(upbeat music) (air whooshing) - What's going on guys, this is Qazi. Welcome to another epic video. And today I'm going to be talking about something that is very
obvious it's in front of you. You use it every day, but it's more about how to
actually use it properly and to your advantage. Talk to any top colorist and they will talk about
this technique all day long and put all their emphasis on this. And they'll tell you
that if you perfect this you will be a pro colorist. So again, like I said, this is not gonna be something that's gonna be revolutionary it's some tool that you
never even heard of. It's something that you've been doing it I'm gonna help you do it better. And I promise you, after watching this video
you're gonna get that edge where you're gonna just
pull up all the old footage that you have and you're
gonna try to regrade it, to see what else you can
get out of that footage. So without any further ado, if you're a beginner filmmaker who wants to make their work stand out, color grading is one of the
most effective ways to do that. If you're coming from
Premiere Pro or Final Cut X then looking at a node based software, like Resolve will just
confuse the heck out of you. In this free training you're
not only gonna learn everything about nodes, you will also learn to build the perfect node tree regardless of the project
that you're working on. I will end the session
with an extended Q%A, these questions came from you guys. Click the link in the
description to sign up for this free training. All right, before we jump into our video let's do talent spotting for this week. And today I wanna give a
shout out to Brian Stromback this guy, I have so much respect for him. He is one of the most
consistent people that I know and his attention to detail
is genuinely next, next level. And I'm so happy that he
is part of our FCM Family. So go give him a follow show him some love and guys if you're enjoying the content, you know what to do, smash that Like button
subscribe to my channel for more awesomeness. Make sure you're
following me on Instagram. And let's roll the intro. (upbeat music) (air whooshing) You're about to learn the
power of balancing your shot. This is I'm telling you the single most important skill you can gain in your color grading career. So many people overlook this, and it's not one of those
that you can just survive without having a full command
over this one technique. So let's start out with
building our node tree. I'm gonna keep it pretty simple. And then I'll take you
through step by step. So I'm gonna... Hmm, let me see. I think I'm gonna do
seven nodes in this one. So the first one is going to be our offset it could also be your temp and tint. This one, I'm gonna call it my primaries. This one is going to be my pop. Here, I'm gonna do my log wheels. This one is going to be my HSL curves. And then, you know what I'm also gonna do a parallel
for this specific example. And then this is going to be my cyan. Node number eight is gonna be my glow. And then this one is going to be my grain. Now these two obviously are not necessary. I can just put them down here. These are basically extracurricular. You don't need to do it, but you're going to see how big of a difference it makes, but let's just jump in first step to getting your image balanced properly is starting of with either a temp or tint or in this case I'm gonna be using offset. So what do we see in this image? There's way too much red
right here in our scopes. Just look at the red to
the green, to the blue. So it's pretty freaking dominant. So let's take that out and
I'm gonna use my offset and I'm gonna start just subtracting it. Like I'm gonna go in
the opposite direction and I'm just kind of seeing eyeballing it till like what my image
actually looks like too. And what I'm really anchoring
on right now is his skin like as long as his skin
is somewhat in the ballpark pretty much going in the right direction. So if I do before and after, like look at how much
of that red we were able to take out and you can even
see that in the vectorscope that we're like now hitting the middle point right
here which means our image is pretty well balanced and without sacrificing anything major. So this is where I'm just
gonna leave my first step. Like, let's just keep it
simple in this step right here, we're gonna do our primaries. This is where I'm gonna
get a bit aggressive. I'm gonna start with my lift and I'm really gonna start
creating some solid separation in my image. I'm gonna pull it down,
something like that. And now obviously it looks too blue. So I'm going to take my gamma
and bring the skin back. And I'm gonna just take it up go too far, obviously always, and then kind of pull it back. So I'm just focusing
on the skin right now. I don't necessarily want
my image to be too blue or too yellow. I wanna keep it somewhere
just in the middle looking somewhat natural, but
