One of the things we wanted to do in order to create the sense of desolation that would - hypothetically - be expected from an apocalyptic atmosphere is a style of colour editing that's also fairly common in such media as charity appeals or debt-related commercials. This is a combination of a few things, the first is saturation, used in order to dull the colours which the camera picks up (cameras with a higher spec tend to capture colours that are more 'true to life' which is a good starting point) The weather on the day of filming was quite good, there weren't too many clouds and the sun shone quite brightly in what was a very blue sky, so I tried the best I could to numb these things down so as to not let them compromise the mood of emptiness and despair that we were trying to set . Next up is contrast, which can be used to emphasize angular shapes and darken shadows, useful for drawing attention to the ripples in the torn flag and the 'flood water' (one of our 'trick shots') not to mention the grooves and crevices in both the skull prop we placed and the warped shell of the destroyed trailer we discovered.
During the editing stage I was able to work with 'split screen' in order to compare the changes I had made to the original footage, so I thought it would be an insightful thing to show you all. For this I have done a split straight down the middle. The left hand side shows the original footage (within my chosen cinematic aspect ratio) and on the right is the same footage with the colour correction and contrast (video event fx on my software) applied to it. Hopefully you will notice the, at times, staggering difference and hence justified this creative decision. Enjoy!
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