Hugo Matthews

Where to go after reading Alexis van Hurkman's 'Colour Correction Handbook'?

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I've been through this book thoroughly now and have been spending time practising all the techniques. I feel like I know the content well enough, and it has given me a great foundation.

But where to go now? I have been through most of the content here on Lowepost, which has also helped a lot, but now I guess I am looking for more insight into: the practicalities of the craft; the real-world processes of professional colourists; intermediate and advanced techniques; grading sessions; useful (colour?) theory from related disciplines and art forms; etc., 

Any tips, particularly on which video tutorial sites are best, would be gratefully received. 

Take care,

H

Edited by Hugo Matthews
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As stated above the more you practice the better you'll get. But there are also some great courses out there. I did one some years ago with Dado Valentic (colour.training) and it really helped and motivated me a lot. There are also some courses out there from the ICA (icolorist.com) that should be good and help you gain experience. 

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if there's a  good uni level art school nearby, see if you could audit their version of color theory 101 course?

also check out what is nearby in computer science/color and medicine/color at any local uni,there may be courses on offer that can be of great value to a colorist if allowed to audit

 

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I think, you should try to grade some real project. When you have to grade over 100 shots in a day, your color grading approach changes a lot.
When you learn color grading at one shot, you have time to create a lot of masks, roto, finetune everything. But when you can't spend more then a minute on a shot, you start to look at the whole image balance and how is it interacting with neighbor shots.
So, you just choose a couple of shots of a scene. Fix their WB and exposure problems. Then create a look at this scene's group using these shots. 
And then just go through all the shots, quickly adjusting their WB and exposure. And when you did it to all the scenes and shots, if you still have enough time, you can spend it on masks, fine tuning, tracking, etc.
Also full screen and color grading panel changes a lot of things too.
Of course this is just a one way of grading approach, and may be too obvious for you, but hope someone will find this useful.

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Yes, Dan Moran is very good. (He's also of normal height, which I like.)

I don't often get into "beauty grading," but most of what I know came from Dan's lessons, and they helped me immensely on a couple of projects. Dan also had some great ideas on how to mask and track complex objects, which boiled down to multiple shapes -- and that was a good lesson to learn. MixingLight is a terrific resource.

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