"Correct" skin tones

Prolost continues with concentrated reads, now with the profusely illustrated Save Our Skins:

"I've mentioned before that the current trend in film color correction is the relentless preservations of "correct" skin tones. I saw an interesting example of this recently that I thought I'd share. But first a little background.

There's no question that skin tones are important. Movies are about people and for people. Pleasing skin tones means pleasing-looking people, a cornerstone of the film industry to be sure. But as filmmaking sensibilities grew more and more informed by the capabilities of the DI, an evolution that got real traction, by my estimation, around 2002-2003 with films like Bad Boys II (Stefan Sonnenfeld, colorist) and Underworld (Jet Omoshebi, colorist), more "pushed" looks became commonplace. An aggressive color correction is more likely to render skin tones in an unflattering way, so a colorist's capability was judged in part by his ability to hold pleasing skin tones through severe corrections."

...continue reading at Prolost...

Update: HD Cinema has more on skin tones in Painting HD Cameras pt. 2 - Skin Tones.