How to Color Grade a Music Video | DaVinci Resolve 16 Tutorial

[Music] what's up guys this is Kazi welcome to another amazing tutorial and yes the shot that you just saw is from zou Harris music video this dude is a freaking massive massive deal in Morocco this music video is currently sitting at 40 million views in two months so I cannot wait to see what happens in a year but this was such an exciting project to work on but that's not even the best part the best part is that these guys were so gracious the director and the whole production team that they allowed me to use this for this video YouTube video and also use this for my master class so all the files and everything like is gonna be included in my master class along with the project file in this video I'm gonna be taking you through everything how I landed the job the concept development phase all the way to grading process and then delivering the final product to the client and guys it's gonna be a perfect blend of soft and hard skills so grab a notepad this one is gonna be an information overload now guys before I forget if you guys enjoy my youtube content and IG post then take all of this and 10x it that's what's in my masterclass five days left join link is in the description and let's just see what's inside the course 25 plus hours worth the content 150 plus training videos access to over hundred gigs worth of professionally shot log footage invitation to a mastermind group where we hold weekly competitions and I'm talking about to our group session where I go through everyone's grade and break it down and give you personalized feedback the courses consist of nine total modules as of today and I'm gonna be adding another one very soon and the way it's laid out it's perfect for somebody who knows nothing about resolved to maybe somebody who's intermediate but really want to take their game to the next level the goal with this masterclass is very simple I want you to learn in weeks what took me years to learn I'm so confident that I'm throwing in a hassle-free 30 day money-back guarantee if you're not satisfied I joined thousands of members that are part of FCM culture and have achieved unimaginable results enrollment and soon joined now the link is in the description or in the comments below and guys if you're enjoying the content smash that like button subscribe to my channel for more awesomeness make sure to follow me on instagram i'm dropping value bombs there every single day let's roll the intro so let's start with how I got the job I got hit up on Instagram from the producer saying hey we're a Moroccan production company we work with a lot of artists here and our next project is gonna be releasing on Valentine's Day and then he told me that Amir the director who also directed Sods music video and check this out freaking sitting on more than eight hundred million views he said that that music video was directed by this director and that he was following me on Instagram loved my work and wanted to work with me I mean seriously I to this day I'm so freakin flattered like I just don't have any other words it's it's crazy that you can be having so much fun just sharing what you like and then opportunities like this will knock on your door it took me about 10 hours to grade this but it was really solid chunky 10 hours like I went in I mean just look at the node tree and this is how every shot was and there were so many different locations and scenes that I had to break up so tons of Windows and you know qualifiers and things going on so it really ended up taking 9 to 10 maybe a little over 10 hours especially with some feedback and changes that we had to make but that is usually a pretty good speed when you were working on a music video now this is all done remotely which was great so Google Drive they uploaded the footage which was just one baked file I told him hey just send me a clean version which is basically a pro res 444 XQ because it was shot on Alexa Mini and then that was the lossless you know format or kodak that I wanted to use brought it in to resolve scene cut it and then just went from there right off the bat I knew that this was a match made in heaven because the director was in love with Joker as much as I was so he was just like hey I want the Joker look and I'm like how about maybe Joker and some John wick sprinkled on top and he's like dude I love you I'm like I love you too and we just went from there yeah the main form of communication was whatsapp and the reason why I'm talking about this is because this is gonna come in handy if you do remote work whatsapp is a really robust tool where you can send 10 15 20 minutes like voice messages and then on top of it you can send pictures video and all of that good stuff so it was just the right tool for the job and that's what we used for our communication the storyline is super super sad I mean daughter is born wife is dead the dude just doesn't know how to feel mixed emotions and the whole song is about that it's anger its passion one thing that I like to do is I like to take it in I really like to experience it from viewers perspective first so even if it's log image whatever I will play the song and I will watch it and it's in a different language I don't speak it but it the emotions and acting and everything was there and I almost got choked up like at points watching it and it's it's really important like let it come to you and then once you're emotionally invested the creativity will be so sincere that it will just show through your work and that's when the color grading will genuinely help the storytelling the footage was shot with Alexa Minnie and then the cinematographer knows what he's doing so he was using different color temperature lights on set so it really made it easy for me to kind of grab him and then like shift the