I have been looking into post production techniques for a while now but it seems to be something that is never discussed in great detail on the web. I get the impression that if you want to be really good at it you just have to keep trying lots of different things!
Obviously tweaking the levels and hue/saturation in After Effects will make some difference, but tutorials on the act of “grading” film are sparse.
During my search I did come across one thing that will certainly speed up the time spent adjusting the levels and hue adjustment. It is a preset called Rebel CC which uses advanced expressions in After Effects to determine the blacks/whites/greys and shadows across every frame of a movie based on one sample.
This appears to be a really useful preset and I will definitely be using it on my pre-composed video.
I have also been experimenting with the Remove Grain effect. If applied correctly this smooths noise and grain in the footage by blurring it slightly, but without removing any of the detail within the video. For example, if you have a grainy blue square, which has crisp edges, then Remove Grain will smooth the contents of the square without blurring the crisp edges. I’m not sure how it works but it is very efffective!
