- Hey guys.
My name is Matt Johnson with whoismatt.com.
And today I want to show you how to easily
Color Grade SLOG3 footage in Premier Pro.
And take it from looking like this,
super flat and washed out low contrast image,
to this contrasty and saturated beautiful image.
Now before we jump into this,
if you haven't watched my previous video
all about how to film with SLOG3,
I would highly recommend watching that.
Because if you don't film properly with SLOG3,
it's gonna be significantly more difficult
to color grade your footage and make it look its best.
Also, if you want to save time color grading,
I've created a set of video presets for SLOG3,
That you can use that will give you a huge shortcut,
and make your footage look awesome.
I will link to those presets down below.
Welcome to Premier Pro.
I'm going to assume that you already know
how to import your footage and edit it.
So with these three clips on the timeline,
we're going to pretend that I already have them edited
and they're ready to be colored.
Let's now discuss what I want to do with these clips.
And in a broader sense,
what is color grading?
At its heart, color grading is really the process
of shifting and modifying the colors in a film,
to create a certain mood.
Mood, I like that word, like a cow, mood.
The colors you choose in your film,
can really affect the emotional response
that your audience will have when they watch it.
Speaking generally here,
if you color grade your film darker and more blue,
that can make it feel sadder and more tragic.
Alternatively, if you shift your colors warmer,
and boost the saturation,
this can make things feel happier and more energetic.
That's just the tip of the iceberg though.
And you have virtually unlimited options
as far as how you want your film to look.
So it's really going to be up to you,
and what kind of film that you want to create.
So with that underway,
let's now talk about this video that I'm editing.
The first step of color grading
is that you're going to want to find your hero shot.
This is going to be the shot
that you're going to color grade first.
And then you're gonna use this shot as a baseline
for color grading the rest of your clips
in your film as well.
You ideally want your hero shot
to have a good variety in color and exposure,
in this shot which I have chosen as my hero shot.
You'll see that I have the sun coming in over here,
we've got shadows down here on the bottom,
and also one of the most important things
your hero shots should have is skin.
That sounds weird.
To clarify, if you have people in your video,
it's very important that your hero shots include the people.
So that way you can get a good idea
of what their skin tones look like as you color grade.
You don't wanna end up with your people having
blue skin tones, like Smurfs or green light the Hulk.
Skin tones are really important.
Side note,
you're probably wondering what's going on here.
There's a couple kissing and there's a,
are those donkeys?
They are actually called Beer Burrows.
And at this wedding that I was filming,
the couple had these Burrows come along for a photo shoot,
and they have these little baskets to carry beer in them.
They're pretty awesome.
Now let's go up here, and make sure that you are
in the color workspace for premiere,
and over here on the right,
you should see the Lumetri Color Panel.
If you do not see this and it does not look like this,
go up to Window, Workspaces and click Reset to Saved Layout,
which will reload Premiere back to this layout.
Let's click through here and you'll see
that you have Basic Correction in creative curves,
color wheels and match, HSL Secondary, Vignettes.
This can all look a little overwhelming
but I have good news.
We're really only gonna be using three of these things.
Basic Correction , Curves and Color wheels.
Looking here at Basic Correction ,
SLOG3 can be intimidating to color grade.
Especially if you're starting out.
Because you look at it
and it's this really flat, low contrast, washed out image.
And you start thinking, well, here's my corrections,
can I fix this?
Maybe I can just increase the exposure.
Nope. Okay.
Let's just make it brighter or darker.
Maybe not.
Maybe I can bring up the highlights,
and then bring down the shadows.
And so it's like in looking a little more contrasty,
drop the blacks satin.
It just, it doesn't look good.
So I would not use the Basic Correction tab
at the start at all.
Let's double click on these,
which we'll reset them all back to their defaults.
And let's go down here to the Curves tab,
which is really gonna be helpful.
When it comes to color correction,
Curves are one of your biggest friends.
If you get one thing from this video,
I want you to learn Curves ,
because they're really, really awesome.
Curves will help you how you're gonna change
the contrast of your video clip.
How dark and how light it is.
And so looking over here, you'll see we have RGB Curves,
and we have a white dot, a red, green, and a blue dot.
RGB, if you've heard of that.
This red, green and blue allow you to change the contrast
for these individual colors.
But we want to change the contrast
for all the colors in this shot.
So we're gonna make sure that white is selected,
and down here we're gonna see
there's this nice diagonal bar.
And the way this bar works
is that it lets you change the contrast,
in darker and lighter parts of your video clip.
