hey what's up guys welcome to another color grading tutorial and today we're
gonna be working with a sony fs7 s lock to footage provided by Marco Fenton I
hope I pronounced your name correctly Marco if I didn't I'm sorry and this is
actually gonna be a multi-step tutorial we're gonna do you a few episodes about
it I'm gonna teach you guys how to duplicate the shots basically how to
match the shots with the different camera angles along with obviously the
color grading that we're gonna do right now so it's gonna be a lot of cool
things that I haven't covered in my previous tutorials as well I'm actually
gonna talk a little bit about the color theory so let's get started we're gonna
be working on this clip in today's tutorial okay I'm gonna make the window
a little bit bigger and we have a shot over here that been shot on a slog to
sony fs7 camera and the first thing that i'm gonna do is i need to decide where
do i want to take this what kind of approach i want to do it as the colorist
well I kind of have a few options because it's such a perfectly lit shot
you know we have the perfect a little bit hazy background we have perfect
lighting on the main characters and even if I'm gonna go right now and I'm gonna
apply the false color plugin we can see even by default we actually have a very
very good exposure so we're I'm gonna take this well for
the beginning let's figure out what we're gonna do and I think I'm gonna
give it a little bit kind of I guess x-files look even though I haven't you
know watch the x-files in a long time but let's see what we can do okay let me
zoom in and let's take a look at our noise level and I can tell that the
noise levels actually very very minimal this
is realistically a perfect shot we barely have any annoy so I don't know if
you guys can see this or not zoomed in what like almost 600 percent
we kind of see a little bit dancing noise but realistically nobody gonna be
zooming in that close anyways so let me do the first thing and the first thing
I'm gonna do I'm gonna be grading it with the lot with my favorite okay what
happened there I didn't select it what my favorite 2383 what okay I'm gonna
call this a lot just like that and over here I have an option either to leave it
alone for future or to work on it right now but for now I'm gonna leave it alone
I'm gonna come back to it I'm gonna create and you know then I'm gonna call
this exposure okay and if we're gonna take a look at the Scopes we can see
that our blacks crashed really really strongly okay so what I'm gonna do I'm
gonna lift it a little bit okay I don't want to be crushing any blocks and you
guys can see as I'm lifting look around 60 area you can see how it compresses if
I'm bringing it down so I kind of want to have a little bit information on
blacks I don't want to crush it completely and I'm going to bring the
highlights down and there's a very interesting thing actually when you're
working with the lot everything that happens before a lot you almost like
having some kind of a pivot so when you do your adjustments you get very
interesting the reaction if you're gonna do a same adjustments after the lot
you're gonna have completely different result
for example we actually can go below the zero but if we're gonna do this before
the lot we sort of clipping right above so very interesting you know keep that
in mind when you when you do color grading whatever adjustments
you're making that way you kind of aware what exactly is going on okay so I'm
gonna create on you you know that I'm gonna drop the false colors over here
just for visual reference for you guys as of right now I really like where
everything is standing okay let me turn it off so let's see before after
okay we start giving it a little bit of look now I'm gonna create another node
and in this node I'm gonna call this saturation all right
just SAT just like that and I'm gonna increase saturation individually like I
do it in all of my previous tutorials and I think it's a little bit saturated
if we're gonna go to the vectorscope let's see I think it's a little bit
saturated it's a little bit warm for my taste so what I'm gonna do I'm gonna
dial it down in a key output by half that way I'm only giving a little bit of
punch okay so we have our basic sort of grading the basic beginning done now
what we're gonna do well I'm actually thinking to give it a very interesting
stylized look and how I'm gonna do this I'm gonna create on your node actually
I'm gonna do couple steps just to be safe what I want to do I want to do a
first color balance I want to make sure that everything is balanced more or less
properly before I'm gonna continue so I'm gonna go to the temperature and I'm
gonna do sort of very basic color balance let me go back to the parade
really quick let's see a little bit worm okay let's check it out before and after
okay so this is relatively neutral color balance I'm gonna call it balance
and this is really I guess you can call it a dummy note I just want to make sure
that before I'm gonna be doing any kind of creative looks I have sort of a
reference point that I can always link to this balanced note in case I need to
get asked in details or something like that
okay and in the next note I'm gonna call this temperature and also the
temperature gonna be my look at the same time so what I'm gonna do here I'm gonna
dial it down just like this I want this shot to be very cold okay perfect
I really like it we almost there now what I'm gonna do I'm gonna select all
of them I'm gonna right-click and I'm gonna create compound node okay that way
they're not on our way of color grading so I'm gonna create another node just
like this and I'm gonna convert it into a parallel mixer so now we're gonna
start polishing our shot a little bit more okay so we have that interesting
side shot let me turn on again false colors and as we can see nothing really
changed I really like where the exposure is also I really like how her nursing I
guess dress or whatever you want to call this is white comparing to before it was
slightly a little bit yellowish okay so we keeping the colors pretty accurate
okay and now what I'm gonna do I'm gonna create a first note and I'm gonna call
this general flight okay and in this general light I'm actually gonna take a
look at this entire clip okay and I can see that it's been lit sort of from
behind a little bit and I'm actually going to replicate that and how I'm
gonna do this well very simple I'm gonna go to the custom curves and I sort of
gonna do a very sloppy mask like this okay I'm gonna give it a bit of a
mid-tones a healthy amount of mid-tones let's make sure that we gonna soft him a
little bit it's not gonna be very hard edges and now I'm gonna go to the
