(upbeat music) - What's going on guys, this is Qazi. Welcome back to another epic video. Seven things I wish I knew
when I started color grading. And I'm telling you, this is genuinely a little over a decade worth of experience that I'm tripling into this one. So notepad is a must. And for those that haven't
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for more awesomeness. Make sure you're following us on Instagram and let's roll the infor. (upbeat music) - All right, let's get
the show on the road. First thing that I wish I
knew is getting your client involved early in the process. What do I mean by that? So let's create a hypothetical scenario. Here's our shot, this is a
program that we're working on. We wanna ask our client,
what are you looking for? What do you hope to
achieve from this grade? And the client goes something like this, they're like, we're
looking for more of a ESPN, 30 for 30 series trailer
where it's just grungy, and overall it has this warm
tint to the entire image, tons of grain, 16 millimeter film vibe, once you gather that
information it's game over. There was something that I
wasn't doing in the beginning, I would just like create my own grade and then flip the coin,
thinking that either the client is gonna love it or hate it. And that is the dead giveaway
that you're an amateur. So get your client involved
early on in the process. Now, number two, which
is the power of primaries this right here, this section. I feel like anybody that's
starting out including myself, I would just like to
over-complicate things instead of like simplifying it. And the more you learn
about color grading, which you realize is that
this right here is gold, and you have to take
full advantage of this before you move on to other tools. So let's put it into an example. So here's my first node, I'm just gonna call it primaries and what we're gonna do before we even start
working in our primaries let's lay out the entire
node tree structure. And then I'm not gonna tell you what's all these nodes are for, I'm gonna take you
through them later okay? So don't freak out this grade is not gonna be that complex, but we're gonna be using 10 nodes here. So now let's go on our 10th node, drop in the color space transform, and then select proper settings, which is Alexa and Alexa log C, because it was shot on Arri Alexa. And as soon as we do that,
we have a proper conversion, it looks pretty good right off the grade. So now we're in our primaries and let me show you the
power of primaries okay? So say we wanna make the
image a bit more neutral right now it's like really, really warm. So we wanna just pull
back from it a little bit. All I have to do here is
just go on through my gamma and start subtracting some of that warmth. And just look at that,
like how easy it was for me to balance out the image. And you can even see it here, you see the blue channel
to the red channel, and now we're balancing this image out. Now it's not necessary since
say these lights are warm so we can keep it like that, but, it's always a good rule of thumb to balance out your image. And there is no better tool out there than your primaries to do that. And just look how quick that was, let's say we wanna kinda
bring up this image because it's just kinda
dark, so it's really moody. So we can just use my
gain and bring it up, we don't have to bring it up too much. And then we can use my lift,
to kinda bring that down to still keep some of that drama. So I'm using my gamma now to pull it down. And if I do before and after, look at the amount of difference
that we made in our image, literally just using these
tools right here okay? So the power of the primaries is unreal, make sure you're tapping into that before you're moving on to other tools. Now we're gonna move into our next tool and I'm actually gonna just call my nodes, do what I'm doing and all
the steps of this process. So now let's just focus,
I'm gonna do a one-up, I'm gonna select vector scope, use your vector scope to
balance out your image okay? And I'm gonna undo this since I didn't make any changes here yet. Basically the rule of thumb is this, this intersection right
here in the middle, the closer you are to this, the more balanced your image is okay? And I'm gonna use my printer lights, this offset settings right here to dial my image more in the center. Right now it's still
leaning in this quadrant, so we let's just balance
it out a little bit more. So I'm gonna go under my printer lights, I'm gonna add a bit more blue and then subtract a little bit of yellow. Maybe just add just a tiny
bit cyan to bring it down and then let's just go half
printer light and let's see. If I take out the blue a little bit more and then let's see, do we
wanna add a bit more red? So that is up to us. We can leave it like this and look at how much more balanced it is. So like, look at how before we thought this was really good, right? Like, 'cause if I go here
and turn it on and off, we had already made such a big difference, but by using our vector scopes, it made it so easy to just make
our image actually balanced by looking at the scopes, okay? That's why it's really, really important and something that I didn't
use to do in the beginning, I wish I knew this technique that would have saved me so much hustle because when you're first
starting out as a colorist, majority of your jobs
are not gonna be like, hey, let's create, let's
try to tell a story through the art of color. It's gonna be more like
let's cover up these mistakes and just make everything look balanced. So, this would have been really valuable when I was starting out. Now let's move on to another
one of my favorite tools, which is this right here,
our log parameters okay? It's very different than
our lift gamma gain. So here, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna switch back to parade now. And what we're seeing at the
bottom here in the scopes is that my blues are really lifted and then my green and then my red. So, this tool right here helps
us balance everything out. So, just watch what's gonna happen, I'm gonna be messing around
with my shadows here. So all I'm doing is I'm
genuinely looking at my scopes and I'm trying to balance it out, okay? So I'm just like, all right, let's just get the blues, and the greens, and the reds on the same spectrum. And now what's gonna happen is if I go and do before and after
