(upbeat music) - What's going on guys, this is Qazi. Welcome to another epic video. You already saw the look
we're gonna be creating is just out of this world. We're pushing this so much and that is the name of the game. When it comes to music videos you really have to let
that side go that says, "I like to make things look natural. I like it where it's just more lifelike." That's not true. When you're working on music videos or when we watch music
videos that we really love, they're driven by emotions
than anything else. If you're thinking about a dream sequence, then all of a sudden there's crazy glow and halo around everything. It's an emotion that is just
exaggerated at that level. So that's what's gonna be happening, but obviously we're gonna
look at the hard skills like techniques to use,
where it doesn't look cheesy. It doesn't look 1990s. It still looks really good and current but we're just gonna keep it on that cusp. We're gonna push it as much as we can to get the most juice out of it. If you casually color grade your projects but want to learn more about nodes and how to build a proper node tree, you came to the right place. 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 were 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 get
into a tutorial section, let's look at our talent spotting and today I want to give a
shout out to Gabi Bukataro. Not only his name is epic, his page is unreal. If you go and follow him, what you're gonna get is not just epic looking posts and breakdowns but the description. You can learn a lot from him, so definitely give him a follow. He's an epic, genuine human being to just get to know anyways. So do that, 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 that intro. (upbeat music) One thing that I do want
to say before I even start that I will admit it, Bernie's version was way better. I tried my best, but it is what it is. This is what you guys got. So let's get to it. Now, this is the shot
that we're gonna be using and you can already see
how stylized it is, right? And this is what I was talking about. Like even just look at the mixed lighting that they're using. So if I pause it on, say this is our frame so let's pause it on this, and first thing that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go under my project settings and under color management, I'm gonna change it to RCM and selective entry wide gamut. So this is a space that I want to be in. As soon as I do that, it
gives me a rec seven or nine, and just what we said, look
at how stylized this is. Honestly, you can print this and it's gonna be great for a music video. The skin doesn't need to be perfect, like this could be a look. You can just basically
create your own world, your own reality. So obviously you know how I do it. So we're gonna take it a step further. So I'm gonna create a node tree structure and then go ahead and start
creating our own grade. So first node is gonna
be our color temperature. Second one could be just
for a couple of different changes that we want to make whether it's hue versus
options or whatever have you, then I'm gonna do a layer mixer action and that's where we're
gonna separate the skin and then create a really extreme look. Then we're gonna have
a couple of nodes here where we're gonna do all FX and then we're gonna have our glow and we're gonna have our grain, and maybe we'll do a vignette. So let's start building this out. So the first node is gonna be my, let's name them. So this one is gonna be my temperature. So let's go ahead and start doing that. So I'm gonna give it a little bit of, I'm basically right now,
just focusing on the skin and then I'm gonna bring in some warmth. So just by doing these quick little steps, like look how much of the
skin we were about to pull out and I can keep working on it. I'm just like looking at the skin and seeing like how realistic
quote end quote it's looking, or natural it's looking. So this is where we started to this is where we are and already we made a huge dent, right? So now one thing that I can do is I can go in here, go under qualifier and just
like really grab the skin and basically I don't care
about how imperfect it is, 'cause that's not the focus. What I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna click on this guy, hit 2X and then skin indicator, and I want to see where
this is actually sitting. So I want to go under my offset and kind of add this kind of action to like really put it
on that skin indicator and then we can just go
back and cut these out, and now if I hit Shift + H
and do a before and after, you can see how big of a difference we're making in the skin and now what I can do
is just get rid of this, because I want to apply
this to the whole image, it's totally fine. That's what I'm going for. It's okay. And then in here I want
to do some HSL curves. and this is what I'm saying, you have to be experimental, you have to be bold when you're
creating music video looks. So here what I can do