So going down here on this bottom left part of the bar,
you have your shadows,
in the middle of the bar you have your mid-tones
and at the top you have your highlights.
Don't worry. Here comes some examples for you.
Because once you see this, you'll totally get it.
Let's go here to the middle now,
to our mid-tones right here in the center.
And you'll notice that whenever I mouse over
it gives me a plus.
So let's click here and a little point appears,
and I'm gonna start to drag this point up
and as you'll see, the image is getting brighter.
Now let's go down here, to these shadows
and I'm gonna click again
and I'm gonna drag down,
look we're bringing down the shadows,
but these mid-tones here are still staying up high.
So the mid-tones are still brighter,
but the shadows are getting darker.
Let's go pretty dark here.
And then let's go over here to our highlights.
We're gonna click again and make another point.
And if I bring the highlights up,
you're gonna see the we're starting to blow out things.
Suddenly we're losing some sky detail,
so let's dial this back a bit down to about here.
'Cause I still wanna see some of these clouds
over here in the distance.
Now with that done,
I can go over here to my effects controls here,
and turn this off and on.
We've already made this image significantly more contrasty.
Okay. We're making progress here.
This is really awesome.
Now how do you know when your contrast is at a good point?
Do you just eyeball it and say, "Yeah, I think that's good?"
No, you can get scientific about this.
Go up here to the top left to the Lumetri Scopes tab.
What is all this Matt?
There's colors.
It's red.
It's a rainbow?
- What's happening with these waves?
I don't know what's going on.
Okay. Check this out.
If I go over here and turn off the curves,
by pressing this checkbox,
suddenly these scopes get squished down here.
This scope is known as a Wave Form.
And this is one of the ways that Premiere
can tell how bright or how dark your image is.
On the left over here,
you have numbers from zero up to 100,
and you can think of zero as being
the absolute pitch-black darkest color that you can get.
And 100 being super bright white
where things start to get overexposed.
Because I filmed this clip in SLOG3,
all of the bright and dark parts of this image,
are all squished together to the middle.
But let's go over here,
and I'm gonna check this box again,
and you'll see that this all spreads out.
And as a visual example,
if I go over here to my point on the curves
that controls my shadows,
and I drag the shadows down,
you'll see that these lines on the left are getting darker,
and they're getting really close to zero.
If I drag them down too far
you'll see that we're losing all this visual data,
that starts to look really videoy,
and this poor Beer Burrow here is completely dark.
So if you're using this wave form scope,
instead of you just eyeballing,
hoping that your footage looks good.
No, you can look at it here and say,
"Oh this is getting too dark,
I need to brighten it up a little bit."
Or, "Oh, it's getting too bright,
I need to darken it down."
In this case,
it's telling me that we're pretty good,
but if I start to bring it up,
you'll see that we're about to clip
and I don't want my highlights to clip.
So I'm gonna keep them down here
just a little bit darker.
If I drag the middle,
you'll see that I'm adjusting the middle of the scopes here.
And I want things to be pretty bright
about there looks good.
All right.
At this point, we've added the contrast back into our image,
but what about these colors?
Everything's looking at early blue and still washed out.
Let's adjust that now.
Close the Curves tab,
and let's go down here to color wheels and match
and open that up.
And what is this here?
We have three circles,
and it says shadows mid-tones and highlights.
That sounds familiar almost like our curves had shadows,
mid-tones and highlights.
It's all connected.
Go back here to color wheels and match now.
And let's start adjusting these colors.
Just like with the curves,
these color wheels are going to enable you
to change the colors of different parts of your image.
In this case, let's start with the mid-tone.
So I'm gonna go over here to this plus,
and I'm gonna click and I'm gonna start to drag up
and to the left.
And you'll see here,
if I let go, we have this nice red up here, blue, green.
So wherever I drag around,
I got over to green suddenly
Oh man, we're looking super green and Hulk like.
If I go up here to purple,
we're looking more purple,
Blue we're looking more blue.
It's very easy to get carried away here.
Key word with color grading is subtlety.
So I'm gonna double click to erase all that.
I'm gonna drag up here to the left a bit,
make this a bit warmer,
we've got the sun coming in,
we want that warmth.
And then for our highlights, if I adjust these,
you're gonna see the highlights effect
all of this white spot up here,
the white donkey, et cetera.
This was sunset.
We want that golden sunset coming in.
So I'm gonna go over here.
I'm gonna bring these colors up to about here.
It's at this point that I want you to think about
what sort of color grades you want.
Do you want to go darker and moodier?
