Abby, thank you for your review and advice. I did struggle with where exactly to put the highlights to look realistic. When I kept them 'white' or 100%, they appeared way too distracting, so I brought them down to range between 50-70%. I just don't know if that's reasonable for the screen. It looks 'believable' on my monitor, but I also don't want the whole movie to be nothing but moving shadows and lose all the detail either. I shot relatively flat knowing that I'd pull down the mids and shadows, to hold on to some detail in my 8-bit footage. That seemed to eliminate much of the noise. I felt having the sky and river in some shots, and striving for overall consistency shot-to-shot throughout, boxed me in a bit as to how wide I could go.
Magenta was definitely NOT what I was going for, so I need to look at that. Was it bad on your monitor? I will definitely pull up some images I like and throw them into the mix to test my color scheme and brightness. That should be helpful.
I also struggled with the skin tones. I wanted to keep a little more color in them, but had trouble getting the blue I wanted and not cooling them off as well (with my primary). I tried to keep the grade simple, but it looks like I may need to be a little bit more surgical in removing the magenta, maintaining the skin tones. On the other hand, I was also thinking that the cold skin tone added to the desperate feel of the character being chased through the woods at night, especially later when she impales herself in a fall. Would that play OK, or would it still just come off like a 'bad color job'?
Thanks again. Lots to consider and try. Cheers.