- Now you probably heard the saying, good artists copy, great ones steal. I'm gonna show you how
to become great today. In other words, stop being a consumer. Learn to extract what you watch and try to replicate that
because think about it, all the best looks are
already out there, right? So all you have to do is recreate
them and throw your flare on top of it. So many amateurs that I know
or beginners that I know make that mistake day in and day out. They try to reinvent the
wheel, that's not the problem. The wheel is already invented. All you have to do is take that
and try to figure out a way to either make it better
or just different. And before we jump into it, anyone that's struggling
with say shot matching, how to bring stuff in and out of Resolve or nailing the skin tones. I have a free workshop that
can help you with all of that. And then some check out, the
link is in the description. And on that note, let's roll the info. (upbeat music) So the best thing ever
happened about six days ago, they dropped "John Wake
Chapter Four" trailer and I absolutely loved every second of it. So I went ahead and
watched it and I'm like, this is amazing, can't wait
for the movie to come out. And usually people just
stop at that, right? Or maybe they'll share it on
their Instagram, but what I do, usually when I watch
something that is visually very appealing, I do this,
I bring it in Resolve, and we can grab this like the entire clip and then bring it into our timeline. And now it's one long
take in our timeline. So what do we do with that? The next step that I
would do is I would go under my timeline and I
would do detect scene cuts. Resolve is gonna use its
AI to start placing cuts at every cut in the trailer. You will need the studio
version of Resolve to do that. If you have the free version,
this won't happen, okay? Because this is part of their
neural engine technology, which is only included
in the studio version. So now if I were to
come into my color page, all the cuts are placed
and each shot is just like if you were to get a
project to grade it, right? So it's like all cut up nicely. So basically now we're ready
to analyze all these clips and see what's happening, what makes these shots the way they look. And the answer lies right
here in your scopes, okay? You can tell a lot just
by looking at the scope. So for instance, if we
look at this scene, right? And if I pause it right here, let's just say this is our hero frame. Just look at how warm this image is. So if you're watching it on
your TV or something like that, without the scopes, it's really hard to put it in
context where the saturation is sitting, where everything
is sitting on the vectorscope where everything is sitting
on the parade, but here, this just makes it binary, right? Like it's just, it's black and white. Like we're just seeing
what's happening here. So in this case, I look at
my vectorscope and I go, everything is sitting on
this warm quadrant, right? Like top left, so I see that and it translates, it makes
sense, and then I look at my, where my shadows
are and highlights. And this guest should
tell us a lot right here. So look at it, our blues
are all the way down here, but then they're cut from the top, they're pulled down quite a bit. That's where the warmth
is coming from, right? Because if I were to go in my, you know, in my primaries right here
and I just take my gain and I start pulling up the blue, right? Like if I just start pulling this up like that and do something
like this, if I do before and after, you can see right
here that we're bringing back that blue, right, like, I mean just look at this area
right here from here to this. Like we're changing that,
but we're also changing the magic, right, like it's not the same, like this warm tone with
this like very modern spin on orange and teal, right? So that's what's going on here, but we wouldn't have known that again if we were watching it on TV. So this gets to tell us so much about that and how and
where everything is sitting, majority of the scene sits
right here, you see it, right? Like right here, this is where majority
of the scene is sitting. So if I hover over here, if you click on these three
dots and turn on display qualifier focus, then when
you hover over on the screen, it will show you that on your
scopes as you can see right now, so you can see everything. Majority of my scene sits in
this area right here, okay minus the candles, right? Like look at that, all of
those are sitting far up there, right, or even this area is
sitting a little bit higher. So it is by nature is a dark
scene, candle lit, right, supposed to be, and then we have like really saturated yellows. I mean just look at how much
saturation is in his skin. Like this is pretty high. So this is the skin indicator right here, this line right there where
you can click right here and then click on show skin indicator. So that's what's happening
right now, and if I hover over, just look at how much
saturation is in the skin. 'Cause like if I were
to pull this down like, and just show you kind of
