This is a little different than my normal content for the site, but I thought that you filmmaking pros might like to see what goes into a live production. For those that don’t know, here’s what you’re seeing:

PGM (top right) = Program – what’s actually going on air.

PV (top left) = Preview – what’s coming up next after a transition is executed (either cut or dissolve)

Cam 1 – Cam 5 = Camera sources – Cam 1 & 2 are on tripods in the middle of the auditorium. Cam 3, 4, & 5 are on stage.

GFX 1 & 2 = Graphics Computers – GFX 1 does lyrics on the center screen (not pictured), as well as video playback for PGM. GFX 2 is keyed in using a linear key (fill & matte) and puts the lower-third lyrics up for the webcast, side screens, etc.

This was what I started with:

One of the harder images I've had to balance because of all the warm colors.

I’m not going to break down how I balanced it. If you’ve been reading this site long enough, you know a few tools to do that. Here’s the balanced image:

Much better!

Adjustments for the balanced image above.

Now for the look. First is to adjust the shadows. After doing a bit of experimenting and seeing as how purple was closer to the bluish hue to push into the shadows in the Blockbuster look than the orange you pull back in, the shadows seemed the best place to get that purple worked in like I wanted.

Way to far, but that's the beauty of a push/pull look – it'll get fixed in a sec.

It's technically a little on the bluish side of purple, but it gets the shadows the hue that I want them to be.

Now we’ll pull it back in the mids:

More natural on the skintones.

Pull in the opposite color of what we pushed; in this case a green.

Now I’m going to do something a little unusual for the sake of the overall look. I want the background to be just a little bit warmer, so we’ll put  little orange in the highlights to warm the background:

A little warmer on the brick.

A little orange to help the background.

Now we’ll pull a key to get the skin tones where they belong:

Closer to natural skintones.

The matte for the key.

The key settings. Just a hue and saturation; no need to use a luminance qualifier.

Some sea-green in the mids did the trick.

Lastly, an edge vignette to focus attention on the subject:

Window settings

Unlike the last few posts, this is the typical vignette I use; the contrast adjustment is made in the mids.

The final graded shot.

Here’s an example of a close up with the same look applied:

Before

Balanced

After

There you go! One of my favorite looks. It’s not going to work on every shot, as this grade is highly dependent on the production design, but I’ll still make it available for download.

Attached is the Apple Color secondary for this look. You will probably have to adjust this for your shot, but it should work as a good base. The 1st secondary is blank so that you can balance in the primaries, then make any other adjustments necessary to make it look good in S1. As usual, feel free to use this look in your projects all you want, but please don’t share or distribute this preset. Instead, send them here to get it.
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We’ll start with a balanced shot:

The balanced image.

The first thing we’re gonna do is lower the saturation by a little over half:

Lower saturation also gives a feeling of low contrast, even though we didn't touch any of the highlights, mids, or shadows.

Adjustments for the above.

Now, to start on the actual low-contrast look, the first thing we’ll do is raise the shadows:

Raising the shadows has the biggest impact in this look.

Adjustments for the above. Look in the shadows area.

Next step is to hit the mids:

We want to add just a little contrast in the mids so there's still some perceived sharpness, but the blacks are still a little milky.

Lower the mids just a tad bit. I also touched the highlights a little, but almost an insignificant amount, so I merged it with this section.

Now on to a sight color cast. I want a faint sense of coldness, so We’ll push some blue into the shadows.

Just a little colder than I want, but we'll pull it back in a second.

Because the shadows are lifted they take the color very well, so it takes just a touch.

Now we’ll pull it back a little in the mids:

A little warmer.

It's not technically a pull (since it's not the opposite hue), but I want the shot a little warmer, so I pulled in some red.

Now just a touch colder in the highlights:

Last part of the color cast.

Just a touch of blue in the highlights.

Last step – an edge vignette:

Nice soft window on a new node.

Settings for the window above.

Different from the vignettes I typically use, this one only affects the shadows a little (since I want low-contrast blacks). Most of the adjustment is in the highlights.

Here’s the final image, followed by a few examples of this look on other shots:

The final look

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

I know this is a quick, simple look, but it works well on a variety of shots (mostly due to the low saturation which counters bad color casts).

Attached is the Resolve PowerGrade for this look. Append it after your first node, don’t forget to adjust that first node to balance  your specific shot. As usual, feel free to use this look in your projects all you want, but please don’t share or distribute this preset. Instead, send them here to get it.
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We’ll start with the ungraded shot:

The raw, ungraded image.

