- What's going on, guys? This is Qazi, welcome to
another amazing video. This time, we're talking
about how to color grade a documentary. And this is a real world scenario
because this is a real job that I worked on. So I personally feel like
it's very important for me to bring on real work, because
then you actually get to see what goes behind the curtain. How did it actually happen? So let's start with, how
did I learn this gig? I was approached on Instagram,
obviously I tell you guys all the time, the power of Instagram and the power of social media period. So Bryce reached out to me,
funny story is that he reached out to me before this project
on a commercial and the timing just wasn't right, I was on other gigs, I couldn't take on the job. Then months later, he actually
reached out to me and said, "Hey, Qazi, I have this
documentary, would love for you to check it out." So he pretty much told me it
was a super low budget project, I was like, "Okay, let me think about it." And this leads us to our point number two. So this is something
that I touched base on in my live webinar last week. So in this case, service
exchange was that I wanna turn this transaction into a
win-win for both of us, so what can I ask for? So I reached out to Bryce and I said, "How about you give me
access to this footage so I can share it with
my masterclass members, they can practice along
in a real world scenario on a real project that's
shot professionally with high end cameras
and mixed format cameras? Different cameras so they
can apply shot matching and all these techniques
that they're learning in the masterclass?" He was open to it, he was
super generous about it. Let's move on to our point number three. So since there was no budget on this one, I wanted to set the expectations straight, I barely had any time
to jump on it anyways, so I told Brice, I'm like,
"Brother, I can only give you one day and it's going to be
a base grade because we have eight, nine minutes and
hundreds of shots to go through. I'm just gonna do my best to
make it look good without using Qualifiers or Windows and
raw doing and tracking and things like that,"
which he was open to, he was totally fine with it. Let's move on to our point number four. So the main camera was RED
Gemini, and then as a B-Cam, they were using Pocket
4K along with Mavic Pro and then they used GoPro. So there were four different cameras, completely different color
sciences, let's move on to our point number five,
which is post workflow. And for this one, we went
with the bacon blade, and for those that are
part of my masterclass, they know exactly what that is. My first module is conform and
I talk about round tripping and bacon blade process. So basically here, you ask
your client to give you a cleanout, which is,
take the graphics off, take anything super
imposed or whatever you did in Premiere Pro or Final Cut
10, take all those effects off and then export a high-res. So in this case, I asked
him to do a ProRes 444 with flat profiles. So guys, I wanna take a moment
to tell you, two days left to sign up for my masterclass, this project is going to
be added to my masterclass along with my project files,
so you can actually deconstruct like, look at my node tree
and see what's happening and then rebuild your own grade
on this particular project. But let's check out what's included in the masterclass real quick. It's the ultimate roadmap that
takes you through every step of the color grading process. The masterclass contains
25 hours of lessons, 150 plus videos, almost a hundred gigs worth of professionally shot footage for you to practice with,
free LUTs and PowerGrades, 30% off on any FilmConvert products, and you get free access
to the Mastermind group, where we hold weekly competitions, you get TaylorMade feedback
and a chance to win $1,000 cash prize. I'm so confident that
I'm throwing in a 30 day money back guarantee if
you're not satisfied. We have over 1,600 members
in FCM in just about a year, click the link and sign up
right now, enrollment ends soon, and I will see you in the masterclass. And guys, if you're enjoying the content, you know what to do,
subscribe to my channel if you haven't already,
follow me on Instagram, value bombs are being
dropped every single day, let's roll the intro. (upbeat music) All right, guys, so let's
get this show on the road. This time, I'm gonna try out
having this camera up here on the corner while we go through it. So it's a little bit more personable, and then because this is a
breakdown, I wanna take moments to talk to you and then go
back and then talk to you and just take it from there. So like I said, this was
a bacon blade process, which actually means is
that I got this one file. So I'm gonna push this
over so you guys can see what's going on. This is what I got from the
client, it's a cleanout, so it's ProRes 444 23976, and
this is the resolution, okay? So that's what I got, what
I did is right click on it and say, scene cut detection, and then went through the process. And once you do that,
you end up with this. So the file name you can
see is still the same, but then resolve this
smart enough to break it up into different clips. So once you have all of
this, then what you wanna do is just select all your
clips, all of them, and then right click and say,
create timeline, new timeline. So that's what happened. And then once we have that
all set up and ready to go, you go in your edit, you just
make sure that when you do a playback, everything is
where it's supposed to be, and everything is good to go. So I obviously had a reference over here, so I just made sure everything matched up, everything was good to go,
and then I just went ahead to my color page and started grading. So I'm gonna take my timeline
all the way to the top and basically, the first
thing that I can recommend you guys do is click on the Lightbox Mode, and that's a pretty good one. So I'm gonna push this over a little bit, so we can just focus on
what's happening here and then I'll bring it in
when we need the scopes. So the Lightbox Mode is that
big because first of all, you can control it, how
small you wanna make it, or how big you wanna make it, and you get tons of
information in a snapshot. So if I put it somewhere around here and then this little i
guy, if I click on that, it gives me all the information,
like many different things and I can take you through
it what's happening. So it tells me the clip Kodak
that I'm using, it's giving me a full count, so I have
about 130 shots or 129 shots that I have to go through. And this is a very cool way
to just get a gist of what you got going on. So even if we take the look
off and let me just do that, so I'm gonna go ahead and click right here and just say update, and
then it should update to how I got the project. So, this is what I had, this
is what I was looking at and I'm going, okay. So the first thing that I do
is besides watching it through, so obviously first time, watch
it through and just let it start swimming in that
Kool-Aid, but then afterwards, I would come out here in this
mode and I just look at it and I go, what do I got? So I have these shots that
go together minus this one, so these two, and these guys, then this one is in the same family, then we got the talking head