Do you want happier and brighter?
You can do whatever you want.
In this case because it's a wedding film,
because I want to show this couple being happy and vibrant,
I'm gonna go for brighter colors.
I'm gonna go for more saturation.
I'm gonna go for more of a happy vibe.
Speaking of saturation though,
here this is still looking a little de-saturated.
So let's tweak that now,
we're gonna close Color Wheels
and we're going to go up here to Basic Correction again.
Remember Basic Correction,
we tried it and it was terrible.
Well, I love using Basic Correction
as I'm reaching the end of the color grading process,
because now is the point where I can make some little tweaks
and really make the image pop.
So let's go over here and you'll see temperature.
If I wanna make the whole scene just slightly
warm early out.
Let's bump it up just to smudge,
and still feeling washed out though.
So let's go under the saturation
and remember because this was filmed in SLOG3.
It is definitely de-saturated.
So don't be afraid to go down here,
and crank up your saturation to,
don't want to go too crazy or like that's like popping.
No, we don't go that crazy.
I find that 120 usually looks good.
You can definitely go higher if you want.
But I don't want to be overwhelming.
I still want more of a softer film, like look.
So I think this looks good.
Key thing to remember, make subtle changes.
Don't go super crazy.
Subtlety is key and you'll get there.
Well, let's play the shot back here, and see how it looks.
Not bad.
Look at those little Burrows,
love them all properly colored.
So what's next?
Well, you'll notice here that I have two
other shots on the timeline.
We finished the hero shot,
but the great thing is that you can now apply this hero shot
to other shots on your timeline,
and greatly speed up the color grading process.
So we're gonna go over here to effect controls.
I'm gonna click on Lumetri Color,
I'm gonna press control C because I'm on PC.
You can press command C if you're on a Mac
to copy the Lumetri Color.
And let's go over here to this second clip,
you'll see it's the groom,
he's getting dressed for the wedding day.
With this new clip selected I'm gonna press control V
and he's looking real orange.
Don't worry.
We're gonna fix this.
Here's the good news.
This shot is already very contrasty
and turning it off and on here.
It's already making a significant step
in the right direction.
But we're going way too warm.
So I'm gonna look over here with the curves section,
and let's pull up our scopes here too.
And you're gonna see that over here
on the bottom of this scope,
we are way too deep in the shadows,
mostly due to his jacket.
So I wanna bring these shadows up just a little bit.
So we don't lose all of that data.
That's one great thing about a SLOG3.
As long as you film with it correctly,
you can pull things and push things as much as you want.
So I'm gonna go to about right here,
'cause this is where I start to see on the scopes,
that the blacks are starting to get crushed to it.
So we still have a nice shadow roll-off
on the groom's jacket.
With that let's also look over here with the mid-tones,
which are going to cover his skin tones,
and let's make him a little bit brighter.
And then for the highlights,
I think the highlights look good where they are.
They're getting pretty close to being overexposed.
It's at a good level.
Now let's do something about these warmer colors.
Notice that whenever I brought up the mid tones,
some of those warmer colors went away.
Because whenever you brighten the image,
colors are gonna get more washed out.
So let's go over here to Basic Correction first,
because remember I had changed the color temperature.
I'm gonna double click on this,
and that's gonna cool it off a bit, helping things out.
Let's go down here to color wheels and match.
And remember the last shot was the sunset.
So we don't need to go quite so warm.
Double-click to reset that,
double-click to reset this,
and we're back to the stock colors.
I don't love how this looks either though.
Main issue is
that the groom was standing next to this window,
and so we had the green grass again
blasting up through the window.
For being reflected by the sun directly onto his skin.
So we need to offset that a bit.
So I'm gonna go back over to the mid-tones,
which are gonna control most of his skin,
and I'm gonna bring him up warmer
but also into the magenta.
And so you'll see that his skin tone is getting a healthier,
more reddish tone.
The trick is you don't want to go too far.
'Cause if you go too far, you start getting really purple,
and then the wall starts turning purple,
and we don't want that.
So we're gonna tone it back here.
Everything's a balance.
You have your complimentary colors.
If your shots too green, turn it a bit more red.
If you're shuts to red, turn it green.
If it's too blue, turn it orange, et cetera, et cetera.
So let's go by right there for the mid-tones.
Are you feeling better about that?
Let's look at our highlights.
Now let's go a little
into the red with the highlights too.
Maybe more vertical too
into more red than magenta.
There we go.
Okay. Healthy skin tones looking way better
than how they looked earlier.
