we're doing it another tutorial this
time we're gonna talk about how to color grade your footage and for the very first time on this
channel we will have a giveaway for the past couple of weeks I've been testing this editing
panel that loop tech sent to me and trust me oh boy it made my grading and editing process so much
faster you will see in this video why and because I love that so much I asked them hey fellas and
loop deck could we do a little giveaway on my channel to get a loop deck plus like this one
to the squad out there that's always watching my videos and they were like of course dude so make
sure to stick around and find out how to get your hands on one of these but now let's jump
into the tutorial let's answer one important question first why do you want to color grade
your footage in my humble opinion there are three reasons first you want to achieve this cinematic
look and that look doesn't come straight out of the camera color grading will enable you to
emulate the look we know and love from our favorite movies and also up your production
value second you can leverage colors to set the mood and subtly influence the viewers perception
and emotions it's also a creative tool to convey additional information of your story for example
in the movie classic The Matrix scenes that take place in the matrix had a monochromic green 10
while scenes in the real world had a more natural look and third you can create your own look and if
consistently applied to your footage people may start saying oh hey this is a Sam colder video
this is a Peter McKinnon video oh hey this is fill in your own name video purely by the look of the
image now in this video I will introduce you to the process that I use to color correct and
great map footage which I learned from shadowing professional colorist and by watching hundreds of
YouTube videos so that you don't have to do it you're welcome so before we get into the Nitty
Gritty of this tutorial we have to understand the basics and do some homework and understand what is
the difference between color correction and color grading color correction is the process in which
you get all your various scripts all your footage to the same base level a natural true-to-life
image once you have all your Clips corrected and match you can go into color grading arguably the
more fun part this is where you give your footage to the look you want to achieve apply lots and do
the final pass this is getting hot in the sweater anyways if you're planning on color grading your
footage and I assume you want to do this otherwise what's the point in watching this video you want
to shoot in a logarithmic picture profile log is a flat D saturated image profile that gives you the
widest dynamic range and the highest flexibility in the color grading process but straight out of
camera log images look completely down so let's have a look how to bring life into these frames
the color grading process is compiled of three steps set the contrast and exposure naturalize
colors and white balance and nail the saturation a little side note for this tutorial I'll be using
footage from my upcoming new serious perspectives you get a little bit of a sneak peek of what
I shot there the first episode is set in the astonishing Dolomites it's a mountain range in
northern Italy and it will drop here on YouTube soon most likely uh knocked over so now it's a
good time to hit that subscribe button and join the notification mob by ringing the bell and you
build notified when I upload my next video so the very first step in every correction process is to
adjust the contrast for that you want to pull up the luma waveform monitor in your editing
software in Final Cut Pro simply hit command + seven the waveform monitor allows you to see how
light or dark your image is across the entire frame zero is the darkest black and 100 is the
brightest wide in most instances you don't want your image to crush a buffer or burn below this
range next you want to pull down the brightness of your shadows so that the darkest parts of your
image just hit zero and pull up the highlights so that the brightest parts of the image hit
100 to achieve this I'll be using the color wheels alternatively you can also use color
curves whatever you feel most comfortable with so the nice thing about using an editing color
like the loop deck plus is that most of them have a dedicated knob for contrast which automatically
lifts the highlights and drops the shadows from there you can just do some fine-tuning
with the shadow and highlight knobs and boom you can already see why colourists are using
control surfaces like this because it just is so much more efficient I definitely prefer turning
knobs over a mouse or touch but it's just more precise and satisfying oh yeah it's satisfying
I mean listen to that for well balanced and well exposed image we want to adjust the mid-tones next
and here our old pal and photography Pro Ansel Adams comes to the rescue Ansel came up with the
zone system to assist in the proper exposure of analog film photography back in the days this
zone system determined accurately the exposure values for common objects like humans on a scale
from zero to ten and zero to ten is equivalent to the zero to one hundred Ayari values that you see
on your waveform monitor in this zone system cook Asian skin tones like my pale face here fall into
zone seven about 74 Ayari this is where you want these skin tones to land and ideally you already
consider this during the shoot so actually right now as I'm shooting I have a monitor up here and
pulled up the waveform monitor to make sure that my skin tones fall into the 74 I Arirang another
bonus tip in the editing process you may want to mask out the skin tones the face of your subject
and adjust the mid-tones until you hit 74 i re and a voila you have the perfect skin tone
exposure with the contrast out of its way we are now set to move on to adjust the color and
oh boy color is much much more difficult helpful to for us to recreate the natural color spectrum
