Apple Final Cut Pro 5 - Manual (Page 1221)

434 Part II Project Interchange
The Color Correction Process
As mentioned earlier, color correction has several goals. To outline the process of color
correction, this section focuses on two of those goals:
 Making the actors or key elements of your scene look the way they should
 Determining the overall look that you want for the scenes making up your movie
Every video project is comprised of a series of scenes. While scenes may differ in color
and tone—one scene taking place at night, the next one happening in the midday
sun—every shot within a given scene should match. The goal is to make sure that the
transitions from shot to shot within a scene are smooth. If one shot is brighter or
redder than the one next to it, the result can be similar to a jump cut, distracting the
viewer and making your project look unprofessional.
The overall process of color correcting different shots in a scene to match one another
involves five steps.
Step 1: Pick the master shot of a scene to use as the basis for color correction
If you’re color correcting a scene consisting of a single shot, then your job is pretty
easy. All you need to do is find the settings that work best for that one shot. Most
scenes, however, cut between a variety of different shots using close-ups, medium
shots, and wide shots. In every scene, there is usually a single wide shot that
encompasses the entire scene, called a master shot. Traditionally, this is the first shot
that is taken for a scene and used as the basis for that scene. After the master shot,
you’ll typically use a series of medium shots and close-ups. These other shots are called
coverage, because they’re often used to cover different edits made in the scene.
When you color correct a scene, you begin with the master shot, since that’s usually the
establishing shot of your scene. Using the master shot as the basis, you can then make
the colors of the coverage shots match those of the master.
Step 2: Perform primary color correction
Primary color correction refers to two basic steps that you take using one of the
Final Cut Pro color correction filters. After you apply the Color Corrector or Color
Corrector 3-way filter, you’ll perform two steps:
 Adjust the blacks and whites to maximize the contrast of your clip.
Essentially, you’re mapping the blackest black in your clip to 0 and the whitest white
to 100. By doing this first, you widen the luminance range that an underexposed
image covers, or bring down overly bright (or super-white) areas of overexposed
video into the range considered to be broadcast safe.
 Use the appropriate Color Balance controls of the color correction filter to make
adjustments to the balance of reds, greens, and blues in your shot.
As you make these adjustments, you’ll want to view your clip on your broadcast video
monitor as well as check the clip’s luma and chroma levels in the Video Scopes tab to
make more informed modifications.