We’ll start off by doing a quick balance. This shot looks just a bit blue-gray, and the skin tones are a little paler than in real life, so we’ll push in a warmer tone in the highlights.

You'll notice I also raised the highlights a little.

adjustments for the primaries to balance the shot.

Now we’ll start on the look. I want a really high contrast look, but not too saturated. It’ll end up looking very similar to a bleach bypass, but we’ll go about it in a slightly different way. First we’ll crush our blacks a bit to start on the high contrast:

We'll lose the suit into the shadows for now, but we'll get some of it back in a sec.

Adjustments for the above.

Now we’ll raise the highlights to get the suit back and have a little bit of overexposure on the sunlight hotspots.

The sunlight hotspots are intentional in this look to accentuate the "harshness" I'm going for with this look.

I raised the highlights quite a bit…

Now we’ll lower the mids to add back in a little more contrast. I want to only retain a little of the shadow detail on the suit. He’s  sinister character, so I want him to exude darkness.

Leaving detail on the suit just in the shoulders gives his body a good frame of reference, but still lets him blend into the darkness.

The mids came down a good bit too while I watched the shoulders of the suit.

Now we’ll start adding color. I want a dusty sepia-ish tone, but not all in the same tonal area, so we’ll push some red orange into the mids:

A little on the red side for now…

Adjustments for the above.

Now we’l pull the shot back to a sepia by pulling some color into the shadows:

Pulling in color in the shadows offsets the red in the mids.

After some experimenting, green actually ended up being the color to offset the red in the end.

Now that we’ve finished that, we’ll do a good deal of desaturation, but I want that in a new secondary for control:

Very desaturated!

3/4 of the day to black and white!

The last part of the look will be a vignette around the edges:

Part 1 of the vignette – the shadows.

A big, soft window for this.

Pull down the shadows some. Notice I'm "outside" the window/vignette.

Now one last step, and one that I don’t normally do for edge vignettes. Normally I just increase contrast on the edges through the shadows and mids, while leaving the highlights alone. This time i’ll drop the highlights pretty dramatically on the edges.

Bringing down the highlights a good bit.

The final graded shot. Bringing down the highlights on the vignette has the added effect of knocking down the overly-bright plants on the left side.

Here are a few other examples of shots from this short with the look applied:

Before

After

before

After

If you want to see it in action, here’s the final piece (produced for my full-time job at a church):

Attached is the Apple Color secondary for this look. You will probably have to adjust this for your shot, but it should work as a good base. As usual, feel free to use this look in your projects all you want, but please don’t share or distribute this preset. Instead, send them here to get it.
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Here’s what the end result will be:

The Final Look

I started with the unbalanced shot (by the way, the footage was shot on a Red Epic and graded natively in Resolve):

The raw image.

The first step is to balance the image. The raw is a little on the brown side and low contrast:

The balanced image.

A little blue in the miss and highlights to get rid of that brownish tint, and also stretching the contrast a bit by raising the highlights and miss and lowering the blacks.

Now I want to bring focus to the actress a bit with an edge vignette, so I’ll make a new node with a circular power window set to outside the mask:

Center the vignette on the subject to draw attention to her.

Window settings

Lower all three tonal areas by about the same small amount to make a nice darkness vignette

Vignette with the window outline off.

I want to bring a little more attention to her face, and also bring her skin tones just a little bit cooler (to compensate for what I know my final look will do), so I’ll make a new outside node:

Inside vignette part 1.

Lift the highlights a good bit and push them towards blue.

Inside vignette part 2.

Darken the mids to increase contrast on her face and push the miss a little towards an indigo.

Now to create the look itself. I want a lower contrast, darker look with mix of greenish shadows and warmer highlights to work with my location and give that air of class. By the way, this color combination is inspired by a classic 30′s and 40′s office. Think of the hazy private detective’s office with the rich wood furniture and green lamp, chair, etc.

Step 1 – make it dark.

Lower the highlights a little and the mids a good bit. Don't worry, we'll get our shadow detail back in the next step.

Now that we’ve made the image darker, we need our detail back in the blacks!

Ah! There's the detail…

Lift the blacks to get our detail back.

Now to start getting those warm highlights:

Push in some red.

Pushing in some red and orange to get the highlights warm.

Now to pull back a little in the mids:

Pull it back to a normal look.