we saw when we filmed this is the vectorscope our eyes and computer screens deceive us every day in
particular when it comes to colors so me you may wonder now Joey what is a freakin vector scope and
I can tell you a vector scope is a neat visual representation of what is going on in terms of
colors in your image so that you can see if your image is biased towards a certain color simply
put a well balanced image gravitates towards the center of the scope if they are out of whack tweak
the colors again using the color wheels on the loupe deck you if you hit the custom mode button
you can easily adjust the colors of the shadows mids and high the best starting point are the
highlights which often fixes a lot of problems especially if you didn't nail the white balancing
camera and yes I'm guilty of that and doing this all the time eyes are freakin deceptive
you can also use obviously a color checker and white balance card like this one to help you out
to nail the white balance but sometimes you just don't have the time or the tools with you from the
highlights you work yourself through the mid-tones and the shadows if you have a person in your shot
the mid-tones become particularly important since this is where the skin tones lay luckily in your
vectorscope monitor off your editing software you can enable the skin tone line which is reflective
of the skin tone color no matter what ethnicity here again we apply a mask to the face to just
focus on the subject skin tones and adjust them until they line up with the skin tone line lastly
in the colour correction process and that's a quick one is saturation if you shoot in love you
will definitely have to dial up the saturation quite a bit but don't go overboard you want to
achieve a natural looking image and also make sure that all your shots are matching with the
loop that you have actually also multiple dials to navigate your timeline making it easier to skip
just a few frames alright to the next clip making colour matching just a tad faster okay all in all
remember in the color correction stage you want to achieve a matching natural true-to-life look
across all your images and nothing stylized that is happening next in the color grading
all right so you've done your homework now to the dessert the satisfying part where you can
get creative and find the right look for your project I follow these gentle or two-step select
a lot as a starting point and then tweak the look and clean it up from there but as a first step I
add an adjustment layer for the color grade that we are building out since you can easily scale it
out to the entire project and also keeps your timeline a little bit more cleaner then as the
next step simply add the custom Lud effect in Final Cut Pro to the layer and start trying out
some of your favorite lots you can find three nuts all over the internet or invest a little money
and buy lots sets among my personal favorites are actually those that emulate classic film
looks like the Fuji or Kodak films as you're exploring and creating your own look keep the
core learnings from color theory in mind as it will help you to produce a more balanced color
scheme for your image using the color wheel and your dominant color as a starting point you have
various options to achieve a pleasant color contrast from monochromatic like the matrix
and analogous like grand budapest hotel to triadic like the 70 superman movie and complimentary like
Mad Max if you know the rules you can of course break them so called color discordance is the
deliberate decision to deviate from the balanced movie color schemes examples here are Emily with
the color blue or even more extreme sense City the choice is all yours the most popular color
scheme though and cinema is the complementary color contrast of orange and teal because of
its harmonious relationship between orange skin tones and a blueish teal ish background it just
makes the subject stand out more and the audience knows where to focus on so thanks for coming on
this quick detour in color theory but once I'm happy with a lot and adjusted its intensity I'm
going to tweak the look to just adjust to my vision and make the look mine what I love about
the loop tagging and editing panels at this stage in the process is that it allows you even if you
have just one screen to manipulate the image in a full-screen mode you don't need to have
dials in to use your mouse this is perfect as you go into the final treatment of your image
and finally the last step in the color grading process that I do all the time and is my last tip
open the hue versus saturation curves and remove the color out of your shadows and your highlights
so that your blacks are actually black and your whites are wide I know it's a minor detail but as
everything we've discussed in this video today every little step contributes to the bigger
picture to achieve a wonderful look that aids your story and elevates your world and now to
the part that you've been waiting for how can you get a loop Dec Plus well it's super easy step one
join the notification mob by simply smashing that subscribe button and ringing the bell and then
step two let us know in the comments below why you should get your hands on a loop Dec plus the most
creative answer wins stop ring comment easy right okay now at this stage a big big thank you to our
friends at loop tech in finland for creating a an affordable editing panel and also making this
giveaway possible now I absolutely cannot wait to hear from you guys and send that loop tech plus
to you well I will announce the winner in about three weeks time from now and my one of my next
videos so stay cute do you have any color grading tips was this video helpful what else do you want
to see let us know in the comments below I want to know thanks so much for watching have a good
evening have a good morning wherever whenever you are around this beautiful planet bye bye
I'm doing it the dog is drinking some dog is Ammar here okay let's rewind rewind away