like the, normally the, what's the cinematic norm? Where the saturation should be sitting, it would be somewhere around here, okay? Or even less than that,
but this is where we are. Once again, that's the magic. And this is again one
of those secrets, right? You will never in a million
year push your looks as much as this is pushed,
unless you're looking at the scopes and seeing what's happening. You just won't do it
because it's always going to be like, oh man, this is too much. Like let me pull it back,
let's keep moving forward. Let's look at this, what's happening? Okay, the detail in the windows is gone. You know, this is Hollywood, don't you think that they can do, they can have their visual
effects department go in there and just put the most beautiful
clouds and give us some detail in there, no, that's not necessary. And that's another permission
that you get when you look at the best of the best work
that's out there, right? And that's what I mean, like why reinvent the wheel
when somebody's already doing the best and putting
the best work out there? Let's just go out there,
study it, learn from it, and then understand what we
can and can't do and not spend so much time on doing things
that don't even matter, right? So now I'm looking at this. One thing that you will
notice through and through is that not only, so this is the
same scene, so you can say, well that's why all the colors
are looking the way they are. But even if I take you to a
completely different scene like this from the church scene, you
will still see similarities, okay, like watch where
the yellows are sitting. They're exactly in the same spot where the yellows are sitting here, okay? So that is one of the thing
that you need to understand. Like when you're building a look dna, it still has to somehow tie in. It depends, right, like, I mean if the colors are gonna
be completely complimentary and they're gonna sew up, you can't bring in the other colors. Like I can't just grab his
skin or something and just pull it, pull it, pull it and
get the yellow out of him. He's in a completely different
environment or like say a shot like this, so of course
that's gonna be different. But you just have to understand like, so this is an exterior shot, right? But look how well it matches with these. And that's what I'm
trying to tell you, like, I mean they have to bring it in, whether it's like semi-interior,
interior, exterior, like if it's within the same
scene, within the same world, you're gonna find some
similarities that you have to nail in order to like sell the look
if you're going for a really pushed look, so again, if
we see something like that, do you see any information in his ? Completely gone, okay? And I love showing you guys
these things because I feel like so many people get caught in the in. Like when I go from a Wreck 709 to a to a look, people just
freak out and they go, yo Kazi, we lost all the detail,
like what's going on? Blah, blah blah. We never got to see the
Wreck 709 for John W, right? So we just bought it, we
accept it, we see this and we go, this is so stylized, I love it. I bet you in log everything was protected. Then in Wreck 709,
everything was protected. In grade, Jill Bogdanovic a friend and one of my all
time favorite colorists went ahead and made that choice after getting the blessing
from the DP and the director to push the look this far because
that's what serves this story and you know, falls in that
super awesome action genre and that's what's happening here, right? So we buy it, we watch it, and we don't care what color his tie is or what's going on over here,
why can't we see anything? Because what we need to see is
right here and his, you know, eyes and you know, we
have to focus on his face. And that's exactly what's happening. The vignette is really
heavy too on here, right? Like it's just leading
you to look right here. So like reshaping light, these are the things that we're learning when we're looking at the
best work that's out there. And that's what I mean by like
how much can you push your reds, what are these deep reds, right? Like the reds are not going all the way in the middle if you look at it, they're leaning a little
bit toward like magenta, just a smidge, just a touch. And that's what gives it
even a more of like a Nike, like vibrant red, right? And that's how they're getting that. So these are the things
that would be really hard for you to just stumble upon. And then when you watch
it here and you see what's happening, you can go, oh my
god, this makes so much sense. Look at the complimentary
scheme that's happening, right? Like there's a nice little cyan
happening here and then red over there and we can see
like this complimentary scheme right here because it could be really easy to just go under here and pull
out like that color, right? I can even click right here
and then just go in and if I were to pull that down,
let's see what happens, right? So if I do before and after, right? Like we're kind of pulling that out. Obviously the image is compressed
so it's gonna break apart, but you get the idea like we're trying to pull back