and there's two cameras. So we got a RED Gemini
here, we got Pocket 4K here. So we got two different
cameras, so there's gonna be some challenges there to really nail the shot matching process. So this is what we got going on, and then we can obviously
see that some are shot with a different camera,
like look at this. So this is obviously Rec. 709. So this is shot with a DJI Mavic Pro, so we have to keep that in mind. So this is what we got going
on, so we can look at it and start assessing, how
are we going to attack this? So there's these road shots
like from here, from 20 to 23 or 26, actually. So this whole sequence is a road sequence. Because like I said,
for this particular job, I didn't have a lot of
time, so I did went ahead and create groups and did all that. So I basically started with a base grade and then kept coming
back and did more passes and more passes, and you
guys know how big I am when I talk about stacking your images. So let's just jump right
in and let me show you what happened. So I started with the talking head. So the first shot that I
graded was this right here. And I'm gonna turn all this
off, and then I'm gonna turn one on, one note at a time, so you guys can see what's happening. And this entire thing is
built on the 2383 LUT. So that's Kodak film
emulation that I'm using, so it's this guy right
here and I can turn it on and you can start seeing what it's doing. So this is before, and it
is in Red Wide Gamut G10, this is what we're
working with, the image. And then once I drop my LUT
on, Kodak film emulation 2383, it gives us this. So I really like the
colors and what it does and how good the skin
looks and everything. So it's giving us call it like a base, it's giving us a good starting point, and the reason why I'm
keeping my LUT at the end is that I do not wanna
contaminate my look. So I don't want anything
to happen after the LUT. This is really going to help us with different camera footage. So once we get all of this
under control with our primaries and everything, we will
always have a blanket, we will always have a look DNA at the end. So we will know for a fact that
which tunnel it's going out through, and it's this look
DNA that we have embedded right here. So this is really important to understand. So then I left that there and
I went back into my primaries and most of the magic
is just done right here. So it's Lift Gamma Gain
action, you can see the changes that I'm making a little bit
there, a little bit here, a little bit there, but I'm
gonna do this so you can see a little bit of changes
there, barely touching this, quite a bit of a change here,
and then just my contrast and my pivot. So that's what's really
going on to give us this, somewhat of a natural look. And then I went in here
and started creating a little bit of a look, if you will. And again, that is just happening
with my majority is like Lift Gamma Gain, I mean,
again, barely touching this, barely touching that, but then
I did go into my log wheels and started really getting experimental. So I'm pushing this quite a
bit, but I'm really pushing that like, look at where this wheel is sitting and then what's happening here. So I was pushing that quite
a bit, really get the results that I was looking for, and it did that. So it just really started
creating like a film look. And then I went into this
layer and it's called glow, but that's not what I ended up doing. So here again, I'm just fighting
some Lift Gamma Gain again, to pull back all the
extra green that I added. I feel like it was seeping
a bit too much into the skin and everything, and you
can clearly see that. Like in this area right
here and under the shadows and all these areas right
there, it was getting in there a bit too much. So I went back, balanced it
out, and then this was like our obviously sharpening
grain and noise reduction, the usual suspects. And this was our look
for this particular shot and I'm gonna turn the sound
off so when we do a playback, you can just focus on what we created. So ultimately it looked
really, really good, skin looked great, and then
I just stuck with it and ran with that particular look. And then I'm gonna take you through, and then for the Blackmagic, it was a little bit challenging,
there was a bit more that I had to do because look
after the LUT how different it is to where this was before the LUT. So it's really funny. So this is sitting right
here and this is sitting right here, so they're
not necessarily close after the LUT. But let me just turn these on. But then I went ahead and did my primaries and did quite a bit and again,
just our simple Lift Gamma had to push it quite a bit
and then gain a little bit just to get that red out, and
then obviously a little bit of contrast and then pull the
saturation back a little bit, because I noticed that Blackmagic just inherently has more
saturation than Alexa or RED. And then went in and did a
similar treatment to what I did with the previous shot,
like get that green in, and it just gives it a
really nice film look and everything looks
really good, but again, it does a bit too much,
it's really heavy handed with that green look. So then I went back and brought
my warmth back a little bit and all of a sudden, his
skin started looking clean. And then this was the real magic. So this was something that
I didn't have to deal with on the RED but here,
the highlights were just not desirable, and that's the problem with these cheaper cameras. Like yes, Blackmagic is
a really amazing camera, but there was a reason why
RED and Alexas cost so much. Higher end cameras are higher
end cameras for a reason. So here, I had to do that
extra damage control, and after that, it was pretty good. Like we were pretty close,
and I was happy with it, the client was happy with it. And then after that
shot, I went back to this because first shot was challenging
and it was shot matching and there was too many
elements that was going on, and one pro tip that I would
give you is that anytime you're in that situation, it's
not a bad idea to start off, maybe start off with a challenging shot but then right after that,
treat yourself and go work on something that you
know is gonna give you that instant gratification. And that really helps you
stay motivated, stay pumped throughout the job. So then this is how I break it up. So I do like one challenging
one and then one rewarding one, one fun one, and then
one challenging, one fun. So that's how I play it. So like I said, it's a
prototype if you really let it sink in and think about
what I'm just saying, and it can really help
with your mental stamina because as a colorist,
it can get really crazy, like you're just looking at these Hues and a little change can
become such a huge change, and your mind will start
playing tricks on you, and maybe there are things that you think that looked perfect and then you walk away, you
come back and you're like, what were you thinking all that? You guys know exactly
what I'm talking about if you guys have graded professionally or not even professionally,
just like your projects in Final Cut 10, Premiere
Pro, whatever have you. So this one was a lot of fun, but the approach was very
