Chapter 31 — Quiz

Twenty-five questions to check that you can read the scopes, correct a shot, and match a scene. Mix of multiple choice, true/false (justify your answer), short answer, and "what's wrong with this?" diagnosis. Answer from memory first; the key with explanations is at the end.

Multiple choice

1. Color correction and color grading differ most fundamentally in that: - (a) correction uses scopes and grading does not - (b) correction aims for an objective neutral/consistent baseline; grading is subjective mood and look - (c) correction is done in Resolve and grading in Premiere - (d) grading comes first, then correction cleans it up

2. The waveform's vertical axis represents: - (a) hue - (b) saturation - (c) brightness (luminance), 0% black to 100% white - (d) horizontal screen position

3. On the RGB parade, a shot that should be neutral shows Blue sitting higher than Red and Green at both the top and bottom of the trace. This means: - (a) the image is over-exposed - (b) the image has a blue (cool) cast - (c) the blue channel is clipped - (d) nothing — that's normal

4. On the vectorscope, distance from the center represents __ and direction from the center represents ____: - (a) brightness; contrast - (b) hue; saturation - (c) saturation; hue - (d) red; blue

5. The skin-tone line on the vectorscope: - (a) only applies to light skin - (b) is a target every complexion's skin falls along (same angle; farther out or closer in by saturation) - (c) points toward the blue target - (d) is where you should never let skin sit

6. You should set your black point and white point primarily by watching: - (a) the picture on your monitor - (b) the vectorscope - (c) the waveform - (d) the audio meters

7. "Crushed blacks" on the waveform look like: - (a) the trace piled flat against the 0% line - (b) the trace piled flat against the 100% line - (c) the trace bunched in the middle - (d) three separate traces

8. A green color cast, classic from LED and fluorescent lights, is corrected primarily with: - (a) temperature toward warm - (b) tint toward magenta - (c) raising gain - (d) the vectorscope's rotation control

9. When matching two shots, the correct order is: - (a) skin, then color, then tone - (b) color, then tone, then skin - (c) tone (black/white points), then color, then skin - (d) it doesn't matter

10. In a mixed-light café (cool window + warm lamps), the professional correction move is to: - (a) neutralize every source to perfect grey - (b) balance for the dominant/story light (the face) and let motivated practicals stay warm - (c) balance for the lamps and let the window go blue - (d) leave it uncorrected and fix it in the grade

11. Lift, gamma, and gain control, respectively: - (a) highlights, midtones, shadows - (b) shadows, midtones, highlights - (c) hue, saturation, brightness - (d) red, green, blue

12. You push contrast hard on an 8-bit clip and the sky shows visible stair-steps. This is: - (a) clipping - (b) a color cast - (c) banding, from too little data for the move - (d) a scope error

True / false — justify your answer in one sentence

13. You can reliably judge and correct a color cast by eye if you look at the shot long enough.

14. Once highlights are clipped flat against 100% on the waveform, a later slider can recover the lost detail.

15. Correction should be finished before grading begins.

16. A grey card shot on set makes white balance in post a one-click job.

17. Matching black and white points before matching color is pointless; you should always fix color first.

18. A calibrated $2,000 monitor is required to correct footage properly.

Short answer

19. In two sentences, explain why your eye cannot be trusted to correct color (name the mechanism).

20. Name the three scopes and, in a few words each, what each one is best at telling you.

21. Describe the method for neutralizing a cast using a neutral reference and the parade.

22. Why does correcting the hero shot first, then matching everything to it, work better than correcting each shot to some abstract "correct" independently?

What's wrong with this? (diagnosis)

23. A described shot: an editor applied a warm cinematic look to a whole scene. Some shots look beautiful; others look orange and off. They did no correction first. Diagnose the root cause and prescribe the fix.

24. A described waveform on a "moody" shot: the trace is welded flat to 0% across the bottom third and also touches 100% in a hot pile on the right. The client says it "looks crunchy and the shadows are just black holes." Name both problems and the fix.

25. A described scene: a two-camera interview cuts between a wide and a tight shot of the same person. On every cut, the wall shifts from slightly warm to slightly cool and the skin changes. Name what wasn't done and the exact steps to fix it.