qualifier okay I want to make sure that we're only gonna be affecting the bright
stuff actually I did it the other way sorry okay I guess okay I guess like
this is fine and we're gonna feather it a little bit okay and a little bit clean
white just to make sure that our keys a little bit cleaner okay and let's take a
look so I'm doing the wrong note before and after so this thing is very visible
obviously right now but what I'm gonna do I'm actually going to soften it even
more and I'm gonna give it a little bit of extra contrast okay just like that so
basically what I want to do I want to make sure that everything blends
seamlessly that way we don't have any kind of weird you know lines or anything
like that going on so let's check it out before and after before and after huge
difference huge huge difference love it okay so that's number one number two
let's gonna call this one light number two light number 223 just two all right
and for this one I'm gonna do I guess a very basic in a way kind of like this
okay let's give it a nice fetter I want to make it pretty big very large source
with lots of feathering and basically with this I want to give it a little bit
kind of a glow just like this okay and possibly I can give it a little color
match too okay so check it out before and after
before and after okay let me turn off that the false collar and let's take a
look what we have going on so far okay so that's before and after and as you
guys can see we're actually preserving a very healthy skin information so let me
create a new node and this one I'm gonna be calling contrast okay this one is
going to be very straightforward I'm not even gonna use curves all I'm gonna do
just give it a nice little contrast pop and I want to make sure also and I'm
probably gonna do it with a curve that I'm not clipping any blacks okay that's
not the best way of doing this okay I want to make sure that I'm not clipping
any blacks okay so let's keep it like this let's check it out before and after
before and after you know a little a little bit of extra extra touch looks
really good okay so we have this going on what else
can we do well let's take a look at the vectorscope what we what we have going
on so basically at this moment was sort of have very classic I guess you want to
call it teal and orange split but we can take it to the next level so let's
create another note and we're gonna call this one look and we can either finance
what we have or we can create a slightly little bit different so I'm gonna go in
the primary bars and I'm gonna turn off luma mix and I'm just gonna be playing
with the mid-tones primarily with the green and blue so let me give it a
little bit of a little touch of green and let me just play a little bit with a
blue okay I like it let's check it out before and after before and after so we
sort of gave her a little bit of more green I think visually that looks a
little bit more interesting rather than having just a classic clean
look and if you pay attention look how a little bit of very slight adjustments
actually makes visually a huge difference a lot of times when people
color grade they immediately thinking that if you're working as a colorist you
need to do you know absolutely something ridiculous and completely changed how
everything looks but basically as a colorist and especially if you have
really good footage like this one for example you really don't need to do much
in terms of manipulating colors so keep that in mind okay so we have this going
on let me go outside all right let's take a look obviously our compound was a
very basic adjustments but at the same time we're pretty much did half of the
job there relighting look at that huge difference right over here light number
two we added a little bit more depth like that basically I love working with
the lights whenever you build the lights you creating a lot of depth you're
making a simple shot more three-dimensional and if we're gonna go
back you can see how it sort of look a little bit flat even though the lighting
is absolutely perfect but digitally we can actually enhance that now we add it
a little bit of contrast okay and then we add it a little bit of look okay so
everything looks great to my taste and if we're gonna go back to parade the
only thing I want to make sure that I want to make sure that our black is
staining black so I'm gonna go to luma versus saturation and I'm gonna do my
favourite curve basically I'm going to
desaturate a little bit okay let's see let's do it
let's see just like that okay perfect it does the job slightly but it does the
job which you can take a look over here at the scopes okay
we basically protecting the shadow and wanna we want to make sure that very
very black is staining black but I want to have a weird you know color stuff
like a lot of armature color is due for example something like this when people
you know color great like that and they calling it a day this is you know it
looks pretty ridiculous okay let's play it back it looks very very nice I really
like it the only thing I probably want to do is give a little bit of mid-tones
details let's give it a little mid-tones pop and let's take a look if we actually
can see okay I don't know if the YouTube allows you to see it but we're
definitely getting a little bit more details in the guys cars now the one
thing and probably I guess it would be a little bit armature for me to do not
everything always need to be visible a lot of people for example I know hundred
percent what a lot of people would do color grading and you know I sort of
addressed this kind of problem in the previous tutorials but a lot of people
would probably try to have the mask like this on on the guy and they would thing
like okay you know we want to make sure that we see the guy so they would do
something ridiculous like that and you know you don't always have to do this
you know if there would be a director's decision to have this guy completely
hundred-percent visible he would be lit that way you always when you calibrate
you always need to look at the actual lighting on set you know don't try to
change completely entire game thinking as a car
is this is you know exactly what you have to do if we look at the lighting
lighting is very dramatic it's falling from the side we can enhance that but as
the colorist you don't have to be changing it a hundred percent completely
so always keep done in mind okay so let's take a look again before and
after let me come over here and let's take a look again before and after let's
let's see let's play it back and I think it looks great it looks very nice it
looks very cinematic thank you so much for watching make sure to subscribe and
I'll see you in a couple days take care