surgical on this one. So again, we're dropping in our look DNA, and then I'm going in and
I'm doing my Lift Gamma Gain, but majority of it just
got done right here. So I'm gonna take you through and show you what I mean by that. I mean, just look at it, right? Barely touched the Lift
a little bit of Gamma, but then tons of work in the
gain section and then contrast, but just look at how much
of an impact it's making. I mean, we're there, we
created this separation, so I wanted my shadows to be giving them that complementary color against the rock, like they really stand out and
then went into my log wheels. And with the log wheels, I don't think I, no, I don't even think I
touched my log wheels here. And then went into my Hue vs Saturation. But again, like even
here, I just didn't end up doing anything. So basically what this means
is that I played around with it, but then realized
that it wasn't necessary, I didn't have to do it,
so I just moved along. The reason why you see these
empty nodes is because you guys know I'm a huge fan of
having a standardized node tree structure per project basis, and that way, it's really easy. Like if I wanted to go in here now, I could've easily grabbed
the highlights and took it in any way or shape form, like I want it. So I could have easily done
that, that's why I like to have these available. And then even the glow one,
but didn't really end up using it. So just look at how simple
that node tree is, one node, that's it. So that whole look here is
created just with these two, boom and we're done, and then
obviously noise reduction for our finishing touches,
and then I did a sharpening in grain. But this is the look right
here, so if I pause it right here, just look at
before and after and how strong of a look it is, but how just
it was done Lift Gamma Gain guys, I mean, this is what
I'm trying to tell you, how powerful those tools are. And then let's go to our first shot. That's the first shot in the movie, so I really wanted to
have solid impact here. So, I did give it a little
bit more love and it needed a little bit more love to
this, let's check it out. So this is what we have,
once you drop the light, the white balance is off. So then I'm like, okay, no problem. I went in and then just, I mean, come on, look at it. I'm doing this with Lift Gamma Gain. I'm gonna show you,
there's some other stuff that's going on here too,
but this time I went heavy. So look at these numbers,
they're heavier than what's been happening so far in that project. So I'm really pushing
it to get the red out, but then still wanna make
sure that I keep my rocks where they're supposed to be. Did barely any contrast,
like barely touched it. And then let's see if I did
anything in the log wheels. Nope, nothing in the log wheels. And then I did... Is that the only thing that I did? Yeah. Just did Hue vs Hue just a little touch, a little nudge, and that was that. And then went back and
took the saturation off. So really that's the
only thing that happened, just brought it down to 40
from 50, and let me go here and see what happens. So, here's where I picked out the rocks, I qualified my rocks just by
using the luminance values, so I'm trying to keep it really
clean because once again, I told Bryce that I don't
have time to jump in and do too much. So, I wanted to do everything
that was just very, very, again like surgical, but
at the same time, broad. So, look at how much of
a difference it's making. So if I wouldn't have
done that, look at the sky and then with that, what
it does, it just turns it into an HDR image. And then look at what
it does to the rocks. So, that color in the rocks
came in with a little bit of love right here, a little
bit of love right there, a little bit of love right here. So just again, a simple
Lift Gamma Gain operation and got that dialed in. And then this is for this area right here. So I just really wanted to create, basically what I did is just
created a circle or an oval and then tracked it. So pretty simple, tracked it right there and then just went in and
started giving it tons of juice and started pushing it, and most of the push came
from contrast and pivot right here. And then just a little
bit a Hue vs Hue action and then you can just see the result, like it just adds so much life. So it just saturates
everything and just makes it really, really HDR looking. So if I do before and after
and it's unbelievable, if you don't know that this
is what I'm doing here. So, that's pretty much it,
then the usual suspects. And then if I make it
bigger and you guys can see the look that we ended up with, I mean, just we really practice
or I should say exercise what RED has to offer. I'm really doing a hardcore
push and pull there. This was a very good one to go through, so basically, I'm gonna bring
my scopes back in so you guys can see what's going on. So this is sitting on the
dark side, on the darker side, so when I dropped a lot, you
can see what's happening. And maybe it's the time of day,
and then it's totally fine, but I still wanted to have it
match with everything else. So I went in and just look at it. I mean, this is what
I'm trying to tell you. Majority of this action has
done with Lift Gamma Gain, so a little bit of lift,
a little bit of gain, brought up the gain, a
little bit of contrast, but then went in and did a Hue vs Hue. So just brought these up a
little bit and that helped quite a bit. And that's about it. I mean, it was just that,
and it put me in the world where I wanted to be, and I
didn't touch as you can see, log wheels were untouched. So look at how much of
a difference it made, but it just gives it that
clean holiday postcard look, and it's just so stylized, yet it just feels like it belongs. So I ran with that there. And then I wanna show you this one too, because these could get very tricky, because clouds break apart very easily, and look in the parade and in the scopes, where it's sitting. So, people sometimes feel
lost when they see a shot like that and they're
like, "What do we do now? Because we don't really have a reference." 'Cause if you look at the adjacent shots, we got this guy right here,
then we got this guy right here. So if you look at these,
you're like, what am I supposed to make of it, and what am
I supposed to do with this? So again, our look DNA
is sitting right there, so that's looking good,
but still really lifted and you know what to do. So this is what I ended up
doing, just took the liberty and just made him silhouette, why not? I mean, he's against
the clouds and if clouds is the light source, then
anything under that light source is going to be back-lit and
it's gonna be a silhouette. So that's what I ended up
doing, and if you look at it, same action, Lift Gamma Gain operation, just to get the colors right, contrast pushed it quite a bit. I mean, 1.4 is quite a bit push. And then with the Lift Gamma
Gain, these were important. So I wanna show you like, look
where the lift is sitting, so it's little bit to
the right and the bottom, right and down, and then
if you look at the gamma, it's up and over to
the right a little bit, and then gain is a little toward the blue, and that's what's really
creating the separation and just look at how much,
