How to keep your color grade consistent through your video?

N

Neutral

Active member
Hi all,

I decided to focus a lot more on my color grading lately since it's something I've always enjoyed and would like to get better at. I made the switch Davinci Resolve a week ago and am loving it so far. One issue I seem to have all too often is consistency within a project. I mainly edit music video's. I find it very difficult to keep the same look through out an entire video. What I started doing was grading 1 shot until I found the look I like, then taking a screen shot, and I'll leave that screen shot up while I'm editing as reference. Trying to keep at as close to that as I can. However I've found this doesn't really work. When I get to the end of a project and review it, play it back from beginning to finish, I see so many inconsistency's. So I'm wondering, what do professionals do to keep this from happening?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
 
When in the coloring screen in DaVinci, grade a clip until you're happy with it. Then, right click on the video monitoring screen and choose the "grab a still" (or something like that). You'll notice an icon appear to the left of your monitor window, which is a still of your colored clip. Essentially what it's doing is saving all of your nodes and adjustments. Then, you go to a different clip, click and drag that "still" you just created from your colored/graded clip, and drag it to the master node on the untouched clip. This will copy all of your adjustments from that clip onto any other clip you want.

In the process of grading a project I'll end up with a few of these "stills", since not all shots will look good with the same exact adjustments.

I hope that helps.
 
Neutral said:
So I'm wondering, what do professionals do to keep this from happening?
Click to expand...

They spend years getting good (or even great) at what they do. ;)

Just some basics off the top of my head.

1. You need to be in a controlled environment. For example, if you are in a room with windows then the amount (and color) of sunlight will change throughout the day and that will influence how you perceive the color of the images on your monitor.

2. The human brain is great at adapting, unfortunately that works against you while color grading. After 20-30 seconds you eyes will 'adapt' to the image on screen and correct it subconsciously (ex. if the image is too warm your brain will adapt so the white sheet in the picture starts to look white to you even though it's really yellow-ish). To counter act this you should aim to spend 30 seconds or less on a single shot before moving on to 'reset' your eyes.

3. If you are using a regular computer monitor or TV the colors will likely 'drift' over the course of a day (or many days) so the image on the screen will look different at 7pm than it did at 7am.

4. You are getting too granular with your changes (lots of masks, power windows, secondaries, etc.,). This is very hard to keep consistent from shot to shot and it sucks up a lot of time. When I first started grading full time (or at least most of the time) I typically used a primary grade and 3-4 secondaries on each shot (this was for a news magazine style TV show). After a couple of years I typically used a primary and maybe one secondary on each shot. As I became more experienced I became more efficient and learned how to get better results with less effort.

5. You probably don't spend enough time checking your work in real time. Do a few grades and then play it back at full speed. Do a few more and then play it back again. Checking your work often helps keep you from straying too far before you catch yourself.

6. What might be technically correct might not look right. Everything in the image is relative to what's around it. For example, a dark gray shirt in a sea of white might appear black (because it is so much darker than everything else) but if that same shirt is in a sea of black in the next shot it will look dark gray. Even if you make sure the shirt is the same shade of gray in both shots to the viewer it may look like a black shirt (gray shirt in a sea of white) suddenly turned into a gray shirt (gray shirt in a sea of black). To fix this, as the colorist, you have to change the shirt so that it looks like the same shade of gray in both the shots (even though the shirt will be one shade of gray in the first shot, and a different shade of gray in the second).


-Andrew
 
My approach for simple "bestlight" grades of a scene shot under consistent lighting and exposure:
First make a timeline with all of your shots to be used in the scene

1. Find the most challenging shot in the scene. The one with the highest dynamic range or mixed color lighting etc. Grade that to get as close as possible to the look you want.
2. Under the color menu "memories" item, save the grade to the first memory location.
3. Right click select all of the shots on the time line and load the saved grade to all. You may need to do some touch up some individual shots beyond that. Add another correction node so you don't mess with the base node. But if you were consistent in your exposures, you shouldn't need to do much.
 
Some available light stills from a casual party shoot. The only variable is camera aperture settings. Same bestlight grade applied to all. The first shot was the one used for grading.
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16359567829_be2bfac084_c.jpg

16481634966_f7d473db7a_c.jpg

16481635686_2bb5aa464f_c.jpg

16358375860_32e7df9c22_c.jpg
 
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