hue of certain things and really pull him apart and create cool-looking imagery the reference images that I was using on this one were there for inspiration they weren't necessarily there for a one-to-one match we weren't really going for let's just nail every single hue and an saturation value and luminance value of Joker or any of those movies that we initially discussed it was just there it kind of keep us in check so as I mentioned like I usually will watch a couple of times but once I have watched it from the storyline perspective then I will watch it more like analytically to start figuring out the game plan that will usually lead me to go to the lightbox mode and it's sort of like a grid view where you can just see the entire project and this is where I will start picking out locations and scenes and start dividing everything up and grouping it by doing so you'll get a really good idea of how long it's gonna take to grade the project so once that happens then you want to look for what is the first shot that you're gonna start off with and that is a big mystery okay and that's it that's an important one so you gotta think about what was the conversation that you had with your creative director what did they say in this case they were looking for the Joker look so I'm gonna find something that's gonna put me in that world right off the bat so I mean I broke down the scenes and locations there were like tons of money shots in the waiting area and I wanted to really just add a lot of love there so that's where the base grade for the Joker look inspiration kind of came into play and I started like separating these colors and really did tons of push and pull so started off with my contrast and my lift gamma game and we did quite a bit here like just look at it so a lot was sort of done in here and the focus was to really keep his eyes you know as the focal point because if you see how it he's lit the light is an overhead light and it's kind of giving him the raccoon eyes so I just wanted to really be gentle and make sure with my contrast that I don't just completely lose his eyes okay then I went in and added some saturation so we cranked it up quite a bit 86 and then shifted the hue just a tiny bit and again just really started to get a feel for what kind of colors we got and what do we have to play with then the balance was not necessarily balanced it was more like balance look and that's where I really started getting into sort of like you know you can start feeling it out right we're now we're going into that like look at this the difference and then all of a sudden that so now we're kind of going you know in that Joker world I'm gonna click on this guy and then I'm gonna select this and do selectors still images and you know we've still got a lot of work to do but you can start seeing what's happening you can see the direction and then in our look we modified it if you look at the back I'm actually gonna do before and after I'm gonna go slow so you can really absorb and see what's happening because color grading is all about nuances you know tiny changes and you really have to kind of lock in and see what's happening so see how I popped that green even more and it's basically this green that we see inside the Train like even right there through that window so that's what I'm really trying to pull in here and then went ahead and brought that down brought everything down if we see right here luma versus Q versus luma and then started giving it more detail by just dropping it down and see it just adds more depth there and then moved on and worked on his skin and started bringing in the sodium vapor that we see here so you know this is still sort of like in the tungsten world but with some adjustment and what's happening is that I'm using my log wheels and just look at what I'm doing with my mid-tone I'm really really pushing it trying to get in that ballpark with my mid-tones in the log wheels and that pretty much did the trick just look at it like look at his skin how much yellow we were able to pull out and it just really served us well even the more warmth that it adds in that green helps us to like takes us in that direction even more look adjustment is usually where I just do a little bit of offset but this time I just use my gamma and I touched it a bit I mean I barely did anything I actually don't know if you guys will be able to see it on YouTube but just a hint but again it it adds more depth into the image you can just see it in his skin in here all over and then create a vignette really pop him out because ultimately that's the point right so I mean this is the vignette and if I do shift H you can see what it's doing so just grabbed it inverted it and then pulled everything down just a touch by using my curves RGB curves pulled it down just a touch then went ahead and added the glow effect and if we pop it open here didn't really mess with the threshold really and actually dialed back the brightness yeah just like add some interest in my window there because look how dull it looks and I just want to pop it out and it doesn't really take anything away from my dude because the color complement there and the color contrast here is what pops them out okay so it doesn't matter if luminance value wise if this and this sits in the same world that doesn't really matter so you know wanted to just add more visual interest that's what happened there instead of adding sharpness I actually used my mid-tone detail and just look at his face I added I pull some detail out so that's what I did by negative 20 it just starts giving it a really nice clean like soft look to the entire image like it almost feels like you have a black mist filter on you know your lens sort of deal so it just like takes the the digital edge off your footage that's what happened there and