- You know those Instagram reels where they go 3, 2, 1, boom
and then you see the color grade and everyone was like,
"Oh my god, this is the best video ever on Instagram Reels."
See, I try to make those Instagram Reels
and I'm just never satisfied with how they turn out
because I low key am not good at color grading.
But you know who's really good at color grading?
My friend Qazi.
Has a YouTube channel, he does this for like Hollywood films
and I have a feeling he's gonna show me up in today's video
in our challenge of Lazy versus Pro Color Grading.
Boom.
- [Qazi] And then node number eight is going to be my look.
- LUTs.
Qazi, I feel like I'm not doing a great job.
So this area is getting pretty hot.
You're making me try, bro.
(spraying noise) So here's the setup.
We're both gonna color grade the exact same clip.
The clip was shot on the Lumix S5 in V.Log
at a native ISO of 640 and 4:2:2 10 bit color.
So we have a lot of latitude to work with.
I'm gonna be color grading in Premiere Pro
using Lumetri Color on this setup right here.
This is my Mac.
And Qazi's gonna color grade that exact same clip,
but in his epic studio in DaVinci Resolve.
I am very nervous for this challenge,
but I'm also excited to learn something.
So let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
All right, let's dive into this color grade.
So let's just do some of the basic things that we need.
So this is V.Log footage.
So let's just get a Rec.709 on this clip.
Let's put it on an adjustment layer.
That's our Rec.709.
And if we turn that layer on and off, boom.
The colors outta this camera look so nice already.
So let's just start playing around with it.
So, I think what we'll do
is we'll do another adjustment layer.
And what we're gonna fix
is just some of the little corrections
that might need to happen in this shot.
Very subtle.
I think I actually want to crush the blacks
a little bit more on this.
I like crunchy, a crunchy look personally.
So because I'm a basic bee,
I am going to just start by like playing around with LUTs.
Okay, interesting.
So we brought a lot of saturation back in here.
I think that looks good,
gonna add another adjustment layer here.
And I kind of just wanna play around
with some like power windows, maybe some vignetting,
but I think I want to invert this.
So we are going to invert this to make it darker.
And what we're gonna do is we are going to feather
this a ton.
So now we're bringing a bit more attention in on me.
I don't wanna make it too dramatic.
Qazi, you're making me try, bro.
I've never done this before.
Is that blue kind of a cool vibe?
I don't know.
Maybe I'll add one more mask and I'll like,
I'll bring it out over here too.
And I'll just like feather this as well.
So let's look at this clip.
I think I'm happy with this.
That's the raw clip.
Now let's introduce the Rec.709.
Now let's introduce basic adjustments.
Now let's introduce the LUT.
Now let's introduce a bit more of this like toning.
Cool, and then our last introducing a bit more
darkness in the back.
I feel like the yellow is throwing me off on this,
I want to adjust that single color in the corrections area.
Qazi, I feel like I'm not doing a great job,
but we're getting there.
Find this color, find that one.
And we are going to...
Ooh, that's cool.
That's my clip.
(intense music)
- What's going on guys? This is Qazi.
First of all, Chris,
thank you so much for bringing me to your platform.
I'm super stoked to be doing this collaboration.
Let's just get the first thing out of the way.
Chris, by no means, is a lazy colorist.
This guy is a master of all.
- Isn't that so cool? Huh?
I picked the one bottle
that was basically done at this point.
(spraying noise)
- I came up with a process
that I'm gonna take you through
to kind of give you an insight
to what we're thinking about when we're creating a look.
How do you come up with something that is good
through and through?
So that's what you're gonna be learning in this tutorial.
Let's jump right in.
Now, one thing that I wanna say is that
Chris' footage, straight outta the camera, Lumix S5,
looks phenomenal color-wise,
and that's the beauty of Panasonic color science
that I've noticed.
It doesn't matter, you can just slap a Rec.709 LUT
or color space transform and you'll be ready to go.
But obviously we want to take this
and see how far we can push it.