still with a lot of style. So let me pull this down a little bit more and kinda
keep it in that world. Like I said, I'm going to take my gamma and just add a little bit
more life into his skin even something like that. That's looking good. So this is where we started, this is where we are. This is the magic of balancing. You wanna latch onto some anchors. So I wanna keep my lights
looking yellow tungsten if you will, I wanna
make my skin look good. And as long as those two
things are looking good the rest is just going to fall into place. Now in our pop we're just going to
use our contrast slider and I'm going to start
giving us some contrast, not do much. I'm going to kind of pull it back, keep it pretty open like
something like that. It looks pretty good if
I do before and after, I mean just look at it right. Now in my log wheels I'm gonna go under my log wheels. I'm going to take my shadow and I'm gonna just try to pull some of that blue out, keep it somewhere around here. And if I do before and after we're not really doing much, to be honest. So what I wanna do is I
wanna go into my primaries go back into my lift, gamma, gain and kinda push it even more. I just want to kind of exaggerate it. And then I'm gonna go under my gamma and just like really raise
that up to something like that. So now if we go into my log wheels I'm gonna take my shadows and I'm gonna kind of
just go places with it. So even if we park it
somewhere around here the whole idea is to create some sort of a style and create as
much separation as possible. I'm gonna take my mid tone and I'm going to start adding a little bit of more warmth like orange, if you will. So I'm going to keep it
somewhere around here if I do before and after you start
to see the difference, I mean right behind him, like we're going from yellow to that really nice orange. And then we're adding a bit
more blue in the overall image. We can see it over here too. So now in my HSL curves what I really want to do is
a couple of different things. I'm gonna go under my yellow hue vs hue, and I'm gonna string it until it's a bit more on the red side. So I like that. I'm gonna go into my
hue vs hue you for reds. And I'm just gonna focus on
the skin and kind of warm it up just about the right amount, something like this. And now what I wanna do is under my cyan. I just wanna kinda go under
luminance and pull it down. Not too much, something like that. I don't wanna do anything extreme and the reason being is
that I have a node right here where I'm gonna make that change. I'm gonna go under my vectors presets and I'm gonna select my cyan. I'm just going to pick my cyan and it does an excellent
job picking that out. Now I'm all I have to do is just go into my saturation and then
just dial it back a little bit so it's not distracting. And then the next thing I'm
gonna do is I'm gonna go under my highlights slider and I'm going to kind
of just crank it back. And it's a very realistic way to kinda control those highlights and just look at that before and after. And if I take these two
and do before and after, like look at how digital
and weird it looks like how natural and we just brought back
so much dynamic range and then this is guys, come on. This is the magic of understanding how to balance your image to create enough separation. Now, somebody might say, "Hey, this is not well balanced "because your black points
are not like really all "you know, neutral." And that's totally true, but playing to create separation in my image, color separation I'm still going for a look stylized look, it's not hard for me to
balance out my black points. All I have to do is if
I go under my log wheel, just to give you an example I can just do that and
bring it really close. And then all of a sudden my black points are gonna be even, but that's not what I'm going for. I'm going for a really cool look. So now let's go to our glow node. I'm gonna go under here
and I'm gonna drop on low. And then in here, let's
go to our composite mode and we're going to select my favorite, which is soft light. I'm gonna take my threshold
and start cranking it back not all the way. I'm gonna keep it... I wanna make it like super moody. So I'm gonna put somewhere around here and I'm gonna open this
up go into my blend, start dialing it back. And you know what? I wanna take my threshold and kinda close it off a bit more and now go to my blend and keep it somewhere around here. So if I do before and after, I mean the blend and just overall glow is
making a huge difference. Let me try to open up
my glow a little bit, close it off and then maybe take the
brightness and crank it. Maybe not too much. So even somewhere around here, if I do before and after
it looks really nice, then under my grain obviously I'm gonna throw my
favorite 35 millimeter 400T and then I'm gonna crank it. I'm just I love grain loud and proud I don't care. So I'm just going to like really go big maybe something like that. And if I do before and after, it's pretty substantial. If I punch in and show you guys, I mean the grain that I'm
