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Please color grading advice needed!


midloch
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Hi guys!

I am just grading my new film from expedition to Matsés tribe in Peru. I shot all with GH5 10bit 24p (+ some shots by basic dron DJI Spark and a few shots with gopro). I do not use any luts and have been trying to get the best jungle adventure look for a week but my eyes are confused and I really do not know if this is ok or not. The problem is whether the colors are rich enough and if the jungle atmosphere in picture is decent or if it is a piece of shit... Please can you take a short look to give me any advice of uninvolved person before I will grade all the hundreds shots manually? The thing is that the colors, saturation and contrast looks pretty different on my DELL UP2716D UltraSharp 27 compared to my Panasonic NEOplasma VT65 so I can not decide if to continue in Dell way or try different approach.

Thank you a lot!

 

 

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Hello Midloch, let me congrats you for the shoot you just did, very nice to be shooting in Peruvian forest, and my first advice, you have to grade your footage in a calibrated monitor, that`s step number one, the next step is to color correct you footage, to make it to look natural, and then you can go and apply a LUT to give to your film a special look.

If you are not using a calibrated monitor you have to get one or buy a device to calibrate the one you are using.....don`t waste any time trying to do it without a calibrated monitor.

The best device to calibrate a monitor in the market today is the "X-Rite i1Display Pro".

Regards!

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48 minutes ago, midloch said:

I do not use any luts and have been trying to get the best jungle adventure look for a week but my eyes are confused and I really do not know if this is ok or not

A friend once remarked to me that he enjoyed reading Edgar Allan Poe because he could tell when Poe wrote one paragraph in a good mood, then the next day, he's in a crap mood, and would then write a depressing paragraph.  In other words, our emotions change hourly, daily, and they will change our emotional choice in colors.  So not surprised you're driving yourself crazy ;) There is NO perfect color.  LUTs are just another person's color opinion, emotion.  As @hijodeibn said, calibrating your monitor is your first step.  I have a ColorRite but it creates more problems than it solves for me, so I just use a color chart I find on the internet.  First use your software's calibration of brightness/contrast though (gamma).   If you don't know a lot about how cameras create color, I did a video on YouTube, search "Camera RAW is Color Blind".  After that, try to decide on a look, create a few reference shots, and grade to them.

a_DisplayTest1920x1200.jpg

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5 hours ago, midloch said:

Hi guys!

I am just grading my new film from expedition to Matsés tribe in Peru. I shot all with GH5 10bit 24p (+ some shots by basic dron DJI Spark and a few shots with gopro). I do not use any luts and have been trying to get the best jungle adventure look for a week but my eyes are confused and I really do not know if this is ok or not. The problem is whether the colors are rich enough and if the jungle atmosphere in picture is decent or if it is a piece of shit... Please can you take a short look to give me any advice of uninvolved person before I will grade all the hundreds shots manually? The thing is that the colors, saturation and contrast looks pretty different on my DELL UP2716D UltraSharp 27 compared to my Panasonic NEOplasma VT65 so I can not decide if to continue in Dell way or try different approach.

Thank you a lot!

 

Always use calibrated display as a reference. If you set for example red colour to reference it will shows exactly the same color on your neoplasma as other colorist in other project graded their project to their reference. If you grade for your plasma, everyone will see wrong colors.

Could you please share some ungraded clips (which contains skin tones) with us? i would happy if i can test my colorgrading skill with 10 bit footage.

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Hi guys,

 

thank you all! I really appreciate your suggests as it is the greatest project I have ever done. I will do as you write. @maxotics you are righ with Poe! I do the colors just only by heart and they are certainly influenced by my mood and emotion so now I need to step aside and use more brain.  to @Deadcode bellow is a short ungraded video that I uploaded on Vimeo and it is possible to download the original file:

 

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15 hours ago, midloch said:

Hi guys,

 

 @Deadcode bellow is a short ungraded video that I uploaded on Vimeo and it is possible to download the original file:

 

Unfortunately i am unable to edit the footage without transcoding, both FCPX 10.4 and Davinci Resolve 14.2 cannot handle it.

The skintones are blown out, the WB is off, this one is very challenging, now i respect the grade what you did in the first post.

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Looking at a calibrated monitor, I would personally just say raise your blacks a little. They’re a little too harsh giving this not an adventure look but a terrifying experience with that hard contrast. Other wise I think colors look good, not too saturated, which I prefer. 

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5 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

I'm not sure what kind of look you are going for with this story, but I got this after a few minutes in Resolve...kind of an old Kodak film look (I worked just off of a screenshot so it isn't very high quality)

5a72bbef0e301_ScreenShot2018-02-01at9_02_36AM.png.b0acaf14a473f637a3e000ce682a56e1.png

 

This was your original:

5a72bc349af86_ScreenShot2018-02-01at9_02_50AM.thumb.png.ad16b3ca722f794a199f4c7f4bb24e39.png

@Benjamin Hilton this is actually the most difficult shot to grade. As you can see the face is behind fire so the air is wiggling. Now I see that my grading was not nice so thank you a lot!

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No Problem.  I attached a LUT I exported of that grade if you want to try it out as a base for the sequence.  It includes all the adjustments minus the power windows to bring up his face.  

I think power windows are your friend on a project like this where you really couldn't light.  They give you the ability to draw the attention to the right places by bringing the exposure up or down in certain areas. 

Grading is a very fine art that takes a lot of practice, don't give up!  It's worth taking the time to learn and practice and become a master.  (I still feel like I have a long way to go here)

 

Jungle Grade V_1_32.Screen Shot 2018-02-01 at 8.46.59 AM.cube

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