Standardized test pattern with defined colors and gray values — for monitor, camera, and grader calibration. Shoot it at the beginning of every day for reliable reference.
Color Bars
Before every professional shoot, color bars are rolled — a standardized test pattern that provides you and your team with a reliable reference for the entire production chain. The classic SMPTE bars display eight vertical stripes in white, yellow, cyan, green, magenta, red, blue, and black, often with a black burst signal and a 1 kHz test tone below. This pattern is not a luxury — it's your first line of defense against color distortion, exposure errors, and monitor lies.
On set, you roll the color bars right at the beginning of the shoot, for at least 10–15 seconds, before the first scene runs. The reason: They allow the colorist to precisely reference your camera's chromatic balance later in the edit. Without this reference, you're fumbling in the dark during grading. This becomes especially important when you're using multiple cameras or switching between daylight and artificial light — the color bars will immediately reveal if one camera "sees" differently than another. In a digital workflow, color bars also serve as the link between RAW files and the final color space: they enable accurate adjustment of LUT applications.
In practice, mistakes often happen because crews keep the bars too short or treat them as a mere formality. A good habit: record the color bars not just at the beginning, but again after long breaks or when changing lighting setups. Some DoPs also film the bars with a test chart in the frame — this gives the colorist additional information about sharpness, contrast, and color saturation. With digital cameras (RED, ARRI, Sony), color bars are often integrated into the menus; with analog workflows, you'll need to feed them in from an external generator or add them digitally.
Color bars are also a communication tool: they indicate to broadcast engineers that your signal chain is clean, and they help the first assistant camera operator check exposure with the waveform monitor. In streaming and broadcast productions, calibrated color bars are even mandatory — without them, the file is often not accepted. It's worth taking this "boring" first shot seriously.