[00:00:00] What is up guys.
I wanted to tell you, color grading it doesn't matter.
Okay that's a lie.
It really matters.
It makes your shots beautiful, cinematic, they look good but how can you get your shots
to go from this to this Final Cut Pro if you don't exactly know what you're doing.
That's what we'll be going over today is a basic yet detailed guide of color grading
and Final Cut Pro.
[00:00:23] Here we go.
[00:00:23] Ok so there are three things you need to be thinking of when color grading
the first one exposure.
The second color balancing.
And the third is mood the mood of the shot.
We'll be going over all three of those today.
So you have your shot here and it looks good.
It's well lit and it's it's just a good looking shot but you want to make it more cinematic
and make it pop a little bit more.
So what you're going to do is press Command 6 to to open up the color wheels and Command
7 to open up your scopes.
I would pull up the Luma Waveform here.
So you have your color wheels over here which can adjust your colors your saturation on
these sliders as well as your exposure for highlights mid tones shadows and the whole
thing.
So we are going to right now mess with the exposure sliders.
So if you look right here the goal of changing your exposure is to expand your dynamic range
here.
So I want it to extend up to about 100 any higher and you get a bleach bypass look.
And I want to bring my shadows down to zero.
Go past zero it really crushes the blacks and maybe I'll bring down my mid tones a little
bit.
I did a video on skin tone so check that out.
You want to make sure your skin tones are within a certain IRE and you also want to
make sure they're true to their natural color which you can see on this Vector Scope.
[00:01:47] So check out that video.
But already this looks much better.
I will increase the saturation a tad.
You don't want to go too much and look at that that's already popping a lot more.
The next thing we're going to do is work on color balancing.
Now this shot is already colored pretty well.
Really the goal of color balancing is to normalize shots so if you have something reflecting
in that's giving your shot enough color or if maybe you set your white balance wrong
in the camera.
This is how you can corrected in post.
So this shot's really fine.
I found a shot of just an elephant that I took that was horrendous.
So what I'm going to do is open up the color wheels and if you look it is blue.
The shot is blue.
So what you're going to do whatever color your shot is more of you're going to take
your sliders and push it away from that color.
So the whole shot here is pretty blue so many use the master.
And I'm gonna push away from the blue in this section right here and already that's looking
better maybe since this is the darker parts the shadows I'll move this over a little bit
more and I mean it's not a great shot it wasn't a great shot shot to start with but I think
that saved it.
So you can do this with any shot that you think has been ruined by something reflecting
in or is just a different color you can just mess with these wheels and and take that color
out but it's always good to get it right before you enter the editing room as well.
[00:03:17] And the last thing we're going to do is talk about mood.
Now this is totally subjective.
It's a stylized choice.
You can change the mood.
However you would like I use lots that I find that they make my time in the editing room
much shorter.
I'm able to grade faster and so I suggest using a lot.
But if you want to go old fashioned then you can mess with these wheels here and you have
the the color slider here.
So let's say I'll push the highlights into the Greens a little bit more maybe the shadows
a little bit more red maybe push the master a little bit, no, that doesn't look very good.
And right here basically just tweak it until you find something that you like that I don't
think that looks bad.
I think that looks pretty good.
I think that's doable.
But like I said you can use lots.
I highly recommend them.
I did a video on lots if you guys want to check out that and how to make your LUTs look
good on your video.
Check it out after this video.
And don't forget to subscribe.
Guys I post videos like this every week to help you become a better videographer.