then I went ahead in my global adjustment and brought everything down and pretty much it was pretty simple just use the gain and pulled it down a little bit and now we're just really really like see we're getting in that world quite a bit and then created a window and just popped him out like I was pretty aggressive with it because like I said I just really wanted to see his eyes and what's going on you know so that did the trick I mean just look at before and after and it really just sits in well use my RGB curves and just pop them out a little bit makes all the difference in the world and then right here added this really cool effect that I use every now and then lens reflection and this one is take it or leave it like you don't always have to use it but I ended up using it it gives it like a nice lens flare effect anamorphic lens flare effect and you can use it in so many different ways and I just went in and messed around with the parameters until I was happy created my own preset so I mean they give you different options but it can be really cheesy so I went in and just really played around with it and that's the best way to learn every shot is gonna react different to the look that you're going for you just kind of have to play around and see where you land and what you like and then finally topped it off with the grain and you guys know how much your boy likes his grain some if I pop it really close you guys can actually see it so this is before pretty digital and looks cool but not as cool as this you know that's just all of a sudden makes it look like film so added tons of grain and give the image a lot of weight and grit so this is what happened in this shot and now if we go before and after you can start seeing that it's not one-to-one but it is in that world I mean you know compared to this that you know so it just I wanted the essence not necessarily you know put me in you know the Gotham City sort of deal so that's what happened here and shout out an image once everything was ready to go I exported it and sent it to the director absolutely loved it he was super stoked and then I knew that okay now we have the direction now I have a note tree that I can work off of and then I just went from there the car scenes are some of my favorite because I am just so proud of how that look came to be and I think the ambient lighting along with the seat you know just look at the color of the seat which just makes the teal and orange so easy because it's native I don't have to recreate it that one color orange exists and it's there and then all I have to do is push tons of teal into the environment to kind of complement that so it's a pretty drastic change yet the skin looks so natural and everything just feels like it belongs it truly is one of the best grades I've ever created started with the exposure as usual contrast and didn't really think that it needed saturation so did not do that and then in the balance I just went berserk I went nuts balance was also the look basically just look what is happening and can you imagine how much happened just by using lift gamma gain and some features from hue versus what is this Hoover saturation and hue versus hue but does that make any sense to you that we created this entire look going from here to here in one node just by using this and we're nudging it we're not even pushing it too much like look how much work we're doing and what we're getting in return it's absolutely bananas but this is just the beginning of the look then I go in and I refine it I bring some warmth back in and I go right here and I just keep massaging it look at justement did not touch it at all so it just sits there and then in my vignette pretty much just created a vignette around him and then inverted it and brought everything else down using my RGB curves so it does like a really nice gentle roll-off brings everything down and then used my glow did not really touch the threshold much but brought the brightness down I just wanted to pull him out of the background more and just add this blooming effect in my highlights and it does a really good job and went into sharpening it the same thing in my mid-tone pulled it back so now you guys know the pattern anytime you see sharpen this is exactly what's happening here global adjustment pulls some of the colors out and made it really intense and basically the shot that we're going for here is this but again not one-to-one we're just trying to get the essence of this but then make it our own that's what's happening here and in this one use my RGB curves and really just injected some red into this entire shot and that helps take this seat and pop it out pop him out and really creates this color separation and gives us something very very unique this would have been really cool too but I feel like this just makes all the difference in the world and then went in and used my highlights slider and pulled it back you know just to get some sting out and and even out the entire image because here it's just like we got some hot spots here and I don't want the eyes to just go there because the image is so beautiful that I want people to look at the seed to look at him you know the the parts of the jacket that we can see the hand all of that so just had to do that and then finally added grain noise reduction and I mean come on so this did that and majority of the look like I said was created just by using our balance and can you believe if I would have shown you this look and did not tell you that it was created without any qualifier would you have believed it I mean trust me like it just there's no way you would have been like dude where is the qualifier to get that kind of skin and then get this much separation and that's always my sermon anytime I'm you know doing any video on talking about guys try to get there