http://www.myspace.com/gospeljohn

Well honestly, I started doing this as a way to practice new color correction techniques that I learned. I thought... why not do some color correction on some scenic footage... thus came the correction of adult movies.

A lot of the new ones need some major help too... I don't know why but these guys just haven't figured out how to white balance yet. Probably just a bunch of idiots who spent their money on the talent and don't give a damn about post production.

Just bang 'em out... on to the next one.

Bang 'em out... he he he.

By watching Behind the Scene stuff, I've seen a lot of how they light it. A medium-end set will have a couple of kino flows (flourescent banks) to fill the area and one guy who has a home depot light that follows the camera man (usually also the director) and basically lights the area of interest head on.

The cameras they use? Sony PD150/170, Canon XL2, Panasonic DVX. I've seen stuff shot on the HVX and Z1... but not in the Behind the Scene stuff.

Here's a few hobby color correction tips: And for the pics, I've kept them very PG so Tom won't ban me forever.

First off... don't expect any porno with the word "amateur" (ie Amateur Angels or Amateur Blondes in Danger) in the title to be correctly color balanced.

Here's an example of the Redhead that wasn't a redhead:

That took all of 3 minutes to correct. I used AfterEffects and Curves with only the color picker as my reference.

Just boosted the red on the low to medium end to emphasize her hair color, corrected the blue levels for the improper white balance (looks like indoor setting was used) and mixed in green to taste. The white walls in the background really push the color of the subject way down... FOR SHAME!!!

It ain't perfect yet (a bit too warm and maybe not enough contrast) but we're only doing this for fun. Here's another example of a magenta cast... probably from offsetting green for flourescent lighting. The entire movie has this problem.

This was even easier than the first one. Just added green back into the midrange. Corrected the whites.. and maybe a touch of red.

I know this scene is a helluva lot better than the original that was released... Again... it ain't color corrected like American Beauty but it's way better.

It's such a shame because that brunette is so damn cute.


All this took a few minutes to do (granted maybe an hour to render)... why can't these porn guys just do the minor touch ups. Sure what I'm doing isn't Hollywood level but you have to agree that the afters look better than the befores...

Oh well... now you know what I occasionally do with my free time.

If you're interested here's the book: Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction (5th Edition) It has a lot in there about print and it really pertains more to that world than video but what I've learned about curves thus far is really powerful.

If you're more interested in learning about those funny graphs Premiere shows you called vectorscopes, this is the book I cut my coloring teeth on: Color Correction for Digital Video: Using Desktop Tools to Perfect Your Image It will get you started on the path toward a point where nothing out of the camera looks right.