Production company Three Volts approached me to do some grading for a Park Nicollet spot they were doing. It’s a graphically treated spot (effects by Minneapolis-based Design Guys), but I was brought in to do specific work on the skin tones throughout.
The nature of the spot made the skin tones pretty easy to isolate for hue and saturation adjustment, but additional work involved whitening teeth, some subtle complexion smoothing, and contrast tweaking to match the graphics.
Interestingly, KARE 11 did a news story on locally-produced regional spots competing with their bigger-budget national counterparts that featured this commercial. Professionally produced graphics and color correction added necessary polish. If you ever ask yourself whether or not it’s worth the money to have your project graded, ask yourself how your project will compare to the competition if you don’t.
