Capítulo 16. Is Color Correction Becoming a Barrier to Learning for Media Students?

Capítulo 16. Is Color Correction Becoming a Barrier
to Learning for Media Students?

*Ted Fisher

Delta State University (Cleveland, Mississippi)

A Mississippi Delta Case Study

Learning the basic concepts of “color correction” is an essential task for Media students. For those producing still images or videos, this knowledge allows a new and expanded set of possibilities for their practice. For those studying the history and theory of media, it offers a set of tools for understanding and analysis. For those investigating communication techniques, it clarifies the role color and tonality play in visual language. Yet the tools and techniques required to teach “color correction” beyond the introductory level generally privilege access to expensive equipment, calibrated systems, and controlled viewing spaces. This challenge is often reduced in a university environment since students have access to the school’s computer labs or postproduction rooms. Recent shifts to remote learning, however, have demonstrated a new form of “digital divide”. When students and professors attempt to work from home on laptops, phones, or outdated family computers, we see problems that limit student learning and make fair assessment difficult. Only by carefully shifting the methods we use to teach and evaluate can we mitigate the bad outcomes that arise when we use contemporary color correction techniques without the essential facilities.

These issues became practical concerns in the past year at the new Digital Media Arts Center at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. In 2019, after carefully studying the methods used by professional editors and colorists, a Postproduction Suite was designed for student use. A calibrated 5K monitor was set up. Controlled lighting, set at the recommended color temperature, was installed. The walls were covered in grey foam squares to reduce any color cast. A Tangent Element Panels Kit, designed to control color correction with Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere software, was placed so that students could work while seeing both reference scopes and their video output at broadcast settings. Reference audio speakers were carefully arranged, creating a high-end screening room with visuals and sound that could be trusted.

In March 2020, however, students and professors were sent home when cases of Covid-19 surged in Mississippi. Classes continued remotely. Students experienced a dislocation from the 15-seat computer lab used for video classes to working at home, on a laptop, perhaps in the family kitchen. Everyone was immediately sent a quiz to discover which students lacked equipment or had a problem running the required software. It was realized that many students had significant limitations outside of school.

Intermediate and advanced students felt the change more than beginners. They had already been trained to match their work to broadcast standards. Those who had spent time in the Postproduction Suite noticed the uncertainty most acutely: a group project that was being completed that term could no longer be checked in the Suite, creating doubt that it looked and sounded as good as possible.

In a remote situation, it is obvious that access to equipment will vary for each student. This has a significant impact on how and when a student can work. It was also quickly discovered that students with limited or slow internet access faced much longer file downloads before they could start on a project, and much less reliable uploads as a project deadline neared. As well, some students started a project working in a room influenced by bright daytime sunlight, and finished it under a warm-colored tungsten lightbulb at night. The idea of a controlled viewing space posed a challenge.

Student work quality varied in unexpected ways. The results on some technical assignments stretched out like a bicycle race: a few students, working on quality equipment in comfortable and controllable viewing conditions, were getting almost perfect results. Then there was the majority of the class, with reasonable control over the results but demonstrating some limitations. For example, some students struggled to understand the concept of “tint” in their work, seemingly unable to see the subtle balance between green and magenta. Significantly, the students in the bottom third of the class often had more than one problem and, as so often happens when a type of “digital divide” occurs, they lowered their expectations and shifted to basic and minimal approaches. For them, mastery of skills seemed unachievable in these conditions.

Defining Technical and Aesthetic Color
Correction Concepts

To develop approaches that might mitigate these problems, both in remote learning and in educational practice when classes return to “normal” methods, understanding a little about the history of color correction is necessary. Two key ideas about the evolution of the practice can be seen to greatly influence current approaches.

First, it is important to realize that video color correction is a practice that evolved from the methods broadcasters used to create material that could be broadcast “safely” within the limitations of the technology. Aesthetic quality was a secondary concern. There is a significant conceptual difference between making a file match technical requirements and making aesthetic changes to that same file.

Second, it should be understood that this initial broadcast-based concept of color correction has been expanded greatly in the last two decades because the ideas and techniques used in Hollywood-style film production came to dominate postproduction practice. Cinematic color correction initially lagged far behind broadcast color correction because filmmaking did not accept a file-based approach, insisting digital files could not hold the full quality of film. Since the original material filmmakers used consisted of reels of film negative, the postproduction process for theatrical film was designed to eventually refer back to the film negative.
A digital edit often ended with an edl —an “edit decision list” that guided the physical cutting and assembly of film negative or a film print. The original film was considered the highest quality material, and the digital files were really proxy files —temporary guides for use in computer editing software. Only 20 years ago, with the release of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2000), did Hollywood embrace a shift to the “digital intermediate process”. At that point, with film scanning and printing perceived as producing a full-quality product, it became common practice to treat film as a source material that was changed into digital files. Then, digital files could be fully processed in color correction software, rather than requiring a return to the original negative. This pushed color correction to new heights.