from that saturation, again, taking away that juice that
makes this look what it is. Or once again, if I go under
saturation and pull it down and just trying to keep it kosher, you know what the norm is
and like what is proper, it would look like this and it
wouldn't be John Wick, right? And that's why it's so
important to look at these. And the next step is to
not only just look at them, do something that I called
play the what if game, okay? And that is what's really gonna
get your brain going, okay? So the what if game is this, like if I'm looking at this
shot right here and if I'm here and I'm going, okay, I
see where it's, it is like I look at the vector
scope and I like this, what if this is like a cold
winter morning somewhere, right? Instead of like this warm, like almost looks like he's in
Dubai or something like that, right, like they're trying to create like, I mean I don't know, but just by looking at that
I'm thinking like, you know, maybe he is somewhere in like Middle East or something like that, right? So what if we try to change that? What I can do a couple
of different things. I can go in my highlights or in my gain and I can just pull this down, right, and I can just like really cool this off. And if I were to cool this off and do before and after, all of a
sudden you see the back, right? We went from Middle East to like England, you know
what I mean, like, just like that we're, now we're in London, right? We can even make it cooler,
something like that. And you know, we just
went from Middle East to like London, just like that, and that's the beauty of color grading, right? Like that it's that easy
for you to like transform and put people in a different environment, whether it's weather or a
completely different period like you know, period piece. Like it could be from
the seventies, eighties or futuristic, right,
we can do those things. If we wanna be a little bit more subtle than what I did, then I
will go under my offsets and move the entire thing over. So it's not just the highlights, it's the whole thing
that we just dragged down and we create like that
kind of thing, right? So like we just pulled out
all of those warm tones and replaced them for these cooler
tones and now my blues are really lifted so I can just go in my log and I can just pull that down, right? So like I'm not even looking at my, I'm not even looking
at my screen right now. I was just looking at my parade
and I just pulled that down so now my blacks are proper
and we created a completely different look, a more subtle
look than when I use the gain. But that's the beauty
of color grading, right? Like that's why I love it so
much that every single tool will get you to a similar result but in a completely different way, we wanna steal from the
best but then we want to throw our own flare on
it and make it ours, right? You know, whether you think about sports, you know
the new soccer players are their role models are Mbappe's
role model is Ronaldo, right? So he looked up Ronaldo and
wanted to be like him, even he, his jersey is like number seven. So he wanted to be like Ronaldo, we can't now just say well
he just copied Ronaldo, he's not original, he's
a fake, he's, you know, he's himself, he is a
living being, he's not fake. He just modeled himself to, you know, to the best of the best and
then became the best, right? Embodied that like those traits
and then actually ended up being the best, and then and embodies Mbappe, nobody
calls them Ronaldo Jr. And that's the concept that you
gotta get through your head. 'Cause I feel like a lot
of people make that mistake and I, I keep saying that
because it is that important. So let's move on to some of these shots. So obviously we look at this
shot and we know that this is a pretty good example of like
some key action happening here. So she probably went in and
pulled the key to get their skin tones looking proper and
then have everything shifted toward that cyan. So like look at that world
that she created, right? Like it's absolutely stunning. One of my favorite shots
in the entire thing because again, you know,
they're in New York, it's so cold, I already know
they're in New York, right? I don't need anything else,
like yes I see a few buildings, but these buildings could be anywhere. You know, this could be freakin' Seattle, but I'm just looking at it
and I just know that they're in New York because of that
palette that she chose. That's the power of color grading. And you wouldn't know
it until you study it. You break it down and you bring
it in here, what makes this, you know, this is not blue,
this is more cyan, right? So we see like what makes it more cyan? Well an excesss of green
so there is more green than blue up top and then there's blue and then the red is pulled down, right? So that's what's giving it
this field that we're getting. But once again, if I go under
my gain and if I start adding, you know, more of this, right? We completely changed it, now we could be in Hong Kong, right, like that. Like just you saw it how fast it happened and now we're somewhere else, right? And that's so powerful. You wouldn't know it until you read the scopes and see what's happening. And it was really easy for me
