'film' grading, A1 + Letus Extreme

PaPa

PaPa

Major Contributor
*** Calling all 'Grading' experts ***

Just like everyone here, I am busting my buns with learning curves to try and learn the best way of delivering the most 'film like' skin tones and colors. I spent several hours last night doing and redoing a few shots from some run and gun footage and I think that I have found something that is reasonably better than the original in terms of looking like 'film'. Obviously digital will never be exactly the same, but in hopes of attaining something better than the clean look, I come to you for judgment and guidance.

The reason I am posting this is because although some here have fantastic abilities of making footage look very interesting with their artistic color grading, I rarely see digital footage that has been cleaned up to resemble something more natural, like "40 Year Old Virgin" / "Superbad" / "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". Generally what I see on these boards, although nice, is purely stylistic and over the top, myself included.

Why these films? I will be shooting a French feature in Montreal sometime soon and am trying to go for that cleaner more natural feeling of the film look without going "Lord of the Rings" / "Matrix" / "Saving Private Ryan" route with out of this world color palettes.

Let me know what you think. Perhaps take a crack at the original grab yourself and most importantly, leave your feedback. Thanks!

General information about original shot:

- Run and gun footage
- No lighting or bounce board used, shot in the shade

Things to notice in the graded shot:

- Softer clipping highlights
- Smoother and softer skin tones due to curve adjustment
- lowered the magenta cast on skin.

The original was taken using the Vision Preset for the XH A1.



Original:


frank01b2mv6.jpg




Graded with RBC curves in Premier Pro CS3:


frank02b1qg3.jpg




Have a stab at it!

- Jon
 
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cc.jpg


some sharpening, rbg curves, color mattes and hue saturation. could've dropped the magenta some and maybe a tad bit red, but your guy looked good with some color instead of pale.
 
i'd say you need to lower saturation, if you're aiming for film look, on the film colors are pretty much pale..
 
i like what oyu have caro, but again, still very magenta and video looking, and the highlights blow out.

for frame of refernce, take a look at seth rogan in this still, and study the skin tone.

sample1.jpg


granted the lighting is very different and he is in a much lower exposure range due to him being inside, but its definitely a reference.
 
Hey Papa, mind posting a screen capture of your RGB preset? I've noted the magenta cast in my footage as well and would like to see how I can get rid of it.
 
absolutely.

here ya go:

( I take it then you approve of the coloring? ) I still feel like it can get even closer but i find myself not knowing what else to adjust..


beforeafterwithcurvesvr7.jpg


Gunna go get some exercise, hope to see some opinions / suggestions when i get back :)
 
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i think the reference and your grading are very close, except that raising the midtone and clamping on the highlight on yours tend to create harsher highlights area. Look at his forehead on your grab, there's almost a whole patch of it there instead of a gradual transition. Also there's a slight yellow tint that takes away from the naturalness of it.
 
i should have been more specific. I added minus green to the curve.

What gets rid of the apparent magenta is due to the raising the minus green to bring the magenta tones more uniform across the entire image. The master curve brightens the skin tones to make them more even with the brighter parts of the face which blow out the skin more, and then finally lowering the red channel to lessen the purple/redness that was added to the image with an adjustment of some added minus blue to remove the purple.

However we are still leagues away from approaching the best possible skin tone comparison from film, much more work to be done the question is what...
 
Huy Vu said:
i think the reference and your grading are very close, except that raising the midtone and clamping on the highlight on yours tend to create harsher highlights area. Look at his forehead on your grab, there's almost a whole patch of it there instead of a gradual transition. Also there's a slight yellow tint that takes away from the naturalness of it.
Click to expand...

for sure, and that is where makeup can play a crucial role to get rid of the skin blemishes so one is not forced to do it in post. Part of the beauty of the reference grab is the even coloration of the skin across the entire face, which gives it a flatness that i was going for. But you are right, it would be nicer to not have to raise the mids as much as i am doing to go for such an effect.

I wonder what else can be done..
 
1212088100.jpg


Try this for size. I work in Magic Bullet Looks, Color, Colorista...depends on the task.

That has a three way color correct. A lift-gamma-gain adjustment to kill the magenta. A curves adjust to bring up the contrast, and an overall exposure increase to compensate for lost detail.
 
thanks for posting matt, great take on the image.

But again i have to refer to my reference picture. Seth's face is very soft texture wise and even heh as a slight contrast ratio on him. Frank, who is the guy in my image is shot under almost completely neutral flat lighting, well exposed, so there should be a way of treating his skin without making him appear overly dark. The blacks look really nice. The magenta is definitely gone. there is a bit of a green hue in his beard and the blowout whites look every more video than before. But his face looks too harsh for the 'natural' film look i'm going for as previously mentioned.

would be very interested to see a crab of your corrections, i.e. what i did for the curves.
 
that is not the point Car3o. The point is that with curves, much can be done to reproduce a quality similar ot film, not exactly like film. It is up to exposure, contrast ratio and much more. I am not saying that it will reproduce exactly what film can, but one can get closer than what we've been able to do in this thread thus far. And that is what I'm after. I have shot enough film to know the limits of reproducing 'it' on video.. But more can be done here.
 
I tried to work on the blowout. Problem is you don't have any information there. I was unable to pull even a hint of anything from there. It was a quick 3 minute job. I am working on someone elses project here right now so I might be able to take a detailed look at it in a few hours.

If you really want information from that blown-out area, you need to re-shoot.

Unfortunately I deleted the file settings I had for that grab, since I was just transitioning to another shot and I threw it in to take a quick crack at it.
 
lol i am not trying to retrieve the information from the blow outs, just reat hem the way blow outs look on film. Look at my corrected image to see what i mean. Much softer and less explosive white.
 
Image2.jpg Image1.jpg

Done in Vegas with Magic Bullet plugin..

Duplicated video track, than to the upper apply "golden chrunch" preset..and than opacity of the upper video line to 39%..

But I am not sure if that is what you looked for..

Cheers,

david
 
thanks Dave. Definitely nicer on the right. Although her skin now has a green hue to it. perhaps it is my screen though.

I think one of the problems of my original grab is his skin is slightly over exposed. Slight less exposure on him would probably make the curve adjustment much easier to achieve the look desired. Going to try to get more stuff under several exposure range and re post.
 
Papa I actually like your take on the grading in the first post. There's still a fair amount of detail in the hair in comparison to the rest of the attempts although all are straight. I do prefer your take.

There's a little too much "gold" or yellow in the image, which is a slight distracting.

But looks good. Your attempts at grading are getting better.
 
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