color grading question

New_Zealand

New_Zealand

Veteran
There seem to be different choices now a days to color grade. One of them is inside your editing system - the other is a preset color to place over your footage? I notice more choices putting a preset over your footage then actually going into your timeline and doing the color grading manually. Is there any advantage to putting a preset over your footage? some of the software are filmconvert, Neumannfilms etc....

What are you guys using or doing? Is anyone on here doing color grading as a business/job?

I'm shooting 4k and looking for a certain look so needed to figure out the best way in doing this. Thanks
 
New_Zealand said:
There seem to be different choices now a days to color grade. One of them is inside your editing system - the other is a preset color to place over your footage? I notice more choices putting a preset over your footage then actually going into your timeline and doing the color grading manually. Is there any advantage to putting a preset over your footage? some of the software are filmconvert, Neumannfilms etc....

What are you guys using or doing? Is anyone on here doing color grading as a business/job?

I'm shooting 4k and looking for a certain look so needed to figure out the best way in doing this. Thanks
Click to expand...

last question first, yes i grade films & broadcast tv, it's early July and in 2016 so far i have graded 7 features, 2 TV pilot's, 26 eps of TV series, 10 short films, and a large pile of TV national commericals for Canada... i use Nucoda, Baselight, Resolve, Avid|DS, Nuke, and Mamba - i think i qualify

i don't grade inside the edit system typicaly, exception being BLE inside Avid MC, don't use LUTs, don't use filmdestroy, or nummannfilm, or anything close to those.

Best way to do this is to send a XML/AAF and camera orignal media to an experienced colorist, and remember to include a cheque...

Next best way is to invest in the tools you will need to do this (maybe 20k, probbaly alot more, i'm sitting infront of 150k of investment right now waiting for a project to open) and the investment in time to learn the nunanaces (maybe a few years of seat time as an assist/Jr then step up to films etc etc)

Going further down the sub-optimal road would be to gradein free Resolve on an unerpowered machine with an uncallibrated mon... in that case use scopes, broadcast safe and do as little as possiable, avoid the curves, totaly avoid any LUT

Last choice would be to use the 3way corrector in any NLE, with uncallibrated mon leave broadcast safe on, keep an eye on the scopes, and do as little as possiable to the images

Completly off the table are any LUTs and presets

get a base grade first, get the shots inside scenes to match before coming up with a "look"
 
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My thinking is that there are significant differences between color -effects- like filmconvert, Neumannfilms, magic bullet, etc and actually color grading.

When I grade an edited program, my goal is to change the contrast and colors to enhance the story. So increasing the contrast and boosting the colors is usually high on the list. Look at the "behind the scenes" footage on almost any DVD and you can see the huge differences between camera footage and finished product. Contrast is cranked to make velvety blacks and to bring out every detail; color almost drool off the screen!

To do that you need to tweak each and every screne. While you might find that some of the 'preset' filters work well with some footage and some scenes, they tend to always looks "canned" and sometimes actually take away from the impact of your footage.

"....anyone doing color grading as a business/job?" Look at the credits of most movies and many tv programs and you will see a skilled (and hopefully well paid) artist listed as "color grading" or "color timing" or even "colourist."


Jim
Colorburst Video

 
Just think about it as using light room and photoshop if you apply a preset to a batch of photo in LR, no guarantee every photo will get u best result, best will be from editing every photo. Similarly individual tweaking a clip will give u a better result, using a preset to tweak a batch of similar clips may give u similar results, but probably will not be 100% as good.

As for softwares, different software may have different advantages on doing a certain task. you have to try yourself what is best your u base on the hardware u use
 
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