to go there and I knew that I wasn't like breaking anything
because I just have studied enough material and built
my own library to just know that where I'm putting
everything is okay because in the movie "Her," that's
where the reds were sitting and that's where the greens were sitting. So now I'm just taking it there
without even referencing it. Like I said, like I mean
if I'm taking it there, this is more like "Her," you know, that's the sort of like world I'm creating because I just have it
stored in my head now. So if you were to start studying it, just like how I'm showing you, same thing is going to happen. You're gonna start creating
these beautiful looks with your footage, with your flare, but still create these like
universal truths if you will. Like I said, we just, I looked at it and I knew
it was New York, how? I don't know, I just knew,
you know what I mean? Look at how pushed the blacks are, the shadows in the entire,
the theme of this movie, they're pushed, they're
pushed to how, and I love it. I love it because that just gives me the sense of like it's an action. Like something is happening
like that kind of shoot 'em up, you know, film that I'm watching. Another great example is
this scene, it just looks so regal, so pretty, beautiful and just the gold tones that Jill
uses complimenting with cyan is just some of the best like
content I've seen online, like the way she does it, and
so clean, it's truly magical, okay, and that's what's happening here. Now if I were to go hue versus hue right? Grab my yellows and I pull it
up and I just make it a little bit more, you know, red
than say that yellow, it's not the same, it's not the same, it's not that gold, right,
that's going with that cyan. I just chain the entire
DNA and I don't like it as much as I like this, right? Once again, look at where
the colors are sitting, how saturated this is. If we go back and if we pull
the saturation to something like that, it's not the same,
we took out the impact, okay? Does that mean everything
needs to be crazy saturated? Absolutely not. Tom Poole is another amazing
colorist and also a friend that I very much look up to and the
kind of work that he's done and his approach is very
different than Jill, you know, it's not so saturated and contrasty yet, it's not less attractive
than what Jill does. Two completely different styles. They still both hold their own, you know? And and that's why it's so
important to find your style. And obviously you want to be
malleable so you can change it up, and like this is not the
only thing that Jill does. I mean she does like a low con
vogue looks and she does this and everything in between, but you know, first learn one thing, master it, then move on to the next thing, right? And this is the best way to do it. Let's look at a few more frames
and then we're gonna move on to the next step of
like this entire process. So gorgeous, right? Just look at it where
everything is sitting it, it's bright and I love that, right? Like, I mean just look at
this, how gorgeous this is. And once again, sticking to
the theme, those yellows. So you'll see Jill graded "Joker," right? And in "Joker" we saw that, you know, the yellows were not yellows, they were more toward like that red. And that's because Lauren
Sher, who was the DP, he loves that color, so then
she went in that direction. But in this movie, it's like she's playing with
yellows a lot and I love it. It's very different, like
look at this shot, right? And it goes so well with
like this crazy cyan, I mean just look at the waveform, how it's split beautifully. Like just perfectly like
split complimentary, like I'm kind of jazzed up and I
want to do a tutorial on this. I feel like it would be really cool, like I've done very many
different variations of orange and teal, but I don't really think
I've done anything like this. I feel like this is unique
and it's very modern. Like this is what's happening today in the world of like
orange and teal looks. So if you guys are interested
in something like that, let me know in the comments
and we'll cook something up. This is very pretty. Look at the saturation guys, look at how unapologetic her work is. Again, the contrast is just
so pushed yet it doesn't come at a cost of skin tones,
look how beautiful and pretty the skin is, right? And that's, yes, makeup has something to do
with it and all those things, but trust me when you start grading and when you start doing
a crazy push and pull, you can crack some skin tones
very easily just like that. And that's one of the hardest things when it comes to grading to
keep the skin tones like pretty and like, you know what I
mean, like the skin tones. Like she's pushing the hell out of the entire image yet
it's not like, you know, his skin is dirty and
you get what I'm saying? When you push the contrast too much, the skin starts to get dirty, the circles become a lot darker,
that kind of thing, right? So we don't see that here. Let's just completely
