Movie Making Manual/Colour Grading

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Colour grading is the process of manipulating each shot in a film in order to achieve a certain 'look'. The job of colour grading usually falls to a specialist referred to as the colourist. Professional colourist's use sophisticated digital finishing units such as the Davinci 2k system. The process normally starts with analysis and colour correction of each shot to fix problems such as unwanted colour casts. Next, the colourist can use a myriad of techniques to colour the scene to reflect the artistic preference of the producer/director (for example, reducing saturation can give the scene a bleak look). Once a look is decided upon the grading process for the rest of that scene (or even the whole film) is generaly routine, as the colourist aims to provide consistency between shots.