RJD2 - Approaching the Grade
RJD2 - Approaching the Grade
The first time I met director Brad Hasse was during the color correct for another music video he directed for Homeboy Sandman. It was a joy to work with Brad again for the RJD2 video and as the editor for this video as well I had long been thinking about how to approach the grade as we were cutting it.
Part of my process as a colorist is getting to understand whatever brand I am working with, be it a musician, a corporate client, or a product. For this video, which relied solely on the talents of America’s Best Dance Crew, Quest Crew, I visited the site and began poking around. The color purple factored heavily into their branding, and sure enough, during the video a lot of purple was worn by the dancers.
I decided that bringing this out would not only help drive their brand forward, but it was an interesting way to vary the “Pleasantville” look of complete desaturation with one color popping. To heavily saturate the purple color and desaturate the other colors, while not completely but certainly severely, at once was unnatural and stylized. But the dancers themselves are pulling off moves that mere mortals couldn’t! And the video is completely reversed! So it actually made sense to pursue this line of logic.
Additionally, I didn’t want this video to have a very DIY look and feel to it. There are hundreds of videos that already exist of just kids performing tricks to the camera. An aggressive grade was also a way to separate ourselves from that kind of “YouTube” aesthetic.
