Want to know how to get that "Sin City" Look? or make your own Hulk movie?

How about fixing the Red/Pink face that us Irish guys always end up with on camera?

Now you can!

The CAT-TV Staff recently participated in a 24 hour Film Festival in Williamstown, MA. Our Team had 24 hours to make a 5 minute video that included a specific object and a line.

Our object was an egg, and the line was "All time is all time, it does not change."

Check out our final production: "egg" at MySpace.com/ZacharyMcNaughton

Our team decided we would do a parody on the movie "Pi" this meant black and white, but we really wanted our object to POP out to the viewer so we decided a simple color isolation would do the trick.

Here is how we did it. First, choose what color you wish to isolate, for this examle we will use yellow. Place your clip on the timeline in FCP and then load it into the viewer by double clicking it.

From the "Effects" Tab (or Menu) add the "Color Corrector" filter to your clip. Select the "Color Corrector" tab which now appears in the viewer to the right of the "Filters" tab.

At the bottom of the plug-in you will see an arrow next to the words "-Limit Effect-" Click it. You should have a screen that looks like this:

What "Limit Effect" does is allows you to make color corrections to a limited range of color. The default color selection is a chroma green.

Make sure your playhead is over your clip in the timeline so you can see what you are working on. Next click the eye dropper tool located to the right of the color spectrum BAR (NOT the eyedropper to the right of the "whites" slider) and select a color from the canvas that you wish to isolate. In my case, I am clicking the yellow yolk of the egg.

You should see the color selection in the color spectrum bar change to the color you selected. Now grab the "Sat" (saturation) slider and drag it all the way to the left. The color you selected should turn to grey! (yes we are working in reverse here).

Chances are that only a small section of the color desaturated. No worries! lets fix it!

Click the eyedropper tool again but this time hold down the Shift key and select the colors that were not desaturated the first time. Repeat this process until all of the color you want to isolate is greyed out.

Note: you may need to MANUALLY widen the "Sat" and "Luma" selections (bellow the Color Spectrum Bar) to include shades of your color that are in shadows and highlights.

You can also manually widen the color selection but be careful... if you widen the color selection to much you may affect colors that you do not want to include in this isolation.

Ok! we are getting there! Now you will see there is a button below the eyedropper that is shaped like a trapazoid,

this is the "Invert Selection" button. Click it and Walla! you have successfully isolated a color!

If your final picture is to choppy around the edges, try adding a little "softening" with the bottom slider in the color corrector. Be careful, a little softening goes a long way too much will look bad if there is a lot of movement in your clip.

You may wish to add a little contrast to sharpen up the blacks in your picture you can do this by lowering the "Blacks" slider and raising the "Whites" Slider 1/8th of an inch or less.

One more note!!! you don't have to use this trick with Black and White! you can also use it to make your talent look like the Hulk!

Try selecting skin tones for your isolation color! follow all the steps above, but in the end you will bring the "Sat" (Saturation) slider back up, and maybe even above the nuetral position.

Then Spin the "Hue" Wheel in the upper right of the screen until you get the color you want!

I use this tool ALL THE TIME when people in my studio shows are a bit to Pink or Red in the face, you can Isolate that Pink/Red then Slightly desaturate and Slightly change the Hue toward yellow to  get a more natural skin tone.

I hope this has been helpful!

Enjoy!

Zachary McNaughton, Final Cut Pro Certified Editor

McNaudio Media Solutions LLC