These two ideas shape color correction practice. In the first concept, we color correct to make our files acceptable for their intended use. Aesthetic standards are secondary. Conversely, in the second concept aesthetic standards are primary, but raise complicated technical standards even further. A film must look perfect, it is the ideal and highest expression of our visual culture —but this “cinematic” look is calibrated to an even more complicated standard, beyond that of broadcast—. Achieving cinematic color correction requires both technical precision and artistic taste.

Comprehending these two conceptual approaches is important, because ultimately the common ground between broadcast and cinematic traditions is not the eye of the film colorist. The common ground is the technical scope. Aesthetic decisions will be made, but no technical transgression can be allowed, and this is measured with the technical standards seen in a Waveform Monitor scope, an RGB Parade scope, and a Vectorscope (Figure 16.1). These active graphs of our video signal represent the laws of the system.

Fair Mitigation Methods Based
on Technical Scopes

Understanding that color correction goes beyond aesthetic appraisal is crucially important. Fortunately, the objective technical measurement scopes allow can provide a method to mitigate the problem remote production creates. When students and professors are quarantined, we cannot build calibrated postproduction suites in everyone’s personal space. What can we do? The answer is that most postproduction software has professional broadcast scopes included. We can learn to use scopes.

Specifically, common software packages like Adobe Premiere or Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve (including the free version) provide all of the technical scopes. Inexpensive apps for smartphones also include scopes of this kind. If we are able to understand (and to teach our students to understand) what scopes show us, then we can calibrate from recording to postproduction and produce professional results. We can compensate for our imperfect monitors and viewing spaces —if we are willing to look at and understand the information scopes give us, taken directly from the camera sensor or the digital file.

Teachers should abandon the practice of evaluating student work based only on their personal taste and a quick glance at a laptop screen. It is time to recognize how easily our eyes misjudge visual information despite our best intentions. When giving critique or grading student work, defer to scopes. Unless you are certain you have calibrated and prepared your system, you are probably seeing that student’s work incorrectly. In any case, push students to defer to scopes. If a student sees that an image looks bright enough on their uncalibrated screen and then realizes the scopes show it as underexposed, this is a valuable lesson.

This approach can also benefit students in Film Studies, Broadcast Communication, or the History of Media. One can analyze film stills on scopes easily, allowing a shift from opinion to a more objective measurement. Was “The Long Night” episode of Game of Thrones actually too dark? Can we numerically measure the use of color temperature to represent Mexico and the U.S. in Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)?

While the use of scopes moves both students and teachers toward a more objective analysis of color and tonality, one other approach implemented at Delta State University has proven to be valuable. Assigning students to a “Senior Producer” role and giving them the task of reviewing the color and tonality of another student’s submitted video breaks away from the standard teaching hierarchy in an effective way. Introducing a new voice to the critique reminds us to consider how video is disseminated and viewed. As well, the process of carefully evaluating another student’s work on scopes (and by eye) is an important learning opportunity.

Color correction, one of the most powerful techniques available in contemporary media production, has utterly changed postproduction for still photography and video creation. Understanding it is essential. Yet the access challenge color correction presents—requiring a powerful computer, a calibrated screen, and a controlled viewing space—goes far beyond what some students will have available during remote classes or when working outside of school facilities. This can become a significant barrier to learning, leaving students to struggle with the highly-stressful feeling of not trusting one’s own eyes, and the disorientation of being told they are seeing things incorrectly. By shifting to scope-based evaluation, and by giving students a role reviewing videos as a Senior Producer, teachers can help reduce these problems for most students. It is time to make teaching color correction a more objective and fairer practice.

References

Bisset, J. (2019, May 1). Game of Thrones cinematographer defends “too dark” episode. cnet. https://www.cnet.com/news/game-of-thrones-
cinematographer-defends-too-dark-episode/

Coen, J., & Coen, E. (Dirs.) (2000, August 30). O Brother, Where Art Thou? [Film]. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190590/

Soderbergh, S. (Dir.) (2001, January 5). Traffic [Film]. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/