you can see it clearly I can punch in here. And if I do before, like look at the blue in his pants here to like after, and now it's way more neutral
and you can see it here. So like all that blue cast that we were getting in our
shadows is completely gone, the image is way more neutral. And it really affects the entire image not just that, like, even like his skin is looking better than before. See, like in this area, like this is before there's so much blue and we can see it here. Actually let's do this
so we can hover over and you can see it on the
scope, what I'm looking at. And then if I do this, like see how much more
neutral it is now, okay? So that's the power of your lock controls, and once again, I wish I knew to use it how I'm using it today. Back in the day I wasn't
using it to properly adjust my black and white points. That's not the only use
for the lock controls, but it is one of the most powerful tools to quickly balance out your shot, especially your anchors,
blacks and whites, okay? So the whites are looking
good, I'm not too mad about it, although I feel like this, right here, if I go to the whites right here, we do see that there's just a little bit more red than the blue. So what we can do is I
can go under my mid-tone and just pull up the
blue just a little bit. So something like that, right? Just a little bit like that. So now if I hover over,
we're very much even, and you can see it, see like all three. Like we're really, really
even okay, right there. So now I can just leave it like that, and if I do before and
after once again, guys, we're taking out the cast, we're just making the image
look really proper all right? And now this is what's
called your base grade. So this is what you wanna do. If you have 100 shots and you wanna start creating a really cool look
and grade it and all that. Before you get to grading one shot and then try to apply it
on all the other shots you wanna create a base
grade, which is this. So this looks neutral, this looks good. At this point, you can even
bring your client back in and show him this, he'll be like, hey, this is how it was shot in Rec 709. This is where we're sitting right now, and now I'm gonna go in and
start creating a look, okay? So up until this point, we made sure we get the most
colors out of our image, bring up the exposure, make
everything look proper. This is what you will need
to do to all 100 shots first, before you go in and
start grading it, okay? So, now let's move on, and this is where we
get into our fun stuff, which is the HSL curves. So here, what are we looking at? Remember our clients
said that they're looking for a little bit of a vintage look, right? So now what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna grab this right here, go in here and just open
it up just a tiny bit, and I'm in my hue versus hue. So what I'm gonna do is
let's try to make this a little bit smaller and let's go back to vector scope and let's keep it somewhere around here. So we can really see what I'm doing, maybe make it a little bit bigger, let's put it somewhere around here, good. All right, so now I'm in here okay? Look what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go in the middle point and I'm gonna start moving it, and again, going for that vintage vibe. So this blue is not as vintagey
to me than this, right? So that just adds just a tiny bit more. And it's just the small details that are really gonna bring
this whole thing together. So that's what I'm gonna do here. Next thing that I wanna do is I wanna go under my hue vs saturation, and I wanna just literally grab my yellow and I wanna start pulling it down. And it's gonna give us like this steely, like a little bit of a bleach bypass look like, look how clean
everything is looking, right? So it's gonna put us right there. And I like what it's doing okay? I really like what it's doing, and then the last thing that I'm gonna do to really cash out that
bleach bypass effect is go under the sat versus Luma and then grab it from here and raise it up and like, look at what it does. It like adds that silver-ish
quality to the footage. And then this brings our
highlights down, okay? So it does a little bit of damage control. And now all we can do is
go back to our primaries and take our mid-tones or take our gamma and just kinda bring it down
a little bit, not too much something like that. So look at HSL curves, how
much it affected our image. And this is where we started to have a lot of fun with our image. Just look at that, what we're
doing with our image okay? So, after this point
is where the experiment and fun begins. Because that was another thing when I was first starting out,
I wasn't very experimental because I didn't even know what to do, my knowledge was very limited. So, now let me show you, once you start having fun is where the look comes from, okay? So we're gonna go into glow, I'm gonna type in glow. I'm gonna drop it in and just look, I'm gonna change that to soft light. I literally stumbled upon
soft light by experimenting. This is how I figured out
about what soft light did. And now I'm just gonna grab the threshold and move it back. And once again, remember the client is looking for a very
dramatic, like a UFC trailer or a 3430 trailer look, okay? They made it very clear so we can be pretty bold with our moves. I'm gonna go under my blend and I'm gonna kinda split the difference and keep it somewhere around here. So look at, we don't even need to create power windows or anything. We're creating such a
cool vibe and mood here, but it gets better. Click on colorize and this is where we're gonna start bringing in. Remember they said they want
like a really warm feel. Just look at that, like this vintage feel, we were able to create boom, boom, just like through our glow effect. And what do we wanna do? Do we wanna like really push it a bit more like maybe we keep it
somewhere around here. I mean, just look at
the difference we made just with this node. None of this information is lost okay? I'm gonna go back in my four up and show you what I'm talking about. So let's make this a little bit bigger so we can actually go into our four up. And let's try to make it smaller, this is as small as it's gonna be. So let's put that there,
let's put parades here. Let's put wave forum here, this is great. So look at how we were
able to create that vibe yet everything is protected
