of it, I want you to walk away
with something exciting, something fun, okay? And guys, before we jump in and start swimming in this Kool-Aid, let me say it one more time. I will be doing a live webinar next Monday at 11:00 AM Pacific time. You do not want to miss it. It is ACES for beginners. I'm gonna be taking you
through what is ACES? How to set up your project in
ACES, how to grade in ACES. And I guarantee you,
after this live webinar, you will be ready to grade
your first project in ACES. Plus by signing up, you will
be automatically entered when my Freelance Colorist Masterclass, I will be picking three winners
at the end of the training. So registration is free,
but we have limited seating, so click the link below to join. And if you're enjoying the
content, you know to do. Smash that Like button,
subscribe to my channel for more awesomeness. Make sure you're
following me on Instagram, and let's roll the info. (exciting music) So let's start with a
history lesson, you ready? Sir Isaac Newton was the first scientist who came up with what he
called a color circle. It was built off of seven main
colors on the spectrum, okay? Red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo, violet. So Roy G. Biv. This is how you would remember it. But modern physics ditched indigo, because they said it was challenging to distinguish that particular hue adjacent to the other colors
that were on the spectrum. So they ditched indigo
and then we were left with six main colors. So R-O-Y, Roy, G-B-V. That's the current six-color
spectrum that we see, and you can see it on this chart. It is measured in nanometers. We're looking at a wavelength that starts at 380 to 780, and basically this is
what a human eye can see. Now let's move on to something
familiar to most of you, which is the CIE diagram. You've seen this before, I'm sure. It's also known as the horseshoe, just the shape of this diagram. And what we're looking at is exactly what we saw on the spectrum. All right. So you can now spot these values. If you look to your far
right, you see the number 700, and if you look to your
bottom left, you see 380. These are nanometers, and this is what a human
eye is capable of seeing. And then within that, we
have different color gamuts. In this example, we can
see sRGB and Adobe RGB, and then this middle
point right in the center of that triangle is what's called a D65, and that's basically,
in computer's language, a proper white point. This is what computer
declares a proper white point, and that's D65. So hopefully all of these numbers that you might've
probably seen in the past and just didn't really know what it was is starting to make sense now. Now let's move on to the fun stuff. So what I want you to do is, when you look at this color wheel, I want you to split it in half. I want you to look at the
right side as cool tones, left side as warm tones,
and this is very important, whether you're a filmmaker,
cinematographer or a colorist, to identify this, because when you're gonna
be creating certain moods, just knowing that off the top of your head could be very helpful, okay? And now if we dive deeper
into that color wheel, what we get to see is
that it's broken into these different categories, okay? Ultimately, there are
three main categories. You got hue, chroma and value. Hue is basically your color. It sits on the top part of the wheel and it rotates in 360 degrees. That's where all your colors are. So violet is a hue, blue
is a hue, magenta is a hue. These are all hues, and that sits up top. Chroma will be the saturation of that hue. So where is it sitting? How red is that red? How dull is your red? So that's your chroma. Then we talk about the value, which is the brightness of your color. How bright is that red? I mean, that red looks different. Like rose red looks
different in the morning than it does at night. You get what I'm saying? So now what is it doing? It's not really changing
its saturation or its hue. It's changing its value. And knowing these nuances
and these little differences is the difference between
an amateur and a pro, because beginner
cinematographers and colorists are just looking for that swing of a hue to get that red, get that
yellow, get that blue. They're not thinking about like, all these different
variations within each hue. And that's, again, what separates
the pros from the amateur, because the examples that
I'm gonna be showing you later down the road, I mean, you're looking at a
"Blade Runner" right here. We have some other really good ones that I'm gonna take you through and kind of break down those grades and give you a better
understanding of like, what the colorist was thinking, what the director's intent
was, and all that good stuff, and it'll start to make much more sense. So just like I gave you
the example of the rose, the bottom line is that the
perception of a specific color is based on its interaction with other colors around it, okay? I'm about to show you some examples. I want this part to be
a bit more interactive, so I'm just gonna ask you
guys to pause the video and type in your answer in
the comment section below. This is not just a cheap tactic to get some engagement going, but it's gonna be good