switch to a different sort of vibe here. I hate just like throwing a crazy blanket and calling it like something else. But it does kind of give
me "Mad Max" vibes here because it's just so
pushed and unapologetic yet it's really funny how Jill works. Like this is the area where
she does let it breathe. And like if you look at the contrast, like there is a little bit
of room down here right at the bottom and we get to
see a bit more at the bottom and that's just to me is
a very interesting choice. Like usually during the day
scenes they could be crushed and for a right reason because the
light could be pretty harsh, but she chooses to kinda let
it breathe and I like that. Another reason could be because you know, he's an all
black with on a black horse. So like we wanna see something of our hero and don't want him to
completely get lost in detail. So that's what's going on. Beautiful vibe here, again, love it. Colors are pushed and then
a complete opposite, right? So this is sort of like the, probably the most desaturated part of the entire trailer
that I saw and I love it. Cool, cool vibes again. You know they're in Paris, they set it up beautifully
and we get that right? Like I'm buying it, and again, if we were to swing this and
turn it something super warm, it won't be the same. So this is more like the similar theme that we noticed in the beginning, but this time she's playing more on a different complimentary
color scheme, right? So like it's more red and
teal, back to the yellow, beautiful, like look how pushed it is. Absolutely love it because
you still get to see what you want to see and then the
rest just kind of fades away. Absolutely gorgeous shot like
almost looks like a cologne commercial, you know, but
in the best form possible. Like it just looks so pretty. Love this. Club scenes or wherever they are fighting. This is great. I absolutely like really
like again the similar yellow and teal action that's
going on throughout. And then let's keep going. This sequence is pretty cool too. You got to make sure that you know, when you're pushing your images this far, you still want to keep
the focus right here. And I can tell that there is
a window like this and then feathered out and then everything
on the outside is pulled down, like I can see it clearly, right? Like even the intensity on
these lights go goes down a little bit, right? Like on the edges. And then these are bright because we want to keep the focus right here,
right, like what's happening. And that's what we're seeing
and this is how the magic is done, like you always wanna
pull it down from the size just enough, you don't wanna do it
too much where it looks fake, but it's happening here too, right? Like this gets darker and
then the focus is right here. So eyes stay where they're supposed to be. So overall what I would do once I go through and play the
what if game once again, like see looking at a scene like that, where is the skin tone sitting? That's one thing that we didn't
really talk about throughout the thing, like, you know,
people are just like, oh the skin tones need to
be nailed no matter what. Like even in RGB lighting,
that's ludicrous. That'll never happen. I mean let me just show you his skin tone. Look at where the skin tone
is sitting, like look at this. That's not a proper skin tone, that's not where it's supposed
to be, but it doesn't matter. Like, you know, he's in
a streetlight outside. Like take a picture
from your phone and look at where your skin is sitting
because it's gonna respond to like that lighting condition, right? Like it's not always going
to be properly like, oh, sitting on the skin indicator. Like even if I look at
something like this, obviously there's not a lot of saturation in the, in the image, so this
one will say like, you know, is sitting properly like
where it's supposed to be. But if I were to go in again
and just kind of grab my gain and try to add some
warmth and like, you know, give him a little bit more skin juice. So like something like that, right? Like we just added
basically a little bit more. So we went from this cold
treatment to like just giving him a little bit more in his skin tones. The what if game is so
amazing because this is where the flare part comes in. So you can create something
like that after looking at it. Now I just know that okay,
images can be pushed that far, right, so once I have an
idea, what I can do is this, let's just go back really
quick and let's just say I'm looking at this and I pause
it on this frame right here. Okay, so I like this frame. So what I'm gonna do is
this, I'm gonna call this, usually what I do is this, I will create a power grade
and I will call it John Wick. Okay, let's just do that. Why power grade album, power grade album stays on
throughout all your projects within that database, so
that's the beauty of it. When you move on to the next project, all these are gonna be available. The still albums are only limited to your project that you're working in. So if I right click and
I say grab that still, that still is saved now, okay. So let's just grab a few more stills. So let's say I go here
