Colour Correction: Keeping Gordon Willis's Style

Colour Correction

When first approaching the colour correction, two documentaries were of great assistance ‘Gordon Willis on The Godfather’s Cinematography’ and ‘Emulsional Rescue Revealing The Godfather’. They both go into detail on the colours Gordon Willis used and how the original negatives were digitized for colour correction.

The digital cinematographer Martin Cohen gave a valuable lesson when he spoke about the possibilities that grading can give “Just because you can do it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing”. I fully heartedly agree with this statement, if cinematography could be done simply on a computer then there would be no need for half the equipment to be on set.

Before going into detail about the problems and changes I made my short can be broken down into two colours, yellow and black. For the scenes in the gym there was more black then yellow whereas in the homeshots there was more yellow then black however the colours always had a presence. This was to give a sense of different times between the locations similar to how Gordon Willis made the flashbacks scenes in 'Godfather II' more yellow and the present scenes more black.

Willis advises those who are giving the restoration ‘The Godfather’ to input all the yellows by 4 and the reds by 1. Using Premiere Pro CS6 I followed his advice;

The final result I felt was not nearly as effective as it could be. Though Willis’s advice set me on the right track on perusing yellow/red rather then yellow/green, the simple fact is certain footage of mine to begin with was not shot as dark as Willis’s. This led me to alter the correction to fit my footage so that it echoed Willis’s brassy style more affectively.

Careful consideration had to be made to how yellow a shot could be made without making it too artificial and thereby losing what was captured on film. The same can be said for the blacks, if too dark then you run the risk of the audience not being able to see the images on screen. Whilst experimenting I tried both an extreme black/yellow and subtle black/yellow;

The first picture demonstrates the more subtle approach whereas the bottom picture is the more blown out grading. It was here I realized that although time consuming, subtleties were far more effective then in creating a cinematic look. 

It soon became apparent that if there if the colours that are to be graded on are already present during the filming, in this case the blacks and yellow, then the grading is all the more effective;

Though many shots were as successful as the one's above, at times there was too much brightness and an alternative methods had to be found. Such was the case for the skipping shot where there was a distracting reflection from a light on the floor. To counter this I used the lighting effect in premiere pro, making the shot darker and more Willis's like;

Unfortunately blacks and yellows were at times dominated by other colours like the white wall which was far too overexposed to darken down completely. 

Something I was extremely pleased with however was the balancing of black and yellows during the home shots. As quite clearly seen here the grading has made those two colours dominate the scene;

In conclusion, I find that grading works best when lighting, exposure and colours are all correctly considered during the shot. It is a useful device for cinematographers, it's three-way-colour corrector, brightness/contrast, RGB colours and tint all assist in heightening the hard work that was already there and give it that great cinematic look.