Hey folks, it’s Jordy here for cinecom.net and welcome to Copy Cat Friday!
Every week we recreate an effect from a film or music video.
But today is a little bit different,
we're going to recreate the color grading look of three Oscar nominated films!
We're going to build a set, recreate the lighting
and finally show you guys how to color grade using Adobe Premiere Pro's Lumetri.
[Cinecom's intro music]
A big shoutout to our sponsor Loupedeck.
We've made a video about their color correction panel before
and really love to work with it.
All of us have a Loupedeck Plus here in the office.
Basically, this is a control panel that has a bunch of a dials, wheels and buttons
to control the sliders and settings within Lumetri.
Many of our friends also purchased one after seeing our first video
and they're all super happy with it!
You can follow the first link in the description below for more information,
and also we're going to use this panel more throughout the video,
but of course if you don't have one you can still follow along!
We're going to start with ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’.
This one is not nominated for best picture,
but it is nominated for screenplay and costume design.
We're going to recreate the famous scene, which is also popular within memes.
For this one, we'll need to be outside.
[Upbeat music]
-In the scene of ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’
there's really no light setup you need to do.
The only thing you need to make sure of is that the sunlight
comes from the correct side,
and on the other side you wanna lift your shadows up
with a white reflector or anything white, like my jacket, for example.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is shot on the Arri Alexa Studio and Mini.
It has a very warm filmic look, I do have to mention
that I'm not a professional colorist myself, that's why we're going to keep it basic
and just try to match it as good as possible in a fun and quick way.
Inside Lumetri, I'm going to start off with making my short warmer,
using the temperature.
You can go pretty far and this will make your shot very orange and red,
so we're going to compensate by adding green into the shot.
As you do so, pay attention to the skin tones
and make sure they become natural.
Now, this will make your shot very saturated as well,
so we're going to decrease that, I'm going to set mine to around 60.
If your shot doesn't have enough contrast,
you can go ahead and increase that as well.
We're already coming close, but there's one last thing missing,
which are the skin tones.
They're very deep in the film, so let's try and recreate that as well.
For this I'm going to jump into the curves
and make sure that the Hue Saturation Curves are expanded.
From here we can select the skin tones and solely make an adjustment on that.
The skin tones are way too bright, so I'm going to jump into the Hue vs Luma.
This means I can select a hue on the curve, which is going to be orange.
You can also take the color picker to select the skin tones if you're not sure.
And then simply drag down the curve in between, making the skin tones darker.
This will automatically saturate that area as well,
bringing more warmth to Yannick's face.
-Mhm, first time?
The next film is Roma, which is very interesting
as it has a black and white color grading.
Now, black and white is a lot more than just pulling down the saturation.
But first, let's build the set.
[Music]
-The next film is gonna be a Netflix film called Roma
and I'm gonna play Cleo, as you can see I'm all dressed up just like her.
Now, we look for a scene from the trailer that was easily to recreate
and that's why we came up with the bedroom scene,
in which we just have the back of the bath,
we’ve got a painting on top,
we don't have a painting here so we used this plank, our 1 million plank,
not official, but it's way cooler than the official one.
I’m just sitting on a box right here and we've got a little light right here,
a bedroom desk light.
To emphasize that lighting and make it a little bit more stronger
we’re actually also working with a softbox over there,
the Aputure 120D with also an orange filter over that light.
Because even though that Roma is a black-and-white film,
if we’re going to mix different colors of lights
it's going to give a way different tone if you would pull down the saturation.
So, that's why we're just going to work further with tungsten,
which is the same color temperature as the desk light right here.
Roma was shot on the Arri Alexa 65 in color,
and not on film or a digital monochrome camera.
So that means they had to color grade the film to black & white.
Which is not easy to do!
You could already go ahead and decrease the saturation for your clip,
making it black and white, but unfortunately it's not that simple.
We're going to have to tweak the black and white a lot more to get it good.
There're thousands of flavors within black and white
and the color tools can actually help us with that.
But let's start with the contrast first.