adding is pretty insane. And maybe we can dial back
a little bit strength. All right, I'm not going
to go any less than that. Like, this is where I'm
going to draw the line. And then that's my grain. Now two additional steps that I would add to this image to really, really pop it out would be
creating another node right here and just calling it global adjustment. And in this one what I wanna do is I wanna
go into my highlights. I wanna take my highlights in my log wheels and crank
it to about 25, 26 ish. So just park it somewhere around here nothing really happens. I'm gonna take my high range
and start cranking it back. So right now my focus is, does girl, I wanna pop her out. Like, that's my focus anyways. Right, like it's all about that painting and
what's going on there. So I'm going to keep that
somewhere around here. And if I do before and after, I mean just look at how much
of the image we're popping. Now obviously we're
blowing out some highlights and things too. So in order to fix that, I'm gonna go here, I gonna create a note
prior to my first node I'm gonna call it highlights. And here, what I'm
gonna do is I'm gonna go under my HDR and I'm just I'm gonna go under my highlights and
try to crank it back. Obviously, I don't wanna do too much. I just wanna do enough. And really my eyes are right here. Like, I'm just trying to bring this down and I don't care about
the specular highlights if they clip because
they're supposed to clip but just look at how easily
it controlled all of this without touching anything
else before you had to like go into the qualifier, Luma qualifiers select
that and do all of that. So I've been having a
blast with HDR palette. Obviously I still use that technique. There's a time and place for everything but this is really speeding
up the entire workflow for me. So if now, grab all of it, kill it and start from
the top and then take you through what it means to
properly balance your image. And then to create a look around that to get the
most color separation out of your image you have to
do that in the proper order. That's why I have a whole training on nodes and how to
build a proper node tree. So first step we started with our offset, just do start creating
some color separation. And then I use my primaries my lift, gamma, gain to further
create color separation. And then we just use our
contracts slider to add some pop and use my log wheels, but just more colored
contrast if you will. And then in my HSL curve, same exact thing just kept swinging hues to create more separation. And then this one was pretty major. We just went in and just look at, on the vectorscope like how nuclear the cyan is. And it just grabbed it used
my vectors super simple. And then pull that back then. My ultimate favorite
technique added this glow. And there's so many things
that glow does, right? So not just the blooming effect, which make it makes it look like film, but it's almost like having multiple
power windows if you will because it's putting the emphasis
where it's supposed to go. So this is the narrative this is the story I want to see her. I want to see him. I don't care about anything else. So it just in such an organic way, takes the emphasis off of everything else and puts it where it's supposed to go. And then we added grain. My grades are never
complete without a grain. And then I showed you
a really cool technique to just give your image that final 3D look or that pop, and just look at how it brought again that information to life. And then obviously we had
some blown out highlights. I went in and corrected
that and just brought all of that back by using the HDR palette. And this is our final look guys. So like where we started
to where we ended up. Let's check it out in full screen. (upbeat music) There you have it guys
balance, balance, balance. That's the name of the game
when it comes to color grading whether you're working on a documentary or a interview sort of situation or if you're working on a short film, it does not matter. Even if you're creating
really extreme looks balancing goes along way. And especially when it comes to shot matching nothing
will save your behind more than balancing. So work on it, give it a shot. Like I said, pull up some
projects that you already worked on and tried these techniques
that I showed you in here do not forget to watch my free training. I'm telling you none of it matters if you
don't understand what goes where what's the difference between parallel node versus layer mixers. So you really need to
understand all those things. My training gives you
all of that and awesome, so check it out link
is in the description. On that note, smash that Like button, subscribe to my channel
for more awesomeness. I wanna to see you guys in the next video. (air whooshing) (upbeat music)