So now we're inside Resolve
and the first thing that I want to do
is to convert my image from LUT to Rec.709.
So I'm gonna go ahead and select Panasonic V-Gamut
and Panasonic V-Log.
And then, in my output color space,
I'm gonna select Rec.709 and Gamma 2.4.
Okay, and obviously in the shot we see that there's a hazer.
(spraying noise)
This is going to be my hero frame.
So hero frame is basically what is the frame in your clip
that is the perfect representation for the entire clip?
I'm just gonna use my offset for my printer lights.
And I'm gonna go ahead and take out all this red.
I don't wanna overdo anything.
I'm just looking at my blacks
and my blacks are starting to look really, really good.
See, we took so much of that red out.
I'm going to jump into my actual look.
So this is going to be my balance.
And then node number eight is going to be my look.
Look at a lot of these examples.
You can use a site like shotdeck.com and download these,
bring them into Resolve and then check it out.
Interstellar, right?
So much beauty in this.
Well, look at what's happening with the blacks.
They're gone because we don't need to see
what's behind his head.
Keeping that in mind, let's jump in.
Let's create some magic.
So I'm gonna grab my S-curve at the bottom
and I'm gonna lift it up a little bit.
I like my blacks lifted just a tiny bit.
And then we're gonna just grab another point right here.
And we're just gonna focus on the highlights.
It makes the entire image much more three dimensional.
I'm gonna grab my Gain and I'm gonna start pushing it
into that Fincher yellow sort of look.
And if I do before and after already,
it's looking pretty good.
So this is where we're at right now.
Now let's go ahead and attack
some of those problems that we talked about.
So this area is getting pretty hot.
Let's bring it down.
Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and create a custom shape.
This is just gonna be a garbage mat.
Okay, so I'm gonna create a shape like this.
Something like that and I'm gonna go under my Gain
and I'm gonna pull it down to somewhere around 0.90ish
and we're gonna feather it out.
And if I do before and after,
making all the difference in the world, like look at that.
Then I'm gonna go in this node right here.
I'm gonna create another window.
And now we're just gonna put the focus on our guitar.
And then what I'm gonna do is go back in the window.
I'm gonna go under my gain
and I'm gonna raise it up to something like this.
Like let's just do 1:1.5.
So okay, I'm gonna just create this sort of like
a general shape.
It's gonna be pretty wide.
And then I'm gonna go under my softness
and I'm gonna soften it out quite a bit
to something like this and I'm gonna invert it.
And basically we're just gonna drop it down
by half a stop, everything outside of him.
So just look at that.
I wanna go here and just add more texture.
So I'm gonna go under Film Grain, 35 millimeter, 400T.
It does all the right things.
So if I go here, this is before, keep an eye right here.
And then this is after.
So guys, this is our final image, right?
(intense music)
So, in conclusion, I would say to be a good colorist,
you just need to know the why
behind every decision that you make.
Color grading is not one plus one equals two.
That will never be the case.
It is probably one of the most subjective occupation
when it comes to filmmaking.
So here, as long as we're creating images
that are supporting our story, that is our job.
- Okay. It's time.
Whose color grade did you like better?
Did you like Qazi's or did you like mine?
I will look for your comments below.
And while you're down there, leave a time code
if you learned something new about the color grading process
either in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro.
I'm curious to see if there's anything
that stood out to you.
And I think it's time
that I officially moved to DaVinci Resolve, yeah?
I just feel like the Lumix S5
is such a great camera for color grading.
I'm not using it to its full potential.
You got V.Log, amazing flat profile,
you can really pull the most out of it.
14 stops, a dynamic range.
Like that's the reason why we use it
for all of our cinema needs.
And I feel like it's time to move over to DaVinci
to get the best out of it.
I think I'm gonna do it.
If you guys liked this video
please press like for the algorithm.
That stuff actually makes a difference.
And if you wanna see the rest of the Lazy versus Pro series
that we have, I will leave a playlist right here
that you can click on.
I never know where to put my...
Now that just looks weird.
Click, click, oh there, click there.