I'm going to increase the exposure, giving me more room to work with the shadows.
This will blow up the highlights, so make sure to decrease that right after.
I can now pull down the absolute blacks.
And because we've first increased that exposure,
we're keeping more detail in the darker areas.
The next adjustment will be the temperature.
Although this might seem weird, but pulling down the temperature
will actually darken the skin tones and other red areas.
You can also see it well here on the Youtube logo.
But it's a nice trick to change the exposure on those areas.
Alright, we're coming close.
Next up, I'm going to jump into the color wheels.
Because we've desaturated the clip on top,
it means that we can actually push colors back into the shot using these wheels.
And I'm going to do that with the mid tones.
You wanna push a tiny bit of magenta in there.
Be careful not to overdo it.
The magenta should actually not be visible,
but it's going to take the edge off that hard black and white look.
It's going to romanticize the look while still retaining that black and white.
And now let's jump into the final step, which can be found under Vignette.
We're just going to decrease the amount a tiny bit,
introducing this vignette on the edge
which can also slightly be seen in the film itself.
And that's about it.
The simple way!
[Music]
Now, let's continue with the last film, which is ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’,
the story behind Freddie Mercury and his band ‘Queen’.
Amazing film, definitely worth watching!
It's nominated for best picture.
[Music]
-Look, I’m behind the window!
-Me too!
-Look how cute these clamps are,
Jordy ordered them wrong, but they are perfect for my window.
Let’s do that!
-After we are done with the wall, we are going to do the lighting.
When recreating a look from a movie you can come far with only color grading.
But when you really want the same look and feel,
your lighting has to match with the original.
First, we start with the key light on my right side.
This is a primary light which is the brightest.
Then you have a fill light on the left side.
This light is very dimmed and is there to make my shadows less deep
and still have some detail.
The backlight stands right above me and it's the third light.
Because it comes from the top, you get a beautiful halo like in the film.
The last light sits behind a window and it’s a practical light.
We also had to use a lot of smoke behind the wall,
otherwise we wouldn't get the feeling of a room filled with light.
So, that was the light setup,
now let's get Freddy here and make the shot.
And now the color grading!
This one was actually the hardest one of all.
But we're going to do our best.
Starting off, I'm going to make sure the temperature is a little bit warmer.
Pay attention to the highlights on the skin tones as you do so.
Next, we're going to jump into the color wheels.
Push a little bit of teal into the shadows, but don't overdo it,
you wanna make it subtle.
Then for the mid tones, we’re going to push orange into it.
This can be a little more than with the shadows.
Finally, I'm going to decrease the exposure level of the shadows and crush the blacks.
That's the basic setup.
We're now going to click on the top dropdown menu
and select Add Lumetri color effect.
This will add a second Lumetri effect.
All adjustments done in here will also affect our previous grading.
From the basic correction here you could also add a little bit more contrast if needed.
Our highlight was also too hard, so I decrease the highlights as well.
Next, jump into the curves, hue/saturation curves.
The blacks should be black and not teal, so we're going to fix that here.
From the Luma vs Saturation,
we can select the darker areas on the left and pull it down,
decreasing the saturation in the blacks.
Alright, one last step, we’re going to increase the saturation of the teals,
which is Lorenzo's Jacket.
For that I'm jumping into the Hue vs saturation curves.
Make a selection around the teal and pull it up to increase that color's saturation.
And that's it!
-I also write songs…
-Our lead singer just quit.
-Then you’ll need someone new.
And those were the 3 Oscar nominated films and their color grading.
Now, everything was shot on the RED Gemini
and if you would like to play around with those shots yourself,
you can actually download the RAW files from the link in the description below.
Thank you so much for watching, thank you Loupedeck for the support!
Definitely make sure to check out their Loupedeck Plus, guys!
But more importantly, Stay Creative!
-We are going to the shop to look for some accessories for our sets.
-It’s a little bit too tight, but it works, I guess.
-You look pretty, Lorenzo.
-Thank you, Yannick.
-Oh, no! There’s a dragon at our headquarters!
What should we do?
Oh, no!