Compensate for the warm highlights by pulling back with some green/cyan in the mids. This will also bleed in to our shadows just enough to give them the tint we want, which you'll see in just a second.

The last step is to make the image just a little bit more “hazy” by pulling back the saturation:

Pull the saturation back by almost half!

The final node tree.

The final graded image! Pulling the saturation down helped the cyans we pushed not the mids blend a bit better with the actual colors in the location to make a greenish tint in the lower mids and shadows. Nice!

Well there you go. The first of a series of posts I’m planning to do on some looks I created for various projects, and my first post using Resolve. Hope you get some use out of it!

Attached is the Resolve PowerGrade for this look. Use it just like suggested above, don’t forget to adjust the first node to balance  your specific shot, and it should be a great base for you. As usual, feel free to use this look in your projects all you want, but please don’t share or distribute this preset. Instead, send them here to get it.
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@videoaaron Need a 3rd opinion.Is there any way to properly stop gamma and colours changing when you export from FCP?Any plugin etc? TY!

— Jonny Jones (@MrJonnyJones) April 18, 2012

I remembered encountering this a few times a while ago, but couldn’t remember it happening any time recently. After brainstorming on it for a few minutes, it suddenly hit me why I hadn’t seen that problem in forever, and also a good, quick workaround for the issue! Most of the projects I do at my full-time job are mine from start to finish, so I write it, I shoot it, I edit it, I color it, etc. And I almost always end up in After Effects as a last step for one reason or another (matting for a different aspect ration like 2.35:1, some light title or mograph work to polish the final edited piece, or even just to make my fade-ins and fade-out more cinematic using Video Copilot’s Film Fade Presets). That ended up being the reason I had so rarely encountered this issue. After Effects is a color managed program (which I learned from Stu Maschwitz’s book and blog), so by bringing my timeline into After Effects, I was avoiding FCP’s gamma shift on exporting.

So if you’re pulling your hair out because of a gamma shift from FCP, and you happen to have a copy of After Effects, try this: Export an XML of your sequence from Final Cut Pro. Import it into After Effects using Automatic Duck’s (now free) Pro Import AE. Export from there (or for the more unexperienced AE user, don’t “Export”, but add to the Render Queue). Since the Automatic Duck plugin pulls the source files and recreates the timeline in AE, you avoid any gamma adjustments from FCP. If you still see a shift, you might want to check your color management settings for your project, but otherwise, problem solved!

A few notes – there are a bunch of them (55) and they are pretty big file-size-wise, so I split them into 3 .zip files. These are edited h.264 files from a Canon T2i. They are 720p at 60i so you can slow them down to 24p if you need to. Also, these are elements for a very specific project I was working on, so they are tailored to my use, and may not be the best fit for what you need; but hey, they’re free right? Lastly, This is my first time shooting elements like this, so don’t expect it to be as good as Video Copilot, etc. resources.

All of that said, if you can get some use out of these then enjoy! Here’s a screen cap of the files and what they look like. It’d also be cool if you sent me a link to whatever you used them in if they work for you, just so I can see

Click to enlarge

 
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The Good

No more HDSLR transcoding – I recently went to our student ministry’s Beach Week to film for them. I would film for about 13 hours each day on my 5DmkII, then go back to my hotel room and edit a recap of the day for the following morning. I did the same thing using FCP7 last year, and was up until about 4:30am every night because I had to wait for the footage to transcode before I could start editing. This year I copied the clips over and got right to the editing. It was a beautiful thing that saved me at least 2 hours a night compared to the previous year.

The hotkeys – I’m actually pretty impressed with the thought behind the new hotkeys in FCPx. I,O,J,K,L are all the same, but they moved the Insert and Overwrite keys (plus a few new ones) off of the F keys at the top (now leaving them solely for volume, brightness, etc. system keys) down to Q,W,E,D. This is a way more natural hand placement on your keyboard. Also, can I just say I’m in love with the append function (E)? No matter where you are in your timeline, you can easily add a clip to the end without worrying about accidentally overwriting or splitting a clip by a frame or two.

Another great hotkey change is the ability to hold down a timeline tool hotkey to temporarily use that tool until you release the key. I’m still trying to get into the habit of this, but when I remember to use it, it’s much faster. Need to make a quick cut with the blade tool, but then go back to the arrow tool? Just hold down B, make your cut, then release. much faster! I’d also say this shines the most of the trim tool (T) for slip edits, etc.

