Colour Grading Portraits

Some days when colour grading portraits or interviews, I wonder if I’d be better suited with the title of make-up artist, hairdresser, cosmetic surgeon or beautician. We can redden lips, whiten teeth, reduce bags under eyes, soften skin, give a pasty complexion some sun, decrease whiskey-induced ruddiness and annihilate cold sores altogether. So long sucker!

Working on a MCU (Mid Close Up) or CU (Close Up) means we can know the subject intimately after studying their wrinkles, blemishes and facial features. If you happen to meet them in real life, it’s a weird moment when you greet them like an old friend but they have no idea who you are. (Actually welcome to post-production in general – haha)

Image from “I Was Actually There“, graded by Angela Cerasi for Peachy

An important question I ask when grading a documentary interview is how the shot is to sit in the greater context of the film? Is it to sit seamlessly amongst the general vision or is it to punctuate the general vision, making the interview feel more removed and in a different time/place to the general vision? If it’s to sit seamlessly, I try to match the saturation, contrast and luminance to the shots around it so the film flows from start to finish.

If the portraits are to stand apart, I’ll try to make the saturation, contrast and luminance of the interview have a marked difference to the rest of the vision. Perhaps stronger blacks or extra contrast using vignettes and shading. An example where this may be the case is a modern day interview with a witness or expert set against an historic event portrayed through reconstruction and/or archive.

To make a portrait look modern, you might ensure there are crisp, clean colours (so nothing looks faded), and use noise reduction to smooth out the image. To give a cinematic look, we may reduce the contrast but set the pivot point to be low so in general the frame is darker. I can’t think of a situation where we want the subject’s body to be brighter than the face, so if this is the case (eg. A white t-shirt is pinging in the frame), I’d use a soft window to dim it and allow the face to be the brightest part of the image.

Image from “I’m Wanita“, colour graded by Angela Cerasi for Peachy

My top tip when colour grading faces? Do not add a hard window and track the face unless you really have to! It’s great until the person looks left or throws their head up to laugh, then you’re snookered because the window no longer fits their face and it bobs away with a life of its own. You can of course fix this with key-framing and changing the shape of your window, but you’d want to be grading a commercial to warrant this extra time and finessing! Instead, always try a big feathered window across the face area, one which doesn’t track at all. If they move in or out of the light this looks natural and there is no chance of seeing a face-shaped window jumping around the place.

If you’re trying to twist the skin colour slightly because a particular brand of camera (which shall remain nameless) has rendered it a bit green, I’d recommend using the Hue vs Hue curve before jumping to qualifying/keying. This is because when colour grading we are always trying to achieve an effect in the most efficient way possible (same as cinematography?).

A quick and subtle curve adjustment is a lot quicker than achieving a ‘clean’ key (ie. only the desired element is selected with nothing else affected). The Hue vs Lum curve can also be handy to do a quick brighten of a skin tone, but use it extremely carefully or you will cause break up. Remember, introducing picture break up or noise is colourist blasphemy! The goal is always to be sensitive and precious with the imagery, treating portraits with the greatest respect.

This column, “The Art of Colour Grading: Portraits”, written by Angela Cerasi of Peachy Keen Colour, was originally featured in the Australian Cinematographer Society’s “AC Magazine“.