There have been so many great comments on the BTS of the Case Tractor commercial that I wanted to share the 30 second spot with you. Let’s make this a learning experience. I will show you the offline edit of the MOV. files out of the camera that were decompressed with CS5, which Pro Res should just call it quits. This decompressor kicks its ass and hand its hat to them. Adobe has it going on. The first one is my offline edit and then you will look at the finished color grading done with a SpeedGrade DI color correction system. Andrew Huebscher was my colorist. He is extrodianry with this platform. I have not seen very many as good as him, and he is affordable. He is a Director of Photography and has a great eye for color and contrast, plus he can track, move and create windows that do magic things to push the 5D camera to perform at its best. Check out “The Last 3 Mintues”, Navy Rescue Swimmer, Navy Diver, as well as Case. These are perfect examples of his talent.
OFFLINE EDIT
Now I will show you the finished product with voice over, music, sound design, the whole ball of wax.
ONLINE EDIT
Now I will take 6 screen grabs from the spot and tell you what I did in the color correction bay
Un-color Corrected Aerial Shot: Crop Duster Cam 3-5D's mounted to the landing gear of a Cessna single engine
Color Corrected Aerial Shot
This was an interesting shot. When we got it to the edit bay it was soft, the reason was that the engine vibration was blurring every other frame. So Lancer over at Bandito Brothers Post extrated every other frame and then used Twixtor to frame blend. I feel it works great for a 2.5 second shot. Or we could have hired a gyro stabilized Cineflex mount for a A-Star chopper, flown in the pilot, the Aerial photographer, and the mount. $25,000.00 later you would have had the same shot.
I increased the contrast on this and added the rich golden wheat color that is the thread that takes you through the whole spot. That was it.
Un-Color Corrected wide shot of a wheat field at sunset
Color Corrected wide shot of a wheat field at sunset
On this one we did a slight vignette on the edges. Andrew and I increased the contrast and we put a power window on the wheat to dial up the richness and saturation of the afternoon sun.
Un-Color Corrected shot of our Actor driving the Case Combine
Color Corrected shot of our actor in the cab of the Case combine
The Farmer in the cab was shot on a 50mm Kowa. We grabbed the wheat with the secondaries and brought out its warmth. We put a power window on the actors face to bring up his detail and warm up his skin tone. We then took another power window and brought up the luminance level of the LCD screen in the upper left hand corner.
Un-Color Corrected shot of combines harvesting at sunset
Color Corrected shot of combines harvesting at sunset
This is a 75mm Kowa, with the beautiful sunny side up flare in the lower left hand corner. We put a slight vignette on the shot around the edges. We warmed it up slightly and increased the contrast and saturation, but very slightly. Notice how nicely the sun blows out in the frame, no HD hard edges. This feels like film, like digital film.
Un-Color Corrected shot of farmer in the field at sunrise
Color Corrected shot of farmer in the field at sunrise
This was also shot on the 75mm Kowa, at sunrise. I loved this location, I felt the landscape was right out of a Margaret Bourke White print during the great depression. We are looking at the endless horizon of creative expression, are you ready? I know I am.
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