Adding Oomph
The Oldest Trick In The Book
If your color session reaches an impasse about the way a particular scene looks, adding ‘oomph’ to the image is the oldest trick in the color grader’s book to kickstart everyone’s creative juices flowing again.
Actually, making everything warmer is probably the absolute oldest trick, but adding oomph definitely comes a close second.
Although, on reflection, maybe oomph is only the third oldest, since the sleight-of-eye maneuver of pretending to brighten the picture up a tad when in reality you’ve done nothing at all is the second oldest trick.
Whatever, you get the idea: adding oomph is a venerable trick even it does only get the bronze medal for color suite skullduggery.
So what exactly is adding oomph? To be honest, I’m not quite sure how to explain it myself. But I do know what it is when I see it.
Oomph usually needs to added when the picture looks fine, it looks okay, but nobody can quite put their finger on it but … something is missing.
Yeah, the sky is overcast, the talent is kinda pasty, the product is brown, and why did they decide to shoot in a disused parking lot? It’s lacking a bit of edge. It could use some je ne sais quoi. A little lipstick and eyeliner. In other words, we should add some oomph.
Now, you might think there is no '“add oomph” magic button. But it just so happens that there is. Resolve and other color grading systems allow you to create and save special LUTS. They’re like instant ‘looks’ that you can turn on and off with a click of your mouse. Dark and moody; high contrast to make the shot grittier; blue in the blacks to give a cinematic quality; what I call “Tobacco Filter,” which is basically a slight sepia tint with a little desaturation; and so on.
Your client may not go for such drastic changes but their comments combined with your own thoughts will point you in the right direction. And in this case, higher contrast definitely helps our overcast parking lot scene. Then we can window around the talent’s face to bring some blood back in his cheeks and give him a healthy glow. Adding that extra oomph helps so much. I think we can move on to the next shot.
Okay. So it’s plain oatmeal being poured into a gray bowl filmed against a white wall. I wonder what can we do with this? We’ll start with the vignette LUT and go from there.