like we're getting the clouds we've been seeing in other
shots, and then it separates just by creating a color
separation, we're adding sort of a contrast through
color, color contrast. And then obviously the
actual contrast helps too and then as you add more
contrast, it saturates the image and then this is what we end up with. So there's so much variation,
but because it's RED, man, this thing is a beast, it just holds up, I mean, look at this. It's holding up really well
and this is what we ended up here with, and it was just beautiful. It worked out perfectly. So now, I wanna move on to this shot which was a pretty tricky
one because it just... If you look at it, it's so dark. And if I put on my LUT, it's like this, so then what do you do? And I wanted to go for that
joker, interrogation scene or joker, the typical joker
green with that orange. So I wanted to go with
that, but then still keep the skin tones looking natural. So that's what I ran with
it, from this to that, and wanted to just keep it in that world. I'm like, let's just hold
it, let's run with it. And that's all that happened
here because if you can see, the rest is just Lift Gamma Gain. So you guys are picking up a pattern, what I'm putting down, right? So when you look at the
film, it looks beautiful, it looks great, and that's
what my message is here that you don't have to over-complicate it. That said, if I would have
had an extra day or something, or if it was a bigger budget
project like yes, sure, I would have created a
bunch of other Windows and popped certain items
and things like that but in this case, it just
wasn't really necessary. It's shot really beautifully,
and once I had a game plan, I just ran with it and it all worked out. So look at this shot, let's
just really quickly go through this too. So we have our LUT, cool,
this is what it looks like and then here, not only
I use my Lift Gamma Gain to just get some of those
colors from the previous shot, then I wanted to get
experimental and I went into my Hue vs Hue and
I just really wanted to look at what's happening in the fire. And I wanted to create
this nice color contrast between the flames that's happening here. But that happened through Hue vs Hue, a little shift right here
and it gives us this color, than what we had before,
and it just creates tons of different color
variations within the same shot, and it just looks really cool. So again, just one node did
all that and then boom, boom, these are extra, and then
we're done with this shot, moving on to the next
shot, and we just go on. For these shots, I didn't
wanna spend too much time and just get really crazy
with this whole sequence, so what I ended up doing is
obviously dropped on our LUT and I'm like, what can we do? How can I make it look really
interesting, really fast? And the thing is, let's
create this color contrast where we have a little
bit of teal, not too much, just a tiny bit of teal on the lower mids, and then we take the top end and push it toward that salmon. So sun is coming out, it's
really nice and just give it that moody feel. And that's what I ended up going with. So look at how boring it would have been if I wouldn't have done anything
with that, but with that, it just makes such a big difference. And let's just talk
about how I achieved it. So contrast, barely touched
it, didn't really push it too much, Lift Gamma Gain,
that's where it happened. So like I said, I brought
in the teal, pulled it up, like in my gain to get that
salmon action going on, and then let's see if I did
anything in my log wheels. I didn't do anything in my log wheels. So again, you're seeing the
power of Lift Gamma Gain and what can be done just by using that. I mean, that's it. So this is what happened
here, and then we moved on and then even for the interior shots, I wanted to match that. So when we're going from here to here, and obviously I'm creating that
because that doesn't exist. I mean, it looks like this. So I'm really creating
that to carry it over even through the window
and all that stuff. And then I'm grabbing my
highlights with the Luma Qualifier and it's really clean, and
then I just bring it down, I just bring it down a little
bit, I'm sure I'm using my highlights, and look how
gentle and what kind of job it does! Look at the scopes before,
they're not clipping, but all bunched up in
one area and then boom, it just opens it up, and like now all of a
sudden we start to see all these different variations. So that's what happened
here, a little bit of love and then moved on and then this one, I just really had to bring
it up so we can actually see the people in the picture frames. And let's move on to this
shot, one of my favorite shots in the movie, it just looks so gorgeous. And again, when you see how
easy it was to achieve it, it's gonna blow your mind. So let's kill all this,
started with the LUT, actually, so started with a
LUT and look how red dominant this image is. We can see it in the vector
scope, we can read it and we're like, what is going on here? So I went in and boom,
just temperature or tint, it just really get that
cast out and it give it a really cool look and then a quick Lift
Gamma Gain operation, so not even gamma, just
like lift, pulled it down a little bit and then gain
just kept it up a little bit, and let's see this. Obviously actually brought my
contrast down to just open up the image a little bit because
it was a bit too crunchy and that's we ended up with. So just look at how powerful
this was, like boom, just one node right here and
then obviously these are just the standard Lift Gamma Gain or the finishing tools right here. So this one was so much fun, look at it. So this is before, this is
after and just playing off of different tonalities in the shot. So we got this green against these rocks. So what can we do? How can we create color
separation that's native? That belongs? Like it's not like a teal
and orange, teal and orange, but it kinda is teal and orange. And that's why it's so
important to understand how complimentary colors
work, because you can use them in any and everywhere. So when people just roll
their eyes and they're like, I'm out, I'm not team
teal and orange, well, this is how the world is. We got rocks that are that
orange, and then we got trees to compliment that. But camera's not seeing it like that, I mean, it's like this, and then obviously I can white balance it and everything, but it will never get here
unless I do what I did to get it here. And it's just like little
nudging, little pushing, and then you get something
really, really beautiful and that's why I'm all about
simplifying the process and then go in and give it
more juice if you have the time and the budget. Let's move on to the shot. There are so many great
shots that you're gonna keep hearing me say, this is my favorite shot, this is my favorite shot,
this is my favorite shot. So this is also one of my favorite shots. And when you drop on a
LUT, it looks like this, nothing wrong with it, but
nothing too special about it. And then I went in and
again, temp tint action to start with, and that
just put me in that ballpark and then went in and did
my contrast and then pivot, went heavy on the pivot on