in the simplest way possible don't try to turn it into a rocket science I mean right here if I just turn this off and turn it on how much happen in this one node so one of my favorite shots that I've ever graded now the funeral shots are where we had a few back and forth because this is where I wanted to create the subway scene from Joker and I went really really red and you know they kind of were like let's try something else and then we went the opposite route and now we can see the pattern right everything is sort of like red bias which is okay because once you start building grades then when you copy them over to other shots it keeps the same DNA which means it offsets you know whatever is happening here usually it's the first shot that you really have to dial everything in so anyway it started off with the basic contrast and then one thing that I did is I went into my temperature and like really really dialed it back to kind of get this you know readout and balance it out then started creating our look a little bit and the node tree looks very different here because guys that's one thing that I'm gonna tell you when you're working on music videos or real-world projects it's not always gonna be so binary that you have to and you will stick with the same node tree like that structure is perfect but it's a good starting point and it's a good discipline to have to build your grades off of that but I always tell you that when I'm working on projects my node trees are not always looking exactly like what you see in the video because sometimes they're less complicated sometimes they're more complicated obviously here it looks like it's less complicated because it's only ten nodes instead of my usual 14 15 node you know no tree structure so my point is that you know it's not always gonna be the same don't want to kill yourself over it it's okay just just run with it you know sometimes you have to scratch everything and recreate it and this is what needed to happen here because it was just shot so differently and had like red on red and a lot of things that were happening that I had to approach it differently that's what I mean and then I created a custom curve this time and look how much it helps I'm gonna move this over a little bit and talk about it it was so hard to you know give it the right amount of drama because there's a haze in the room and then there is a light source from one side and then there is not enough light on this side and it was just a really really tricky shot so you know I had to create something so I created my own s-curve you really get a better or a granular control over that then the reason why you see this is because after I created that I'm like okay all this detail is sort of gone so what can I do so then I went in and I created this selected that and feathered it out quite a bit and then I went in and started pulling the detail up in this area so now look at how even it looks if I do before it will see the detail in here there's no detail there but like if I do that now her face looks very close to hers and you know all these colors like her face to her face like it started coming in and then even like if you look at the wall here to look at the wall there so that was one of those things that I just had to do who really balanced out the image and I just needed that extra love that's what I was talking about then I went in and Huber's the saturation just added a little bit of saturation and pulled this gunky green out there was a lot of green that was sitting you know in the lower mids I had to clean that up so that happened there and brought the image down quite a bit so in my gain just pulled it down and created a window to this vignette is a little different than the kind of vignette I was using in this video like this one is just really puts a spotlight on him and it also added a really nice little gradient up top that I liked to me this whole sequence was really hard to make it interesting because I express there wasn't much going on in terms of the aesthetics so I really had to you know create something and then I went in and went with our you know look DNA that we've been experimenting with and creating so in this case you know I selected all these areas and then started adding you know bringing back some of that green and it just helped quite a bit to kind of bring it all together where when you go from one scene to the next it still feels like you know it's part of the same music video and the skin tones now started going in the direction that we had them you know in other shots and then here I pushed it even more this is where we started creating that look because this funeral sequence I did not want to keep it clean like this was just too clean I didn't want that like it's not to make it look pretty it's to you know create this feeling like just the sickly this deadly feeling and I feel like you know creeping in this greenish yellow like the David Fincher yellow into this scene just felt right and then finally you know topped it off with grain so this is before this is and I think it's just a really cool aesthetic and one that serves the story really really well I promise you it was a hard decision to go from here to here because I was now dirtying up the image and I'm like man like I worked so hard to get here from there and it looks so clean let's just leave it there but pretty is not always the right answer as a colorist you always have to serve the narrative and this was the right move here and the director loved it the flashback scenes were so great to have that contrast the dark teal and oranges and then we just go to this it just totally like flips the script so this is our raw okay and it's pretty biased like the word red right we can see that and I wanted to use my signature clean white look on this but then give it