And this is just the start. Almost all of the new hotkeys are brilliantly well thought out (as are most of the new timeline tools, which leads me to…)

The Timeline – I don’t really know how best to explain this part, but here goes – when performing a ripple edit, as you make the change the timeline actually moves to show your change, not just showing a timecode difference and an outline of the change as in previous versions. This coupled with the waveform views for audio make timing audio cues ridiculously easy.

Also, having ripple be the default action when shortening or lengthening a clip is pretty handy. I never understood why this wasn’t the default in previous versions…

Waveforms adjusting in height to reflect the volume in the timeline has been a great tool for me. I can take a quick look at all my dialogue and see if they are around the same volume, and pick out any problem shots without having to watch each clip.

Rendering – The background rendering is fast, and the ability to preview effects, titles, coloring – pretty much anything – all in real time at almost full quality is fantastic.

Automatic Sync – I used this for the first time the other day, and it is almost miraculous! Select the clips, right clip, sync. That’s it. My only suggestion would be the ability to select multiple clips and have it match them all at once, but it’s not a big deal.

Speed – I’m not talking the program speed here, though it is pretty good. I’m talking my speed with editing. Compared to my friends from film school, I’m not the most creative editor, but I can do, we’ll say…90% the quality/creativity of what they can do, but in a tenth of the time. My strength is my speed. And as I’ve gotten familiar with FCPx, I’m pretty sure that once they work out a few issues with it and I spend more time with it, I’ll be able to go even faster than I could in FCP7. FCPx really does seem to make pure editing faster. 

The Bad

Codec Support – probably my biggest beef with FCPx is the transcoding and rendering codec lock-in. With FCP7, I almost exclusively used ProRes 422 LT. For my use, it was a fantastic mix of the great ProRes quality, but with more practical file sizes than regular 422. Even though FCPx supports h.264 from HDSLRs, if I had the option I’d probably still use ProRes LT for performance reasons (h.264 takes more precessing power than I’d prefer for projects I have more time on than my Beach Week example) in my editing, and I’d definitely prefer it to render to LT to save some space, even if I was editing the h.264 files.

Format Settings – FCPx lacks the ability to tell it that it incorrectly analyzed footage, like not marking something as anamorphic for example. I work with Anamorphic DV content every week, and have been unable to do any of this work in FCPx because it keeps reading the footage without the anamorphic flag, and there’s not a way to correct it that I know of. A small annoyance, I know, but one that I hit frequently.

Thumbnail Filmstrips in the Timeline  - I miss the old thumbnail-at-beginning-of-clip-only setting from FCP7. The filmstrip is UI clutter. Just say no.

Events & Projects - I don’t mind the whole new event/project paradigm. I just wish it didn’t load every event and project when it started up. Seems like it could balloon out of control quickly.

Transitions – Why do second layer (what I’ll call any track/clip above the main “storyline”) clips not allow transitions unless they are in a “secondary storyline”? I shouldn’t have to make a new storyline just to have a clip transition in/out. Same for audio editing, like shortening a music track. You can’t add a crossfade unless it is a “secondary storyline.” Frustrating…

Coloring – The auto-balance is weak. The inability to type in numerical values is frustrating. The key/qualifier fine tuning is almost nonexistent. And, am I crazy, or is the dividing area between highlights, mids, and shadows very sharp? It makes it hard to adjust low-contrast shots, because the divisions are so harsh. I haven’t been able to do more than basic corrections in this setup. More on this to come in a later post.

Copy/Paste/Effect Management – What if I don’t want to copy every effect and setting from one clip to others? What if I just want to copy the coloring settings? Or the Audio effects only? Or just one effect? Really… all or nothing? #fail.

Interoperability – This is the biggie. All of the others are surmountable or tolerable to a degree. This is the reason I’ve only been able to use FCPx for highlight videos and small edits. I wanted to use FCPx for my latest TV commercial, but the inability to send the timeline to Mocha and After Effects for VFX and custom title work, Soundtrack Pro for better audio mixing, and Color for more controlled grading was a deal-breaker. Editing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You have to be able to talk to other programs. This is not an option for anything more complicated than basic interviews or wedding videos, and even then… Seriously. Don’t even get me started on my long rant about this. Ugh.