this one too, and then a simple Lift Gamma Gain operation. So lift, gamma and moved
it over quite a bit, you guys can see, and then
in the gain just raised it up a little bit. So, did quite a bit in the gain territory. But then just look at,
like from here to here, I could have parked it
here and it would have been a beautiful image, it's perfect. Like there's absolutely
nothing wrong with it. Look how gorgeous the skin is! So then I'm like, what else can we do? So then I went in here,
Luma Qualifier, and boom, just grab my skin or grab
the background, my sky, and then boom, did that, like just a simple two-step-process. So it took my highlights and
brought it down quite a bit, was very aggressive about
it and then took my gain and brought it down just a
touch to give it this nice blue that we're playing off of. And just look at how it all of a sudden becomes green screen. It just pulls our guy out so freaking much and then all of a sudden,
we just go from this to that and it's just so cinematic. So this is before, and then this is after, that's what we ended up with. And again, simple operation. I mean, you guys are picking
up what I'm putting down here. So moving on, I wanna show you another one of my favorite shots, this guy right here. Oh man, it's just such a, like I said, the cinematography on this
is just out of control. So let's break it down. Here is our LUT and this
is what it looks like. So once again, temp and tint went back in and balanced everything
out with temp and tint, but then went in with my
contrast, adjusted that and did a little bit of work
on lift, actually quite a bit. And then went into my gain, lifted up. Another pattern that you
guys are picking up is that Lift Gamma Gain is the dance. So you pull one down, you
raise the other one up to make up for what you did here. But that result is not the
same, result is very different. So here, we're raising this up. So we're introducing a
little bit nice magenta or salmon tones in my colors but then when we pull
this down, we introduce these teal tones in the shadows. So we're creating that
complimentary color scheme, but at the same time,
because the push and pull is happening relatively in the same world, it's keeping everything looking realistic, if that makes any sense. But it will make more sense
as we look at what else is happening here. So then, I went into my
highlights and pulled the sky down quite a bit. And basically, this movie
or this documentary, I'm really taking a Roger Deakins approach and Mitch Paulson, who's
Roger Deakins' colorist, and I'm really taking that
approach and keeping everything in this sort of world. We're not going past that,
I'm really keeping everything way under like 1,000 mark right here. So I'm not clipping the top. So if I do this, boom, we're
doing that, looks poppy, but it looks digital. This looks very much like film, and when you're working
with the 16 bit image, like RED Gemini, why not
take advantage of it? So here, this is a really
cool technique that I used and this was... Let me see. So yeah, it's basically D.
Hayes and it's created... It's not even D. Hayes,
it's like a plugin. Like I ended up just
doing the same technique that I showed you earlier. So, create an oval,
feathered it out quite a bit, and then just went in and
did a Hue vs Hue action to make the forest richer. So, added some deep green in
there, and that also breaks up the monotony of the same Hue. So that helps with that,
makes it visually pleasing. But then went in and did
quite a bit of a contrast and then a lift and gain. So just worked on that a
little bit and just look at the difference that it
makes if we go right here. Let me just turn these on too. So now if we go here and I
hide this and if I do before, so just look at this, what
we were able to create and then just even look
at all these colors, you're like, man, how
is this even possible to get all these colors? And that's the beauty of
working with a camera like RED, that you'll surprise
yourself when you start doing push and pull. And that's why it's really
important to have access to a footage like this, so then when the real job
comes, you know exactly what to expect. So for me to have over a
decade worth of experience working with RED and Alexa
and all these cameras, it really comes in handy
when I'm just like, okay, I know, I know,
I gotta do X, Y and Z, and I know what I can achieve. Like I have an idea. And for this picture,
for this documentary, no reference images, nothing, these are all just original looks. These are just all original
looks, I'm creating them, I'm inspired as I go. And then once I developed
a look in the beginning, I just stuck with it and then
just kept going back and forth and kept massaging it, that kind of thing. So even in this shot,
a lot of these things like the highlights and
this right here came after. So this was the look, I was
here and then I moved on. I'm like, this is good, let's move on. And then on my second pass,
I came back and I'm like, hold on a second, let's
work on it, let's massage it a little bit more and then
I came back and did that. So what else can I show you guys? Okay, this is a good example too. Actually you know what? Let me do this one. This is close to the other
shot that I showed you, but again, it's gonna be very powerful. So look at, after the LUT,
this is what we're looking at. So the LUT didn't really, the LUT is not, if somebody
is out there is like, hey, Qazi, you're working with a LUT. I mean, what's so special
about what you're doing? You guys are obviously seeing the LUT is not really doing much. I mean, it's a look DNA that
activates after I put on my own look. So here once again, no
temperature control used here, just a tint and I'm taking
it to 19 to add a little bit more magenta in there,
because if you remember, this is a little bit
more on the green side and you can see it right here. So then when I add a
little bit more magenta, it cancels that out, and
then I just went in and good old Lift Gamma Gain,
but I'm aggressive with it. So look how far I'm pushing this down, and then I'm pushing the gain
up in the opposite direction to this, you see, this is the
dance that I'm talking about. And then in my gain, I just
raise it up very conservatively and then keep it somewhere around there, even the contrast is pretty low key, I'm not going really heavy on that. So, that's what happened here
but again, you guys remember the salmon with the little teal action that I was talking about? That's being created. So if I make it bigger
and you look at the road, it's a really film-make
looking road, right? This is what we see in
movies, you can think of like "No Country for Old Men", the road, the asphalt looks so rich. And I was just able to
create that with one node and Lift Gamma Gain. And then I was countering
that for my highlights to add that salmon, to create that
drama, because without it, it's just boring. But then with this, you all
of a sudden, it's just like, wow, it was so cinematic. And then adding the school bus yellow, you guys know I'm just
fascinated by yellow, it's in my logo, just it's my life. And I like this rich orangish yellow, like a school bus yellow,
so I brought that in here and it just gives us another pop. And then I made sure that my