and I say grab this still and it's gonna save it here,
let's pick out a few more. So let's just do a
variety so we have a bunch of different stuff, I like
that, let's grab that. And I love this, it's almost
like what I'm thinking. Like let me just give you
my thought process is like New York, middle East, indoor
orange and teal, red and cyan. You know, that's how my
brain is working right now. Okay? Absolutely love like this
sort of regal look, right? Like with a little hint of like cyan, but mostly driven by this gold yellow or yellow gold, absolutely love it. This is just a stunner. So I'm gonna grab it from both angles. I love that how far it's pushed. Tons of teal like in my
midtones and shadows, beautiful yellows in my
highlights, tastefully done. And then I'm just gonna go like
I really love the saturation in the skin tones and
how smooth the skin was. So I'm gonna grab that great
orange and teal example. I really like how pushed
this was yet still like the bottom was breathing,
so I like that part. So I'm gonna grab that. I like this cold, but
sort of like a clean look. Like if we look at it here, it's not over the top cold,
it's just like mostly clean, but she's playing off of
like that whole cold theme that she's creating even in New York. So the greens are higher and then the blues and then the reds. You know, as I mentioned
earlier in the video that you know, you have
to kind of stick with like the DNA that you create
through and through. Absolutely love this, like
very pushed, very stylized. Could be a project that I'm working on where I have to create
something like that, so it will come in handy, if I'm doing
a street scene, you know, something is happening outside
and that could be one of the look books looks that I can
cook up and then just like show it to my director, my DP, and you know, ask for their
feedback or what they think. Absolutely gorgeous, right, like, I mean if I'm working on a
car commercial or something like that, this just kind
of gives me that vibe. Like it just has the
perfect blend of like cyan and then like these warm tones
but they're not over the top. Night scenes with cars
outside, this would be a good example to where
to put everything, right? Like in terms of like the
overall exposure of the road and then what to do with the
lights and things like that. So that's pretty cool. Let's just say like, you know, a shot where we do have a lot of light in the scene and it's
lit with RGB lighting. How far can we push it? And then what do we do with our shadows? So this would be a great
example of that, right? Where we can put our scenes. So now this is permanently saved. I started to build my
library of looks now, okay, so then anytime you're working on a shot that might be an exterior
shot in New York or Paris or somewhere cold, you can go
in command W and pull that up and you can move it
around, you can pull it up. Let's just say the shot behind it is yours and then you can just drop
this shot, pull it next to it and then see, hey,
where are my colors? Where do I need to go, right? Like if I'm looking at
the two, I don't know, let's just say even in
this example and I'm going, I'm a little, I'm a little too blue and first of all, there's
too much saturation, so I'm gonna pull the saturation
down a little bit, right? And now what do I wanna do, so I wanna, I want to keep
going down and I wanna pull it over somewhere, something
like this, right? And I'm getting pretty close, I'm gonna keep going in that direction. So like this was before, this is after. And this starts to give you
a little bit of like sense of what I'm talking about
when I say grab something that you see and then make it yours. So this is like an
example for that, right? And that's why it is so powerful to follow that process and
so many people sleep on it. I feel like I've put on some videos about that in the past. But I feel like I never really
put enough emphasis on it for you to understand or gave
you the entire game plan. I feel like sometimes that's
important to do a whole the full bow tie, right? Like start to finish and kind
of show how I would use it and justify each decision for
it to kind of hit different. And I hope that's what happened
with this tutorial here. At this point, your only
obstacle is your mindset. Get out of your way, put in the hours and the
results you're gonna achieve are gonna be beyond your
expectations, all that said, if you are still
struggling with the basics, the foundations that you need
to start hitting home runs, then my free workshop is
basically tailor-made for you. You have to check it out. It's going to just launch you on this path of becoming a colorist or
making really pretty images. So link is in the
description, check it out. If you enjoyed this video, do me a favor, smash the like button, subscribe
to the channel for more awesomeness, hit the bell
icon if you haven't already. Your views and your
support means everything. And that's what helps keep
me putting out videos. So thank you, and on that note, I will see you guys in the next video. (upbeat music)