some extra love make it look dreamy it's a flashback sequence this is the only thing in this entire music video where he had hope and life was perfect and you know all of that good stuff so wanted to create that through color so this is our basic contrast and you know just lift cam again just to kind of get everything rolling and then this is our saturation and wanted to pump some saturation in so we can start creating some separation and have some you know colors to pop and especially her lipstick in this case and then went in and did my balance and the balance is more than just a balance like I said in this music video my balance node was balance slash look and I would just all this really like push it and then here we brought her skin back quite a bit so if you look at before how green it is - like now we're getting some love back in there and then here we pretty much bring it all back and you might be thinking okay maybe you've gone a bit overboard but just watch what happens in the later nodes but here I did a selection and then tracked it and you know it was a pretty easy pretty clean key and that's the beauty of shooting with these high-end cameras so we was able to pull it and then you my gamma you know lifts gamma again keep it simple you know don't don't overcomplicate it and it was just a little nudge only in our gamma didn't really have to mess with anything else and really put a lot of blood into her skin and then went in here and in my look adjustment just brought everything else you know to that neutral state so I'm looking at her eyes and the background and you can even see it right here in the waveform just look how everything is coming together here and it's looking white that gets to tell you that the whites are actually getting pure white and they're looking you know of what they're supposed to and then moved on and did my clean white technique here and look how much it just cleaned up the image like look at this before and then after and then even here and then I wanted to leave a little bit of green up there because that's the whole theme for the entire music video I mean it's just a little bit green bias so I wanted to leave that in but just look at the difference right and then when in here and really pop everything up with RGB curves and made a really really huge difference but we're not done yet and then in here added glow and just an additional layer to make it dreamy you know make it perfect and drop my threshold down to zero basically what that means is that hey grab everything from the darkest part of the image effect everything that's what that means if you keep going to the right you're only affecting the hottest areas in your frame but if you go all the way to the back you're picking the darkest areas and then in the brightness I just had to touch it but it made such a huge difference like look at how her eyes pop like we can see the detail and the hair everything it's just did the job and then when in here created a custom curve to really really pop everything I mean just look at that her lips her eyes her face how she's separated from the background and it just and nothing is and everything is rec.709 safe because I went into my high soft and I rolled it down so to give it nice roll offs and and keep everything kosher and if you just look at it I mean I'm gonna play it through and we can just see how clean it looks so again started here ended up here one step at a time and then obviously noise reduction to keep it clean and then grain to give it that weight but again just started here ended up here and such a clean look you know did not sacrifice for the skin and lips and all that things that matter hair but then made everything else like it's just a dreamland so that's what happened here and the birthday scene is also one of my favorites and it was a original look I didn't use any references because I wanted to create this magical moment between you know the father and the daughter because there hasn't been a lot of happiness in their lives so the time when they do get that I wanted to make it count so start it off with my contrast and lift gamma gained and went in and started adding tons of juice so saturations that's 68 because I knew what I wanted to do with it and just like really start you know separating it and went into creating a look and this time like you would go man what are you doing what is going on with the skin like this is just such a crazy sort of you know direction and so that was the initial base grade and then went in and started pulling her skin back you know using the same technique so we're in here in our log wheels and just brought her skin back quite a bit it's not so jaundice like and then when in here and kind of pull my Reds down a little bit and I used the RGB curves and just like brought it down a little bit and up until this point you could be like dude how is this your favorite look it becomes my favorite look after you apply this like look at that and if I go into my open effects glow crushed it all the way to zero brought up the brightness a little bit and then if I go in and turn on my grain and my noise reduction and guys sometimes it can be just simple but look at this if I play it through let me just watch this grade and I wanted it to be lifted a little bit and there's a candle light that's lighting her face so I wanted to give it that extra warmth and then with the glow it just gave dit this nice Roelofs that we see in Roger Deakins movies and it's just such a creamy look from where we started to where we ended up the balcony scene is by far my favorite no joke it is probably right next to the car sequence but maybe more it was such a freaking ballsy move to create that look and here's before such a cool shot right the craziest thing that happened is that when I watched a shot I'm like