My conclusion…

All in all, I’m actually pretty happy with what is basically a 1.0 release. I won’t be giving up FCP7, Color or the rest of FCS3 anytime soon, but I think I’ll find myself using FCPx more and more. If they can fix the interoperability so I can send projects to AE, Soundtrack Pro, or even Color, I think we’ll be in business. The rest I’m sure will come with time. It’s definitely not right for everyone, especially “super-pros,” like those who need to integrate with Flame or Nuke, etc., but I don’t think it’s nearly the travesty that everyone else seems to think it is. I’ve always loved and used Final Cut Pro, not because I’m an Apple fanboy, but because it’s the best tool around in my opinion. There are a ton of great tools out there like Avid and Premiere, but FCP always seemed the most fluid and flexible. I’m hoping this new FCP can make up for lost ground and get back to where it should be. It’s got a long way to go, but I like what I see so far.

I have been following Aaron’s “Colorist Tip” series on Twitter for the past year and am honored to be the first guest post on his very helpful and useful blog.  While cranking on the color wheels in Boston on a DaVinci, I have seen an interesting spectrum of work ranging from the standard :30 spot to archival 16mm footage from local colleges like Harvard and MIT. This wide range of footage has allowed for me to experiment, test and experience most formats and the way that they react to grading.

Color grading has been a great passion of mine, as it allows me to explore both my artistic and technical side.  I feel truly blessed to work in a field that I am passionate about and look forward to future developments that will no doubt press this art form and it’s artists even further.  Follow me and my post house on Twitter @robsbessette and @finishboston for more post-production adventures.

Now on to the good stuff!

Have multiple looks ready before client arrives. Favorites are high contrast/saturation, warm/cool, or abstract depending on the subject. Make sure your looks are relative to the piece.

We all know that color grading is about creating “looks”.  The real question is, what look is the right look?  Without experimenting and trying out different styles, we will never know.  There is never a correct answer, we just know what the “right look” is when we see it.  It is not only important for us to see different looks, but for the client to see them as well.  A lot of the looks that I create before a session depend on the subject matter of the piece.  Is it cheerful?  Moody?  Romantic?  I generally like to have 3-4 options prepared before the client walks through the door.  Normally when creating looks I stick to the primaries as I find that it gets the mood across rather accurately.  There can be enormous amounts of work done in the primaries and I sometimes feel that Colorists are too anxious to breeze through this step to get to working with the more luxurious and exciting secondary and keying options.

Currently I am working on a action short, revenge story called “Hard Luck” that takes place in a bar.  Based on the nature of the short, I wanted to come up with some harder looks.  No dreamy looks or soft edges to this one.  Shot on the RED camera, there was some good latitude that provided me with the opportunity to get creative.

Look #1

For this look I wanted to create something that was true to the real life colors on set with an average contrast ratio and good saturation.  I was looking to bring out the hard lines on the actors face to accentuate the dramatic feel.  While crushing the blacks and making the skin tones pop it feels almost as if the actor is surrounded by darkness.

Look #2

On this look I decided to go the opposite direction by creating a less saturated look.  By taking some of the color out of the skin tone, the scars on the actors face seem even more dramatic.

Look #3

This grade probably looks the “prettiest”.  Turning up the gain on this shot allows for a lighter look that covers a higher range of contrast.  While keeping a high contrast ratio along with boosted saturation, this shot looks very pleasing.

Look #4

I generally like to throw one abstract look into the mix just in case the client wants to go to extremes.  These are generally my guilty pleasure, as they allow for me to let the creative juices flow.  On this look I allowed the highlights to blow out and pushed the skin tone towards green, creating a very hard/tough look.

Final Result

The client ended up choosing Look #1.  Since the short is filmed in a bar they wanted to keep the light down, but allow for good saturation at the same time.  For the final correction I added a power window to the actors face so the scars popped a little more and drew the viewers focus to the character.

When it comes down to it, it is all about seeing and exploring different options.  By having looks ready before the client even walks through the door, you’ve show that you are familiar with the material and have placed great thought into how the piece can look.  As long as the client feels comfortable that they have seen all possible options that are fitting to the piece, then you’ve done your job.

Happy coloring!

Rob Bessette – Colorist

1. This is aimed at motion graphic artists, so it’s really just the basics, nothing too in depth.
2. I’m not that great a public speaker, and was a little nervous about giving this presentation, so cut me some slack if I misspoke or said something that wasn’t totally correct…
3. I was also trying to cram in a ton of information into a relatively short amount of time, so please forgive the breakneck speed and “30,000 ft. view” of color grading.

Hope you enjoyed that! I think my next Colorist Tip is going to cover control surfaces, and will probably come sometime next week…