Date: 4-6 March, 2026
Product: I Told You Things Official Music Video
Editing Software: Premiere Pro
Now, I move on to the colour panel of Premiere Pro - this took the MOST time!
Unlike my approach to this section of editing last year, where I would jump straight into Basic Correction for quick fixes of exposure or temperature, I now prioritize curves before anything else. This is the result of learning how curves allow for more precise and controlled color adjustment, as it targets specific tonal ranges rather than affecting the entire image uniformly. This makes it especially useful for me in refining contrast, correcting color casts, and maintaining natural skin tones.
I always follow this routine with color manipulation: white line (tone curve) first, then red/blue/green. This is so that the brightness values of the highlights, midtones, and shadows are set for the other curves to have a foundation upon.
THE GOAL: I wanted this scene to convey the kind of comfort that comes from friendships and companionship. This would then draw further attention to how, despite being in the middle of that warmth (as the main character would be in the middle - use of the rule of thirds), she is still zoned out (focused on addressing the audience - lip-syncing) and thinking about something else.
Inspiration: I Love You, I'm Sorry (Official Music Video) (Gracie Abrams)
Here is the original status of the shot for comparison later on.
From observation, it could easily be seen that the footage is way too bright, or overexposed, leading to the scenery behind the window on the left being at a complete loss of clarity and sharpness. Furthermore, the skin of the main character has also become quite unnatural-looking with the extra highlight that overly emphasises its texture.
With the Lumetri Scope as my guide, I could see at the top left of the video that the details there could no longer be recovered.
At first, I thought there were too many yellow tones, and so I increased the blue hues, particularly in the midtones.
Then, it became too cool, and I tried countering this by heightening the redness.
After multiple trials and errors, along with some frustrated grunts, I was able to finalize the colour for this particular shot with some help from Basic Correction. As can be seen below, I managed to recover the green of the leaves outside to a great degree (so proud😝).