nothing is blown out okay anything like that. Now what I can do is I can come in here and this is gonna be a
pretty cool effect okay? So I'm gonna go in my
mid-tone detail okay? And I'm gonna start cranking that up and look what's happening
around his shoulder area. Like how much detail we're
about to pop in this area. Now, I don't like what it
does to the rest of the image, so what we're gonna do,
we're gonna get very creative and we're actually gonna
create a shape around him, and then we're gonna
feather that out, okay? That is totally normal,
like adding texture is a whole another dimension
when it comes to color grading. Like colors are not the only thing that you need to put your focus on. You also need to think
about how to create texture in your footage, like
really make it stand out. Next thing that I'm gonna do, I'm actually gonna delete this node. I'm gonna go here and I'm
gonna create an outside node. So outside node is
basically, hey, leave this, but select everything outside of it. And now I'm gonna do something opposite to what we did there. I'm actually gonna add
blur, under my blur radius, and I'm gonna crank it up
to like around 55 ish okay? So you might think like, nothing
is really happening dude, but let me show you. Once we punch in here and
now if I do before and after, look at that, not only
is cleaning up the noise, but it's creating this
again really cool effect. So like if I take this
and turn it on and off, like, look at how much texture we added. Like his body, like this,
like the back muscles are popping out of the screen. We almost created that three dimension. And then look at like how we're
just taking the focus away from this right there okay? So that is a very, very cool effect and something that I use quite often. Now, what do we wanna do? I'm gonna go into this node so let's start naming these two. So this is mid-tone detail. And then this one was our
just blurring the background. And this one is going to be my grain. And once again, the set 16 millimeter like really grungy feel. So I'm gonna go select the archival or actually, you know what? Actually let's select the archival print. And now if I punch in and
show you what's happening. And then one thing that we
can do is we can go in here and just add a little bit
of saturation, not too much. And now if I do before and after
look how realistic it looks like it was shot that way. And the character that we
are adding to our footage is just absolutely unreal okay? And this is our CSD. So this is the, like
literally this right there that was supposed to
be our these four nodes that were supposed to be
our experimental node. This is where the grade comes
from guys, look at this. Like, I wouldn't have
found out about these until I started mess
around with these tools. And that's why experimentation, when it comes to color
grading is essential okay? For your growth and getting to a point where you become somebody's
go to guy or girl all right? So, just look at how much
of a difference we made. I had this node here for something, but I don't think I'm gonna be using that. I was gonna show you guys
that how color boost, you can add some color
instead of using saturation, you can use color boost
because the difference is that color boost pumps up a lot
of juice in your mid-tones instead of like your
highlights and shadows. Whereas the saturation is
just like a linear thing that adds overall saturation in your shadows, highlights, mid-tones. Whereas color boost is only
focusing on the mid-tones and you can see like all the detail that we're getting in this area, but honestly, with what we created, I don't think we need it. So I'm actually gonna kill this. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna put this on this level so we can like really
see the entire process. So I'm gonna take all of
these, let's kill them. And we started with the CSD, why is the CSD at the end? You can jump into my course or you can watch my free webinar to understand why I put it downstream instead of upstream, okay? So I go pretty deep and
explaining you the entire process and why it's at the end. So this is our Rec 709 phase, and the first step was we
got a good understanding of what the client wanted. Then we went in and we used our primaries to start creating color separation. And that's the best way to do it because you're not really
doing push and pull and degrading your footage. Then we went in to our vector scope and by using vector scope, we were further able to balance our image and create this color
separation, I mean, look at that, like up until this point is
sort of like a still a tent. And then after that, everything
is looking so much better. We used our log wheels to get
proper black and white points and that made a huge difference okay? So there is a blue cast in the shadows and we can see it in our
scopes too right here, and then we were able to balance that out. And then HSL curves really
helped, like curve this look like, where we started
driving this entire image into this vibe that we wanted to create. And then this is where the
experimentation started. We started with a glow and
just look at what it did, like one quick swing, boom, put us in the ballpark of
like what the client wanted and showed you a really cool technique to add texture to your
image by using mid-tone to like really pop out, because
that's the story, right? Like this is our dude. Like we need to focus on him and then took everything outside of that and just blurred it out to
like give this surreal look. And then added the grain
that the client requested 16 millimeter grain, pretty heavy, and just gives it that gritty feel. And now let's check out the
final look in full screen. (upbeat music) Hopefully you guys found
this video helpful. And honestly, these are probably the most practical tips
that I can give you and genuinely things that I wish I knew before I started color grading. So guys do not forget to
check out the special offer on the masterclass link is down below. And as I already mentioned, this masterclass is for people
that wanna be profitable as a filmmaker and
especially as a freelancer. So it's not just color grading
that we're talking about. We are talking about taking those skills and actually making money off of it and taking your career to the next level. So check out that link, make sure you smash that like
button subscribe to my channel for more awesomeness. And I will see you in the next video. (upbeat music)