for you guys as well. So what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna go through a bunch of these diagrams here. I'm gonna tell you to
type in your answer below, and then we're gonna revisit and I'm gonna give you the answers, okay? So let's check this out. Let's look at this first one, and without cheating, going on the internet
and finding the answer, tell me between these
two letters, A and B, which one is brighter? You can type in your answer
and just say B is brighter. Now let's look at this other example, and tell me which inner
square is brighter? Okay. Left or right? Now let's check out this one and tell me this bar in the middle,
which side of that bar is brighter? Left or right? Now let's move on to our
hue aspect of this exercise. Look at the green in the
middle square and tell me, are they the same or different? So like I said, pause
it, answer down below. Now, let me take you through
and give you the answers. So let's go back to the first diagram. This right here, the A and B
have the same exact values. The reason why we thought
B was brighter than A is because it's the perception of color based on its interaction with
other colors in the space. Same thing goes right here. Let's look at this right here. Obviously the gray in
front of the darker image is much brighter, right? False. They're the exact same values once again. Having to set which
background you're gonna pick with a certain color that you're using can change the entire game. And I'm telling you it's
important, because as a colorist, now that you're aware of it, you can make conscious decisions to make sure that your image pops and you're doing justice to your footage. Same thing here. This bar is the exact same
value from left to right. But obviously when we look at it, the left side is way brighter, but it's only brighter in relationship to the color behind it, all right? And with no surprise, same boring answer. Both of these lime greens
are exactly the same, but when you choose a
poppy lemon background, the lime green pops. When you choose a fluorescent
green on that lime green, it disappears, it muddies
it up and it adds this tinge that just makes the
whole thing kind of blah. It's important now,
because what you can do is if you're in a scenario where the art director didn't
really do their job, the DP was just like,
whatever, didn't care, and you ended up with the
image on the right side, what you want to do now is
to grab that background, maybe use hue versus luminance, bring the value down. Then go under hue versus hue,
swing that hue a little bit so you can create some color separation between your subject, which
would be the inner circle compared to your background. So knowing these things will
help you understand this and then get the most out
of your image, all right? Now let's move on to the fun stuff, and let's talk about color
harmonies, all right? So we have a bunch of different types. I'm going to touch base
on the most common ones, especially in our world,
in the film world. So the first one I want to
talk about is monochromatic. Most of the time people
think monochromatic means black and white,
you know, done and done. That's not true, because the
clip that you're looking at in front of you is from "Moonlight", and it's obviously not black and white, but the colorist very carefully chose a monochromatic scheme, and you can see it on the vector scope. It lives on the same hue, but just because of different
chroma and different value, it created that drama and three-dimension in that image, okay? And that is the power of
color grading, my friends. Because somebody can look
at this image and be like, give me perfect skin tones, give me a pure white on his
shorts, blah, blah, blah, but then it wouldn't be "Moonlight". When it comes to creativity,
you gotta, you know, suspend your disbelief and just go with where the story is going to take you. All right. Now let's look at another
one of my favorite examples and the background of
this video right here, this right here is built on our second type of color
harmony, which is analogous. All right, analogous is basically colors adjacent to the color in the middle. In this case, when we look at it, if our main color is orange, if you look at the sky, it
has a little bit of yellow. If you look at the ground,
it has a little bit of red. And those two colors are
sitting adjacent to orange, and that's the analogous
color scheme or color harmony. And we can see it again
in our vector scope, how it's created. Somebody might think like,
oh, to create separation, let's pull the colors apart
from each other to do that. But in this case, the color separation was created masterfully just through using analogous color harmony. Let's move on to probably the most popular and most common example when
it comes to color grading, which is complimentary harmony, color harmony or color scheme. And I just chose a granddaddy
clip to demonstrate that. This is from "Joker", and we're looking at
Joaquin Phoenix's character, and at this point in his life, his world is falling apart. So when you look at the vector scope, it's not a 50-50 split. It's not like we got tons