highlights stay really crispy and I did that there. So when you put all these
elements in and again, happening in one node, and
then here, we just added a little bit more saturation
because when I was here, just in context with everything
adjacent to this shot, I'm like man, it's still
missing something, what is it? And saturation was the answer here. So guys, it's all of it. So there's just all, your brain needs to be
processing all of it at 110% at all times, turbo boost
needs to be turned on while you're grading and
it just needs to stay on because trust me, you will
forget the smallest things all the time. So you'll forget to use
saturation, you'll forget, or when to use or when you
need it and you'll just get tunnel vision. I mean, you're gonna
be looking at something and you're like, man, what is it missing? And you're gonna go overdo
things like Hue versus options, this and that, but here, just
the results and the answer was right in front of me. Like let's just crank up
the saturation and see if that does anything. And you can see it, like look
at the yellow, what it did, look at the lights, what
it did to the lights, look at the separation that
is creating between my truck or my van and that foliage in the back, and then just look at the
separation that it's creating between these rocks and
the foliage back here, and then the clouds or
the sky with the trees. So all that, just a little
pop, just a tiny bit of pop. And if you guys can definitely
watch this video in 4K, I upload all my videos in 4K, so you're really gonna be
able to see all these nuances that we're talking about. YouTube is getting really
good at their compression, so I can't just throw them under the bus, I feel like they're getting
really, really good with that. So you guys should be
able to see these nuances. And then this is what we ended up with, so let's just play it. This is what we have and
then this is what we created. So again, so cinematic, just
look at layers on layers on layers. So it's looking so good,
that's what we did here. So let's move on to this shot right here. And it just looks,
again, it's just so HDR, is like wow, it looks so good. So I'm gonna turn everything
off and let's start with a LUT, and this is our LUT and
then we go in and work on our primaries in here, let me see. So we didn't really do any
temperature or tint and basically contrast, a little bit of a pivot and then Lift Gamma Gain operation. So hold the lift down a
little bit and then move, nudge the gamma over to
yellow, and then kept my gain, I actually raised it up a
little bit towards that salmon. And then obviously really
went aggressive on the gain and then pulled the gamma
down quite a bit to create that contrast, and then... So this one Lift Gamma Gain, I
actually went pretty hardcore on these, to be honest with you. So that's what happened
here to create this, and it gave me pretty much
most of what I was looking for, but then when I got here
again, this was my first pass, this was good, we moved
on, everything was good. But then for my second pass,
I came back and I'm like, man, what else can we do? So I went here and I did this. Basically Luma Qualifier, grabbed
it and then pulled it down and then went right
here into my highlights and pulled it back quite a
bit and then went into my gain and just moved it over to that blue, like cyanish blue right
there, and then that basically gave us, I'm gonna hit Shift
+ H so you guys can see, I mean, that gave us this, that gave us, I mean, this might as well be
like I just gained two stops minimum, right? Two stops of dynamic range,
I just brought it back. So that's the thing guys,
that you need to understand. So many people out there are just like, it's really easy to work with RED and it's really blah, blah, blah? It's not because if you
don't know how to do this, you're not gonna be doing this. So let's not fool yourself,
you still have to learn the art of color grading to understand
what you're looking for and what you're gonna be getting. So the tip of the iceberg is
like, oh, I can get 16 stops or 14 stops, so that's just the beginning. But then the depth of what
color grading process contains, like knowing different cameras, how much can you push and pull each one? How can you match them? It just goes on for days. So that's why I never
minimize when you see somebody put out really beautiful
imagery with RED and Alexa, don't just roll your eyes
and go that I can do that, there's still, that's a
lot that's going into it to get what they can come up with. So that's what happened here,
and then this is the thing. So once I have this sky in, now basically, I'm like "sky replacing". And then once I have the sky
in, now I have to continue this theme from shot to shot. So I'm gonna show you other shots, like where we just
basically, it never let off, like I just had to then keep
the sky in all of my shots. And let's move on to say
this one and let's kill it and then see what we got going on. So this one is also one of
those shots that were RED Gemini really comes in clutch
because for it to have all that dynamic range and
big depth really helps. So this is what my LUT
and then went in here and did my Lift Gamma
Gain, no temp or tint here and pushed my contrast quite
a bit here and then gain, a little bit, and then gamma
went hard here, and then gain went hard here to create that separation. And then once I did that,
once again for my second pass, I went in and just look
at that, I mean, come on, just look at how much we
were able to pull back before, after. So all that information is there, I'm not adding anything to it. Look at it here and look at it there. That's why it's really important
to work with Red Wide Gamut and that specific secret
source that I talk about because it gives you so much
freedom to create images like that, where you can
do that, like go from here, you're creating something like this. And then that's what
we ended up with here. And overall, you guys can
still see, I'm still keeping the entire operation really, really lean. And let's see. So I'm not gonna show you this one, this one is a pretty good shot as well, and then like I said,
that theme continued. So in all these shots, I'm
pretty much just sky replacing, I'm just grabbing the sky and
then getting it in that world for it to match. So all of these, right? So it's like then, that theme was just in, like I just really owned
it and I just ran with it. This is a pretty good one,
so let's break this one down. Here's the LUT, and then here
are my primaries and I think I am, no, I'm not, no temp
tint here, I lifted my shadows and I brought down my
highlights and that effect is really powerful if
you have a shot like this and you wanna create somewhat
of like an HDR effect, it can really help you do that. Play around with it, get comfortable and you'll get some insane results. Contrast, I pushed it
quite a bit in this one and then again, Lift Gamma Gain
actually went really heavy. So look at this, I'm really
pushing the lift and then gamma, adding more yellow, but
pushing it quite a bit and then gain again,
raising it and bringing the y value down to keep some
of the highlights protected. But again, that was my first
