Colour Graders... what do you want from me?

J

-Joey-

New member
Hey

I have been editing my own footage and 'doing the best I can' with grading and correcting etc. I'm ok and can put something decent and watchable together which is fine for its purpose.

For certain projects though where I want to really push the 'pro' look I am looking at getting my stuff colour graded by someone who knows what they are doing. My thinking is, go to someone with experience and get a better quality product.

So my question is what is the standard procedure for this?

My footage will be filmed on a Canon 70d using a sigma 18-35 lens using ALL-I compression and the cinestyle profile and the camera will be set up to get the best quality footage I can out of the equipment I have. Not pro I know ;) But the results are good enough for my needs right now.

My footage will be edited in premiere pro

So...

1. Is it standard procedure to edit the clips together into a final piece of footage, then this final piece of edited footage goes off to be graded? I would leave all effects off and the footage would essentially be 'as filmed', just edited into a sequence as I want the final piece to be.

2. Given what my footage is filmed in, when I export my edited sequence from premiere, what format would a colour grader want? I ask because I am concerned premiere will do stuff to my footage. Essentially I want premiere to leave the quality of the footage when I export exactly the same as what I import.

I know this isn't a pro project or set up or anything but I want to do the best I can with what I have.

Any advice is greatly appreciate. Thanks so much!
 
You would need to talk to colorist and see what they want. Usually they'll want an AAF or XML of your timeline so that your cuts carry over. It's your job to simplify the timeline as much as you can (compress all your tracks down to 2 or 3, render out any titles or effects, etc...)
Your colorist will then be able to grade your movie using the original footage, rather than a "generation". If I were you, I'd download Resolve (it's free) and practice moving your timeline into it. You'll learn a lot about what a colorist needs in the process.
 
Thanks a lot El Director :). That makes perfect sense.

I think the best situation would be to provide the files and an xml of the timeline. I didn't think of this. But I will chat to a grader and see exactly what he/she wants.

I'll grab resolve.
 
my prefrences are in order of choice
1 - a sorted clean DRP + media pool + ref & roundtrip back to the edit system for finishing
2 - a sorted clean XML/AAF + camera orignals + ref & roundtrip back to the edit system for finishing
3 - an XML of the timeline + camera orignals + ref & finish in the color suite
4 - a clean / all color effeects removed / flatened Qt + EDL +ref & finish in the color suite
notes;
- option 1 will be the most work for you, and the least waste of time in the gradeing suite, so the lowest overall cost for a given target, it's used about 70% of the time from the producer's i work with, XML only really works well with Resolve tho, AAF only works well with Nucoda, if using Avid then consider Baselight's workflow of lens + BLG's

- option 2 will still need some work getting the confrom clean, cutting in VFX, lineing up mix, on and on, may trash the roundtrip depending on how many changesd are needed, forceing you to finish the CTM in the gradeing suite

- option 3 is going to cost you a lot more cash while we sort conform issues in the gradeing suite, once the source XML or AAF is changed substaintialy the roundtrip is trashed and you have to finish the CTM in the color suite

- option 4 is going to limit the creative and technical options considerably (no temporal effectts like Noise Reduction, Flick Fix's, Optical Flow effects etc etc), but may be the lowest cost approach - untill you NEED noise reduction, or flicker fixes or anything else that the software requires access to frames outside the active area in the timeline - then the show enters the high effort / low resualts arena, so if you chose this route make sure you are covered for any QC fixes before exorting a clean Qt
 
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