And then let's go over to the shadows,
because we haven't messed with the shadows much.
Typically I am not a huge fan
of changing my shadow colors unless I really need to,
because if you start shifting your shadows,
thanks can look really weird really quickly.
Like if I changed the blue,
all the shadows are turning blue.
It looks really funky and washed out.
Double clicked to fix that.
Let's drag this down into the blue just a little bit though.
So that way we're getting some of this
blue back on his jacket,
and that's helping remove some of the
warmth that we're getting from the shadows over here.
Cooling off a little bit.
Okay. Now remember we're going for a warmer vibe,
with this color grade.
So now that I've looked at it here,
thinking what else can I do?
Let's go back up here to our Basic Correction .
Do I wanna add a bit more warmth now
just to the entire image with this temperature slider?
Maybe I think about there.
Yeah, we'll go, we don't want to go super crazy,
but there's already a pretty cool shot.
So let's bring it up to about six.
Looking good.
Do we want add a bit more contrast?
It's nice.
'Cause you can just play
with these little sliders now that we're so close.
All right. I think the shot is looking great.
It's time to move on to the third and final shot.
And this one is gonna be a little different.
You're gonna like that.
Because what's this?
We have reception dancing shot.
Darker, how are we gonna make this work?
Well, let's go back over here,
to our hero shot that we love.
I'm gonna go up here to effect controls.
I'm gonna press control C or command C
if you're on Mac to copy this,
gonna go over here to this last clip,
select it, press control we need to paste it.
And we are very warm.
Not quite as warm as the groom getting ready shot,
but we are quite warm.
So let's go on to that and tweak that.
Here's a life hack for you.
If you don't like how your hero shots look pasted,
let's go over here to this groom getting ready shot.
Which we know isn't quite as warm.
So let's actually delete this Lumetri Color shot
from the third clip.
Go over here to the groom getting ready,
press control C to copy that and paste that.
Okay. Okay.
That's a little close to what we want.
Definitely heavy on the magenta and the skin tones though.
This dress should be white.
So let's tweak that.
Go over here to the temperature,
turn that down, cool it off.
Turn on the contrast too,
so we'd have to worry about that.
Go here to our color wheels,
again and let's back off this magenta.
Hello there.
Skin tones already looking better.
Just little tweaks.
Like you can see I'm barely moving the mouse here.
We're going to real subtle.
I still want the highlights to be a little warmer,
but little subtle tweaks.
Very subtle, go a little warmer here.
All right.
Remember this, we changed the shadows to cooler.
So if I bring those back to regular,
we definitely want the shadows to go a little cooler too.
Let's go a little warmer,
a little further up into the red,
and keep that warm, happy vibe.
Let's go back over here to our curves now,
where am I scopes at?
Where are my scopes go?
Okay. We're pretty close to shadows here.
Can we go a little darker?
Okay. That's pretty dark.
I don't really care if the band's visible or not.
I really want the focus to be on this couple.
I think that's looking real good.
Go to mid tones.
Bring the mid-tones up just a slight bit more
so the couple of pops a bit.
So as you can see,
curves are your friend, color wheels are your friend.
Once you know those two things,
color grading SLOG3 is pretty simple.
And you do not need to be intimidated by it.
When in doubt, add more contrast.
Because SLOG3 is super flat.
All right.
Now let's see how all these clips play back to back.
Check it out.
Oh yes.
There's those pretty sunset colors,
for the hero shot, groom getting ready,
looking good great colors for him.
Nice and warm.
And we have this reception,
which is under tungsten lighting,
which is traditionally very warm,
but we cooled it off a little bit.
With that I hope you enjoyed this video
all about color grading SLOG3 footage.
I have another video that I'm working on.
That's gonna be coming up very soon.
That's all about how to color grade using LUTS.
So if you've ever wanted to use LUTS
if you don't even know what a LUT is,
this next video is gonna help you out with that.
Also, if you want to save time and color grade even faster,
I would love if you would check out my color presets.
They work with log footage like SLOG3,
as well as standard footage.
And I've tested them
with many cameras to make sure they work across
a wide variety of camera manufacturers and models.
I will link to those color presets down below.
Thank you so much for watching.
Lastly, if you happen to be a wedding filmmaker like me,
which you probably saw that
whenever you were seeing all these wedding couples,
you probably want to book more couples
and film more weddings. To help you out with that,
I've created a free guide that's gonna walk you
through some practical steps that you can take
right now in your business to book more couples
and film more weddings.
It's a completely free gift to you.
You can download it
at the link down in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.