pass, and then I went back with my second pass and just
look at it, I mean, come on. So look right here what's
happening, and then boom, what we're doing and how
much we're protecting, and that's all happening
with our highlights just really pushing it back and then gain, pulling the gain down and then Hue vs Hue just to give the rocks the
love that they deserve. And then with that, come
on, you get what I'm saying? So that was just that,
those were the two nodes that were used to create the look, and then this was the before
and this is the after. So, look at with my Lift
Gamma Gain, how many colors I'm creating here, right? 'Cause this can very easily be
just like a wash, like a tint because there's lens flare
coming in and all that. But no, I refuse to do that. So I'm giving my rocks
the colors that I want, and then that's contrasting
teal and orange, that is contrasting with
this green that I'm creating in my lower mids. And then when I picked my
Luma Qualifier and picked my highlights in my sky and
when I did the sky replacement, I then added a lot of, injected
a lot of blue in there, like a cyan blue to just
give it another color to just stack it on top,
so it's all stacking. And that's what we ended up with. So was very, very happy about this. Then even in this shot. So if I were to show you
this particular shot, I'm not gonna spend too much
time on it, but this one was pretty challenging too,
because the sun is going down and the image is just looking blur, there's just not much going on. So then in here, I create
that drama in contrast and really do a crazy push
and pull, like I can show you right here, so going pretty
extreme with my contrast, like I said, anything close
to 1.5 is really pushed, this is 1.4 and then doing a lot with my Lift Gamma Gain too. So even crushing my Gamma
even more lifting my lift a little bit and then
pulling my gain down to keep some of the overall highlights in control. But that was my first pass
and came back and I did that, again, like sky replacement. Went back and just grabbed it
and did a little bit of sure. So here, I did not do Hue vs Hue, it was just like Qualifier
Luma, picked my highlights and then went in and
actually went ham right here. So did a lot in my gain and created that. And again, just adding an
additional color to create some visual interest. And then all of a sudden, the
shot just doesn't look dull or boring. And that's what we ended up with here. And then guys, honestly,
this is my favorite shot of the entire film. This is the third time I said this is one of my favorite shots, but
I'm not saying one of, this is actually, period,
this is my favorite shot, not one of, this is my favorite shot for so many different reasons. So first of all, let's
take it and break it down. So this is my LUT right
here, I'm gonna to park it somewhere around here. So that's my LUT right there. And then I went in and
did my Lift Gamma Gain and again, no temp or
tint, just a good old, barely did any contrast, just went heavy with my Lift Gamma Gain. So with Lift, I'm pulling it
down a little bit with my gain, I'm just bringing it down,
I'm keeping it in the center and I just brought it down. And then in my gain, I moved
it into that salmon world a little bit, not too much. And just look at it, it's so beautiful. And then in here, did a little
bit of a Hue vs Saturation, brought the red down because
the red was getting a bit more, a bit nuclear and then raised
the overall saturation, but then again brought the red down. So that dance, that's another one. So you're just like, dude, you're raising the global saturation but then you're pulling some
saturation, what's going on? So you gotta fill it out. It comes with experience, but
it was very important here to do that. But guys, look at how 3D this image is and it was just created
with really two nodes and then the third one was
just saturation control. But the reason why I
love this shot is that, look at the parallax,
just look at the director of photography is doing here. Killed it, how beautiful this is! And then it was only fair
for me to just really, really take it to the next level
and just go nuts with it and just looks green screen. This, like it's one of
one of my proudest work, shots that I worked on. It just makes me so happy. Just look at the range. Just look at the range, the
tonalities that I'm creating from this to all the way
here, and there are just so many colors going on,
contrast values and all of it just done, boom, majority
of it just done right here. So that was really beautiful,
I was a huge fan of it. And then what I wanna show
you, which is very interesting, is this. So this particular shot
was super, super dark. Look where it's sitting. So when I drop a LUT on
it, look what it did. It's noisy, it's murky, it's
crazy, where it's sitting. So, went in and raised the
F out of it, used my offset quite a bit. So offset was just the first move to just bring everything up. Then it started creating
a lot of contrast, then went into my Lift Gamma
Gain, brought the lift down, raised the gamma up quite a bit to get rid of that murky nature of that
shot because it was so dark to begin with, and then look
at what I did with the gain. And that was very helpful
because that's what gave us this. And once we had a major contrast value, everything started to sit right. And then I went in here
and did my good old tried and tested technique
offset, let's not make individual changes and make our life really freaking difficult
because I was happy with where the whites were sitting in,
everything in the previous shot. I just came in and boom,
done, just grab an offset and move it around until
we put life into this shot that matches all the other shots. So this is obviously way more
towards blue and we can see it in our vector scope, how
much on the blue bottom right here it's sitting, I just raised it up and brought it back into that teal and orange
action that we got going on. And then once brought it here, went heavy on the noise
reduction on this one. So did that, and that got rid
of majority of the artifacts and then sharpening in grain and, this is what we started with
and then this is what we (audio cuts out Qazi)
that looked pretty good. Let's do a few more. So these were very interesting,
these were very, very cool and again, if I kill all
of this and let's just go with our LUT and then
went ahead and created my basic contrast, but
that was my first pass, but then I just wasn't happy
with it because it just needed so much, but then I came in
here and, just look what I did. Again, it's like created
that window, softened it up, but mostly that window's not
even like there for anything, because I'm actually
doing a Luma Qualifier, so I'm just selecting that,
and then that really helped bring the same. Like you can see the sky that I'm using, like sky replaced, and then
I just keep using that. So look at it, these
two, like the same sky. So I brought it in here
and it just separates the two worlds so much. And then basically borrowed
the Luma Qualifier, transferred it over into
my key, reversed it. So then I can just affect
everything else minus the clouds or the sky, and then just
went in and used my gain, just look at that, used my
