Article Focus: In this video tutorial, Creative Cow contributing editior Grant Swanson will take you step-by-step through the easiest and fastest (and extremely effective) way of creating the popular Sin City effect - colorized objects in a black and white world. You will learn basic techniques when working with color, and some useful masking/rotoscoping techniques.
Creating the Sin City Effect
by John Corbett on Feb 9, 2009
Great tutorial, Grant! The effect is a gorgeous one, and tricky to accomplish without someone figuring out the trick with the curves. I thought it was very thorough, and appreciated how you explained keyboard shortcuts and menu paths for us junior FX artists.
Creating the Sin City Effect
by Andy Reed on Jan 15, 2009
Hey Grant.
Great tutorial, although I'm having a few problems concerning the change in lighting. For example, when your actor gets to the bottom of the stairs, the light changes, but your footage cuts there. As my actor walks into a bathroom, the lighting changes, and the tone of the jeans goes from a vibrant blue, to a green color. Is there any way i can correct this?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Creating the Sin City Effect
by Mike Lambert on Dec 17, 2008
thanks!!
great tutorial!! :)
Creating the Sin City Effect
by Kim Segel on Apr 23, 2008
Great tut Grant!
Two thoughts on this:
This effect was also used extensively on the wonderful film "Pleasantville," 7 years before "Sin City"; and was used to reveal the emotional state of the characters, as a core theme of the film. You may want to watch it to see just how powerful this effect can be.
Also, as you pointed out, prep for shooting can really speed this effect along. One tip is, regardless of what spot color you want to feature in the final effect; have your talent wear a UNIQUE color on set (not necessarily the one you want) do the 'leave color' to THAT color, and then CC it back to the color you want.
Example: You want to have a blue shirt on talent and no other color, but on set you have walls and other wardrobe (jeans) with blue.
Have talent wear a bright red shirt when you shoot.
Do the 'leave color' to the red shirt.
CC the hue of the shirt (the whole shot actually - since it will only affect the shirt now) back to blue.
Creating the Sin City Effect
by Rob Jones on Apr 20, 2008
Grant! i've always been wanting to learn this technique. great tutorial, keep it up! i look forward to more turorials from you!
Creating the 'Sin City' Effect
by Ross Bradshaw on Apr 4, 2008
sorry half my text got cut off there:
Hows it going Grant
I see what you but I forgot a big part of the problem. All the footage was shot Black and White. Its cool tho becuase I ended up figuring it out in the end. I did one pass of the whole video, picking out one color from each shot, then I pre comped this and brought it back into the the comp and changed the Hue & Sat and masked off a different light source.
Thank you for replying man. Kep up the great tutorials. I really like this one.
Take it easy.
Creating the 'Sin City' Effect
by Ross Bradshaw on Apr 4, 2008
Hows it going Grant
I see what your syaing but I forgot a big part of the problem. All the footage was
shot Black and White. Its cool tho becuase I ended up figuring it out in the
end. I did one pass of the whole video, picking out one color from each
Creating the 'Sin City' Effect
by Grant Swanson on Apr 3, 2008
Ross - The way I see it (from what you wrote), all you have to do is duplicate your RAW footage one more time, put this layer on the top, apply the effects to it (leaver color, and hue/saturation if you want to change the colors/adjust them, and change it's transfer mode to "Color"), and mask it off to street lamps.
Hope this helped!
-Grant Swanson
Creating the 'Sin City' Effect
by Ross Bradshaw on Apr 3, 2008
Hey man got to say thats a great tutorial. Im in the middle of a music video and its really help me add that little bit extra. Cheers man.
I do have one question however. Like I said Im doing a video and using your tutorial but theres something I cant fugure out and I was wondering if you could help me?
The footage Im using your technique in is of a car going down a motorway (the camera is on the bonnet). I want the tial lights to glow red and the road lights to glow orange. to get all the cars lights to glow red I masked out each light and rotoscoped them but Im stuck as to how I can now change the road lights to orange because I've turn the Hue & Sat layer to red? If you know anything at all please let me know.
Cheers man
Take it easy.
Creating the 'Sin City' Effect
by Helge Solie on Mar 25, 2008
Grant very nice tutorial thats a very cool effect.
we like to see more from you.
Helge
Norway
www.universalfilm.no
Creating the 'Sin City' Effect
by RubyHotWax on Mar 22, 2008
Well explained - thx!
Creating the 'Sin City' Effect
by Mark Wagoner on Mar 21, 2008
Thanks Grant very helpful!
Creating the 'Sin City' Effect
by Grant Swanson on Mar 19, 2008
Thanks everybody for the positive feedback!
Michael - Yes, After Effects is an excellent program to color correct with. In fact I recommend to NEVER try any color correction in Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. Every time you add a color-correction filter (or any other type of effect for that matter) in an NLE, it has to re-render out the footage in the codec that you're working in, which is never truly lossless.