is just go under my cyan and start pulling this around, and what do I want to do? Maybe I want to put it
somewhere around here. Like this is looking good. So I can just leave it here. Now in my temp and tint what I can do is I can
just really call it primary meaning like I can do
a lot of things here. So now I can go in my contrast and start giving it some contrast, like really create some posh look and now what I can do is again, just take my lift, bring
it down a little bit, take my gain and then raise it up, take my gamma, raise it up and then gain, bring it down a little bit, something like that
and how are we looking? I mean, this is looking pretty good. If I turn it on and off, if I go all the way back to where we started to where we are, I mean, we made a huge difference so far. It could be a natural look right? Like, I mean, it's not too pushed, but this is where we're
gonna start having fun. Again, this is not necessary
what I'm about to do here but you can do this. I'm just gonna swipe over there, grab her skin and let's make it better a little bit. So I'm gonna do a little bit of that. I'm gonna open it up and see if we can grab a little bit more. Honestly, I just want to
grab more of her skin. So I really want to grab all of that, but when I do that, it literally grabs everything
and that's not what we want. So I'm gonna really control
it with my Luma qualifier because all I really want
is to grab just her skin like nothing else, and even if we do this, let's just say we do this. I'm gonna add some noise, de-noise it a little bit and then I'm gonna go under my blur and I'm gonna crank it up a little bit and this is what we have. So we have that selected. Now what I'm gonna do is in here, I can do a couple of different things. I can push the contrast a little bit more. I'm gonna go under my contrast slider and just push it a little bit more. We don't have to do anything extreme here. So that's all I'm doing here, just pushing the contrast a little bit and then if I do want to create a different kind of mood or look, I can do that in my gamma. So I'm gonna click right here and under my gamma, I can start like punching
in some sort of a color. If I really want to go for it then, let's just say I'm going
for that Terminator 2 blue, like I can really push that in here but I think I want to kind
of split the difference. I don't want to go too far. I can go back and just
add a little bit of it and now if I do before and after, this is not bad. I mean this was one of those steps that was not crazy necessary, but if you do it, it's not a big deal and then in here what I want to do is I have her skin selected, right? I'm gonna go in my mid
tone in my log wheels, and I'm just gonna add a little bit more to kind of pop her out, honestly and if I park it somewhere around here and do before and after, we can see that it is helping quite a bit, and now what I want to do is go under mid-tone detail and pull it back. I'm gonna keep it around -30 ish, and that's when it just
really softens up the skin, like you can see it and it just evens out everything. So now if I take these two on and off. If I look how big of a
difference we're making, right? Without being too like in your face and then this is where the fun begins. So I'm gonna go in here, open effects. These are some of the effects that you probably haven't
seen me use before and that's again, because
I'm working on a music video, I'm gonna have a lot of fun and I'm gonna do different things. So I'm gonna drop this guy on and it's perfect because
it's giving me this like starburst effect which is great. I'm gonna take and pull
the color out of it. So it's all white and it's natural. So now if I do before and after, and you'll see how natural that is, like look at this and it's just there, right? Now we can change the intensity of it but once again, it's a music video. I'm gonna have fun with it. So I'm just gonna kind of leave it in. I mean, I can go in my
blend and control it, but honestly, maybe we
can just leave it at this and not go all the way. It's totally up to you, but let's just say we'll leave it somewhere around here, now that's perfect. I'm gonna go in here, all right, go away buddy. I'm gonna go in here. I'm gonna drop in light rays and look what the light rays do. I absolutely love this effect and all you have to do is
just go under your length and stretch it and just look at this, what we're creating and again, all natural. Like look at how this light is behaving to where she is. So it's super, super natural. It's nothing caked on. It's working off of her. These effects are great okay. These effects are worth getting the Studio version of Resolve. Now, what do I want to do? I'm gonna go in here, I'm gonna juice up my image even more, again, experimental, be bold, keep pushing it. I'm gonna go in here, I'm gonna drop that on. I'm gonna go in my open effects, and I'm gonna go under my composite mode. I'm gonna change to soft light, and then go back and open up my image quite a bit, like this, and under spread, like really just look at her face. I really want to bring that out. Like, she's the focus, like, so just really, really