gain to just start putting in more red into my rocks
and then went into my lift and countered that to balance it out, and this just helps so
much 'cause this is good, this is much better. Like now we're really
creating that separation. And then this is neat. So I actually ended up
using neat because there was a lot of noise that was
just embedded in the shot and it ended up doing quite
a bit, but neat is just so, so, so taxing on your
system, let me actually, just look at this. We can I guess get away
with regular noise reduction to be honest with you, we don't need neat, neat is like a last resort, hail Mary. But neat will just choke your
system, it doesn't matter. Like my $22,000 machine can just choke up. It's like the software
is just written poorly, that's what it is. It's great at what it does,
but rendering times, garbage. So this is such a cool shot,
like what do you do with it? It's just such an interesting
shot, like look at where it sits on the scopes, so
what do you do with it? So this is what I did, I
just dropped a LUT on and it and didn't really help
me, so I'm like whoa, let's see what we can do. And then I just started
doing crazy push and pull. So obviously started with
my contrast and then went in and just took my lift and
started taking it toward that blue, grabbed my gamma
and really started pulling toward that cyan down
here and then took my gain and started taking toward that orange and a little bit toward
red to create that salmon. So that really started
giving me the salmon in the highlights and then
blue on the opposite spectrum, and it just created, I
just created that pallet out of nothing, out of nowhere. And then I went in here and
then just balanced it out. Here, I'm really just, it's just gain. Like nothing else, it's just gain. Like I just went in here and
I just pulled more yellow in and subtracted some blue,
because look at where my vector scope is sitting
and it was just a bit too blue for my comfort. So I brought it in. And that just made me happy
and it just felt balanced and went well with the adjacent shots, but then just look at,
it's such a crazy shot, like what do you really do with it? And then on this one,
if you guys see banding, that's probably YouTube
because what I'm looking at, there's literally no banding,
and that's again guys, this is where RED and these
top end cameras just shine because you can really
create something like that. Like this is pure art,
we just created something that did not exist. And then I just wanna start
wrapping it up and here, same thing, right? The same theme will
continue, look at the sky, after my base grade, I came
back and just gave that blue to my sky and I just continued that theme. This is before, this is after,
all of a sudden we can see our guy there. Again like I said, it's gaining two stops of dynamic range, look at
this right here on my parade before and then after. So it's like we're just giving
so much juice to our image and it just... I think let's just make
this our last shot, and then I can just
talk about a few things. Actually let's make
this one our last shot. So, this one was very interesting too, because I wanna pop him out, I wanna do it in the simplest way possible. So this is my LUT and then
I know there's too much red, then I go in and I pull that out using multiple different things. I mean, majority of the
work is done just right here in my lift. When I pulled it down here,
it took a lot of that red out, so literally just like going
in the opposite direction of that to cancel out that
red and then raised my gain a little bit to just
give the rocks that juice that they need, especially right here, the dirt to give it that red back in, so it then compliments with
the green that I'm adding and that did the trick,
and it just created this really saturated, and we were missing that
little punch in the lower mids and in the shadows, so I
just went and cranked up my contrast a little bit
to give me that punch. And then it really makes our
dude pop, that red pop there. So that was it. And then obviously the rest
is just like sharpening grain and noise reduction. So guys, check it out,
I mean just look at it. Even for this one, there wasn't
much that needed to be done, this was shot on the DJI Mavic Pro. So basically all I had
to do is just take this and then just shift it a little bit. I'm like, okay, I just wanna
create some separation, I wanna keep my rocks
red, but then I wanna take the background and just really
add more than just the red that's sitting and
embedded in the background, to really create some
color separation here. So that's what happened here. And then when we pull out and when we, I'm gonna move my scopes
over, and when we look at our overall image, another
tip that I would give you is that you can also do this
because every time I create a look, then I just go
and look at my project and make it as big as I
can, and then go through and just get a fill for it. How is everything flowing? How is everything looking? Does each scene has its own voice? Is it all flowing together? And is it helping the story? So I'm going through and
I'm just filling it out. I'm seeing it, I'm loving
it, it's all going well, and that's the process. Everything was done
within a day, client was, Bryce was super, super
happy, he just did not expect that he was blown away,
he's just like man, what just happened,
this is out of control? Like, you said just a base
grade, but I know a little bit about resolve and I know
for a fact that it's not a base grade, like you
did much more than that and that's my message to you. Once I went in with the
service exchange process and it was a win-win for both
of us, then I wanted to go 100% in because I had future
plans that I'm gonna do a video on this, I'm gonna share tons
of value with my audience, and then especially for
my masterclass members, they're gonna get access to
this footage, amazing footage and they're gonna get my
project so they can look at my node trees, break it
up, save it, this PowerGrade, use it for their own
work or create their own, whatever they wanna do. So for all that, it was
a fair trade and I put in my 150% and I hope you guys enjoyed it. Now I hope this gave you
a broader perspective of what goes into working
on a documentary like this, where stuff is shot
beautifully, but there's still tons of challenges that
you have to overcome. And especially what we were doing here, we were still trying to
create a really cool look and have this film emulation embedded, which was our look DNA. So once you commit to something like that, then the job is not that easy. You saw, we still have
to use some qualifiers, but it was still a very tight operation. And because we had a pretty
solid notary structure through and through, it was
really easy to replicate and then make a few changes
and move on to the next shot, make a few changes, move
on to the next shot, that kind of thing. So hopefully you guys
enjoyed what you saw, three days left to sign
up for the masterclass, link is in the description, do that. And once you're part of the
FCM community, hit me up on IG, let me know you're one of us. Guys, subscribe to my channel,
smash that like button, and I will see you in the next video. (upbeat music)