of saturation in the skin and it's going toward orange,
and then we got all this cyan. That's not what's happening. So what's really happening is that we got a little bit of juice
in the top left quadrant where the skin tones live, right? Because right now he's lifeless. He's mad, his mom is dying,
he's in the hospital. So keeping those things in mind, there's not a lot of
saturation in his skin. So that's a conscious decision
from Jill Bogdanovich, who graded this film, right? And then in order to create a lot of color and a lot of drama and make
this entire thing sing, she used the background color,
which is cyan and pushed it. So that's where the drama came from. Because if right now I go in,
and I just take this cyan, let me just show you right
here, and de-saturate it, and if I just pull the
chroma back a little bit and make it a little bit darker, bring the value down of this specific hue, all of a sudden, all the
drama from the shot has gone. It's not special anymore. So that was a conscious
decision to do a 30-70 split, where you have a little bit
of like warmth in the skin, but then the rest of the
shot is driven by the cyan. So it's still a very, very prominent complimentary color harmony, all right? So that was a great example of that. And now I want to give you another, and our final example here,
which is a little bit tricky, and it requires a bit more legwork, meaning your production
team needs to be on board and it has to be done
in pre-production before it gets to you in post. I mean, you can technically
create it if you have to, and if you're asked to in post, but majority of this type of work is done in pre-production and then on set. And I'm talking about a split
complimentary color harmony. That's what you're looking
at right here, okay? So it's a Y, right? So it's basically, this is what it is. So you got your, you know, main color, which we see this green. He's in a club right now, and this is a perfect
color harmony for rom-com and comedies in general, okay? So this is from "Spring
Breakers", which is a rom-com. So we got that green on him, which is the unapologetic, our main color. And then instead of like going, you know, directly opposite to in
the magenta direction, the colors split and create the Y. So we hit that red, we
hit that purple, right? So we're hitting those two colors and it's creating that Y shape. And it's a very interesting thing, because when you look at
this image, it's dark, but there's so much pop and juice that you just cannot help but get excited, and that's, you know, the beauty of the split complimentary colors, because it just adds this extra, this X factor that usually
you don't really get to see. Call it maybe almost like unnatural, and obviously there's
mixed lighting in the club, so you can buy it, like, you know, it's natural in that environment, but it's unnatural when
we just think about the sun and the moonlight and all that. So having a basic understanding
of how these colors work with each other and the CIE color system, and what's going on over there will give you a significant
edge over your competition. Whether you're a filmmaker,
cinematographer, director, colorist, whatever have you, right? Like you can utilize these techniques. Honestly, this video, I would keep it in my watch later folder, because this is more like a handbook. This is something that
you routinely go back to and just, you know, go
what was that one thing that he was talking about? Or let me just go touch base on that. And also, I will encourage you guys to keep implementing these
techniques that I talked about. If you have a shot that fit
one of these color harmonies that I'm talking about, or if you have a tough
shot that falls under that green on green that we looked at, and if you just want to challenge yourself and go in there and try to
implement some of the things that I talked about and see if you can pull something out of it, I think it's gonna be very gratifying. And that's one of the
beauties about color grading that I love so much, that
you don't have to wait. But when it comes to
editing or cinematography, you shot something, now you have to wait for
weeks to see the end result. With editing, you have
to live with that edit for so long until it's like
sound designed, graded, and everything for you
to see the final image. But us being in the finishing seat, we do something and we get
to see the results instantly, and there's something beautiful about it. So guys, once again, we only
have a couple of days left to register for my free webinar. If you want a deep dive into
the world of color science, and especially ACES is such a behemoth, there are so many different
school of thoughts and like ways to go about it. The way I'm gonna break it
down is gonna be something where in one hour, you're gonna walk away having enough knowledge to
confidently work in ACES on your next professional project. So go sign up. Registration is free, but we do have limited
seatings and it's filling up. So link is down below, check it out. If you're enjoying the
content, you know what to do, smash the Like button, subscribe to my channel
for more awesomeness, and I will see you guys in the next video. (exciting music)