it something happened to me I just thought of the scene from John wake where he there's a flashback sequence where he's thinking about like when his wife was dying and he was at the hospital and I don't know why like how like this is supposed to be the happiest moment in this music video and I'm thinking about that look I don't know where it came from but it was this look right here and I just thought about this I'm like how crazy would it be to just create something like that and and it is so unnatural because this is an interior this is a flashback sequence so they can do whatever they want with it and I wanted to create that here but still make it my own so it was like just a weird epiphany if you will and I'm like let's just give it a shot let's just try it so started with my contrast and left gamma gain went in and popped in some saturation 68 which is sort of like the theme and then this is the look and you know call it the base grade or look and we we kind of went for it so just look at what I did how much I pushed the green and then brought the blue down and I'm using my left gamma gain once again do you see the power of this this is what I keep telling you just look at the power of this I'm creating this intense look but just using these lifts yeah McGann okay and now it's not necessarily this because again not going for a one-to-one match but it's pretty crazy like it's it was built like that I put it next to it and then I kept creating it and I'm like okay because mine is you know they're in a happy place I'm gonna warm it up a little bit compared to what's going on here but if you look at it overall you look at John Rick is on the right side so you see red green blue and then in mind you see red green blue very very close but then obviously this is not the end we're just you know getting started so that's our base grade then I went in here and started working on it so see I'm bringing her skin back right so if I go right here I do before I do after you just see so much of like this rosy tones that are coming back into her skin and it's helping with our shirt and everything so that's what happened there then grabbed her shirt and qualified it and then brought a ton and ton of color back in there okay and then went ahead and grabbed her skin look at her her skin is sitting grabbed her skin and very realistically just like hold it back but still want to keep it in that environment okay I want to respect that I want to I still want her to live in that world but you know just kind of pop her out and sort of like what's happening here they're creating an extreme look such a crazy look but then they're kind of pulling him back but they're kind of keeping them on the magenta side in this one I started to bring like tons of reds and yellows back this is where I start making this look mine you know that's what I mean a lot of the times for references you can use them as a base but then build on that like you know something that's gonna help your story so that's what's happening here and then in this I pop it up like I just go under my RGB curves and I'll lift it a little bit but then I keep my blacks tight and that added a lot I mean it added a lot of pop and it balanced out the saturation that got added here and it kind of countered that you know and went in here and added my glow and it just did so much it brought it up quite a bit and crushed it all the way and then brought the brightness up and you know again it just puts it like look at that it puts it in this because this is just like a regular look like what is that and then this is that they're having a blast and life has been tough and now they're finally having a great time so it gives you a sense of freedom from where we started where we ended up like I mean tell me this is not the coolest look and that's what made me so proud is because we just pushed it so so freakin much I mean just look at that like it just where it starts to where it ends up I mean it's just such a cool different kind of look and like I said I mean the DNA came from this and then I built on that and made it a little bit warmer a little bit happier you know brought their skin back you know the yellow and the shirt and just like some visual interest back but you know mostly it's based on that same DNA and now if I click right here and click on any of these clips and do update all my images I'm gonna hide this and you guys can see the final look I mean this view gives us you know the bird's eye view of like what the actual music video look like after it was created [Music] hopefully this gives you a good insight to what it takes to grade a music video and working remotely guys don't forget five days left to sign up for the master class trust me it's way more than just a digital course that you're buying you're buying a lifestyle you're becoming part of this community we have a mastermind group like I said so much is going down right now you don't want to wait for six months or eight months and buy it then do it now on that note drop a comment below let me know what you think about this video smash that like button subscribe to my channel for more awesomeness and I will see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Waqas Qazi

Views: 67,998

Keywords: davinci resolve 16, resolve 16, davinci resolve, davinci, davinci resolve 16 tutorial, davinci resolve studio, davinci tutorial, davinci resolve free, color correction tutorial, resolve color grading, color grading davinci resolve, colorist, color grading tutorial, filmmaking, color grading, davinci resolve tutorial, blackmagic design, davinci resolve 16.2, davinci resolve color grading, filmmaker, how to color grade, davinci resolve 16 color grading, theqazman, Zouhair Bahaoui

Id: dfSLoRyS1fA

Length: 37min 49sec (2269 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020