Answer Key

Answers and explanations **1. (b).** Correction = objective neutral/consistent baseline; grading = subjective mood. Both use scopes; both can be done in any editor; correction comes *first*. **2. (c).** Brightness/luminance, 0% (black) at the floor to 100% (white) at the ceiling. Horizontal position matches the picture; hue and saturation are the vectorscope's job. **3. (b).** Equal R, G, B = neutral; blue riding high at both ends means a blue/cool cast across the whole tonal range. (If blue were piled flat at 100% it'd also be clipped, but "higher at top and bottom" describes a cast.) **4. (c).** Saturation = distance from center; hue = direction. Center is neutral grey (zero saturation). **5. (b).** Every complexion's healthy skin falls along the same skin-tone-line angle; darker or lighter skin sits farther out or closer in along it, not at a different angle. **6. (c).** The waveform shows brightness, so it's where you set black and white points and confirm nothing is crushed or blown. **7. (a).** Crushed = piled flat against 0% (shadows welded to black). Piled against 100% is blown highlights. **8. (b).** Tint toward magenta cancels a green cast. Temperature handles warm/cool; gain is brightness. **9. (c).** Tone first (a darker shot *looks* like it has a cast until brightness matches), then color, then the sensitive skin match last. **10. (b).** No single white balance neutralizes two source colors; balance the story-important light (the face) and let motivated practicals keep believable warmth. Erasing all warmth makes the room sterile. **11. (b).** Lift = shadows/black point, gamma = midtones, gain = highlights/white point. (Offset shifts the whole range.) **12. (c).** Banding — too few brightness/color steps (8-bit, heavy compression, per Chapter 3) stretched across a smooth gradient. More correction won't fix it; shoot 10-bit and push gently. **13. False.** Your eye *adapts* (chromatic adaptation): within about a minute it redefines "white" relative to the cast and the cast vanishes from your perception while remaining in the file. Use scopes. **14. False.** A rail is a wall; clipped detail is deleted, not hidden. No slider recovers it — which is why you stop at the rail, watching the waveform. **15. True.** A look is a deliberate shift from neutral; applied to an already-shifted, mismatched image it lands inconsistently. Correct (neutral + matched) first, then grade once. **16. True.** The card is a guaranteed-neutral reference; eyedropper it and R, G, B align in one click — and every shot balanced to the same card matches automatically. **17. False.** Tone match comes first: a shot that's merely darker or lower-contrast *looks* like it has a color cast, so matching brightness first removes that false signal and reveals the real color difference. **18. False.** For the 95% that is correction, the scopes keep you honest because they read the *file*, not the screen. A calibrated monitor helps chase the last few percent later; it is not required to correct. **19.** Human vision constantly *adapts* — it decides what "white" is in a scene and silently recalibrates everything relative to it (chromatic adaptation), so after a short look a color cast disappears from your perception even though it's fully present in the file. Your monitor and room light shift what you see too, so you rely on scopes, which don't adapt. **20.** **Waveform** — brightness and tonal range (black point, white point, crush/clip). **RGB parade** — color balance/casts (compare R, G, B on neutral areas). **Vectorscope** — hue and saturation, and whether skin rides the skin-tone line. **21.** Find something that should be neutral (white shirt, grey wall, black jacket, coffee cup), look at where it sits on the parade, and adjust — eyedropper it, then refine with temperature and tint — until R, G, B line up at that reference. Confirm the vectorscope trace pulls toward center. **22.** Matching to a real hero shot gives every shot the *same concrete target*, so the scene is internally consistent (which is what the viewer perceives), rather than each shot being independently "correct" against an abstract ideal but subtly different from its neighbors. Consistency across the cut matters more than each shot being perfect in isolation. **23.** Root cause: they graded before correcting. The look is a fixed shift from neutral; applied to shots that were *already* shifted differently (different casts/exposures), it lands beautifully on the near-neutral shots and pushes the already-warm ones into orange. Fix: remove the look, correct every shot to a matched neutral baseline first, then reapply the single look — it will now land the same on all of them. **24.** Two problems: **crushed shadows** (trace welded to 0% — the "black holes," detail deleted) and **blown highlights** (hot pile at 100% — clipped). Both came from contrast pushed *through* the rails. Fix: pull lift up until the darkest true detail lifts off 0%, pull gain down until the highlight comes off 100%, and reshape contrast so the trace spans 0–100 without welding to either rail. **25.** The two cameras weren't **matched**. Fix: pick a hero (usually the wide), correct it fully to neutral; then match the tight shot's black and white points on the waveform, match its color balance on the parade so the wall is the same, and match its skin on the vectorscope's skin-tone line. Play the cut and confirm the wall and skin no longer shift.

Topics to review by question: 1, 15, 20, 23 → §31.1 (correction vs grading, order). 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 19 → §31.2 (reading scopes). 8, 10, 21 → §31.3 (white balance/casts). 6, 11, 12, 14, 24 → §31.4 (black/white point, contrast, banding). 9, 17, 22, 25 → §31.5 (matching). 13, 16, 18, 23 → §31.6 (workflow, scopes-not-monitor). 16, 25 → the on-set/edit bridge (grey card, locked white balance).