accentuate it and bring her out and I'm gonna go under my blend. I'm gonna pop this open so you guys can see what I'm doing, and I'm gonna go back to kind of split the
difference between the two. I don't want to go too
over the top with this. So this is already doing more than enough. Now, one thing that I can
do, this is not necessary. I think this is looking
very much like cinematic, it's highly cinematic, it looks amazing. So I don't think this is necessary, but if you want to, you can. I can just throw a window right here, something like that and give it a shape. So here's the aspect. and then maybe just kind of
make it a little bit bigger and then soften the F out of it. So like around somewhere
around here, invert it, and now I can just go
into my editable splines and I can just click on this guy and just grab it from here and kind of drag it down. Again, that is totally up to you. I think it's not necessary, but honestly at the same
time, it doesn't hurt. It's just really putting my eye where it needs to go, which is just focus right here, and at that point, nothing is ever completed
in Qazi's universe without grain, loud and proud okay. So I'm gonna go in here, I'm gonna change this to 35,400. I'm gonna bring the grain
size up a little bit. I'm gonna bring the strength
up a little bit, not too much. Just wanna do enough
to give it some weight and come on, okay? So this is what we created for our music video look,
and we just kept going. So I'm gonna kill everything and we're gonna start, to where we started to where we ended up. So this is what we have which was the rec seven or nine look, and that was from our log footage. This was looking like, "Hey, we can print it. This looks great." Remember that? And then I went ahead
and I did my balance. and I mean, this could
also be printed, right? I mean, we came a long way here and then here, I just pulled out the skin a little bit more, showed you that technique and then just played with our HSL curves and just add a little bit more
Terminator blue, if you will, and then in here I grabbed her skin and did some beauty work, but didn't really push too far because I knew there was so much more that I was gonna do with
our FX and everything, and then here, I just added
a little bit of contrast and just added that punch in the image and then we went ahead and created this starburst effect, which is epic and it's dynamic. It works in real time, and then these light rays just really bring everything together and just makes it look
like she's on a stage, and then glow, just
like, ties everything in. It just adds the right
amount of saturation. It pops the skin out. I mean, it just creates that 3D effect and then to further
enhance that 3D effect, we created a vignette to
pull her out even more without making it look cheesy and then finally added some grain, and this is our final look. So again, before, complete before, the complete after and it's a great look, it doesn't look fake and this is me giving you permission when you're working on music videos, just push man, just keep going. So now we can also add noise
reduction to be honest. So I mean, I can go in here
and use our typical technique that I show you guys. So we're gonna go in
here, nothing too crazy. So I'm gonna go in and just crank this up to about 4.8 ish. I'm gonna break the chain of
my chroma in spatial threshold and I'm gonna bring
this up to about 6.8 ish and that cleans it up quite a bit. Once again, you can't really
tell the difference on YouTube but it does really help. So now let's check out the
final look in full screen. (upbeat music) So, hopefully this was helpful and the purpose of this video, more than just showing
you all the cooler effects that are in Resolve is to give you permission that, hey, if you're gonna be
working on a music video, and if you want to stand out, trust me, you got to push that envelope. You have to push the limits. You have no idea how
many times I get hit up where a music video was graded,
but the client wasn't happy. The director wasn't happy. The artist wasn't happy and then they reached out
to me and they were like, "Qazi, we want you to just do what you do. Like just take it to the next
level, just go nuts with it." And that's the name of the game. When it comes to music video,
there's so many different categories or industries within film. So like if you're working on commercials, you're gonna create a different look. You're working on documentaries,
completely different look but for music videos, just know to let go and be experimental. On that note, do not forget to watch the one hour long training. Trust me, none of this matters unless you know how to put
a proper node tree in place, and that's what's in the
training and then some. So check it out. The link is down below. If you're enjoying the content, smash that like button. Subscribe to my channel
for more awesomeness. and I will see you guys in the next video. (upbeat music)
