My Color Grading Workflow - DaVinci Resolve 18 Tutorial

all right it's been a long time since i did a proper color grading video so let's get going this video is sponsored by film convert i'll talk a little more about them later in the video before we dive integrating let's first start with some essential and fun color theory good color grading starts with a selection of colors before shooting this is called research on the color palette basically if either the cinematographer director or set designer messes up in this department color grading the footage will result in a rather unpleasant experience the magic happens when you combine the right colors movies often work with complementary colors which means colors that stand opposite from one another on the color wheel this may sound difficult so let's pull up some examples the reason complementary colors work so good together is because they create the highest color contrast possible in particular scenarios you want things to pop so working with a color palette that supports that goal is essential another important color scheme that works great for film is a monochromatic color scheme a monochromatic color scheme consists of one base color separated in multiple shades of that color let's take a look at another example my favorite film of all times doom now you can see that all these images are shot using a monochromatic color palette in mind so it's shot with that in mind now if you do a fast forward scroll downwards you can see that some images like this one just pops the reason is because they've introduced a complementary color okay enough theoretical stuff i'll try to apply all the above mentioned notes in the coming part of the video so stick around let's have a quick sneak peek on some of the images that we're going to discuss [Music] [Music] [Music] the feeling we wanted to bring across was intimate and soft for that reason i chose to shoot on the leica r lenses and use the longer focal lengths for the majority of the shoot to get that intimate feeling a little word from today's sponsor film convert film convert is by far the most advanced plugin for emulating film stock it is so good in fact that after i started using it i haven't looked back just apply the plugin to a node and resolve or an adjustment layer in final cut or premiere select your preferred film stock tweak it a little bit and you're good to go now we haven't even talked about the real film grain tool now stick around a little longer as i used film convert on this project as well by clicking on the link in the description you'll get a sweet 10 off money which you can now use to get a nice tasty coffee score also you'll support this channel a lot so uh thanks for considering alright guys the moment you've all been waiting for color grading yes that's creepy let's start with the breakdown of the first sequence so we're talking about the note tree why i made particular choices and how i did it next we're talking about shot composition and why this is so important for this project and of course we're talking about color and color palettes all right first thing is the note tree and this is pretty much the same note 3 that i use in the entire project the reason for this is because it is super fast i make one note tree i copy it over and then i adjust every node if i need to if i don't need to it saves me time and if i need to add stuff i add stuff but this is basically how i always color grade all right so let's put all the notes away well not away but like let's deselect all the notes that's the right word and then let's add them in one by one so what i always do from start to finish is i add in my csd first this is because i want a good reference of what i'm doing so i go from black magic generation 5 film to rec 709 alright so this is my preferred color space to work in because this is also how i'm exporting it eventually next i add in my exposure node and this i always do while watching the scopes alright so i'm checking what i'm doing and how the image looks after i added in the exposure changes the exposure changes are done in the primary wheels using the lift gamma gain offset controls right so just the sliders underneath that's something that i'm always doing and it gives me great results next up is the contrast i just add in a little bit of contrast this is just like 1.15 you can see that it makes a lot of difference it creates a little bit more of a moody look which i personally like i think it's my style but uh who knows next we've got two white balance notes i don't know why i made a separate note for this one sometimes i do weird stuff but this one could easily be done on the white balance note but for some reason i didn't anyway this just adds in a little bit of of like warmth like a little bit of green and it pops out the the reds a little more all right and if i add in this one you can see that the whole image becomes a little bit warmer a little bit a little bit with a little bit warmer all right you can see that in the scopes as well so the blues are pulled down a little bit and we create a little bit more of a white balance reference here all right next up we've got a parallel mixer these two and this is basically where i start to tweak the colors all right so this first one is just done in the log wheels so here i add in a little bit of blue and shadows and a little bit of reds or warmth in the highlights and then i play around with the high and low range right i'll go over more detail about the high and low range when i get to the skin tone section so let's wait for that next up we've got the color warper this is a tool that i absolutely started to love um it's a really minimal minimal change but it adds to the overall look of the image of course something that i always try to do is i try to create a grade with all the knowledge i already possess have better word um if i've done the grade and i'm happy i always take some time to try and and practice with new tools all right so this warper wasn't in resolve for a long time so i started using it after it came out so you know after a while i started to get familiar with it and just the insane control you have over all the colors in your frame is ridiculous like you can change every little nuke and cranny of the image based on the use in the image so what i suggest you do is you create a note tree as you would normally do and after you've created that note tree and your colors look nice you just deselect some of the color notes that you did and then play around with new tools in order to get better at new and creative ways that resolve is having or you know creating for us that way you're always learning and you you get better because you get a better understanding of the program and of the skill a lot of hand movement all right next up we've got the skin tones this is a way of selecting skin tones that i'm always doing so what i do here is i create one node and this is my qualifier node all right so go to my qualifier i press shift h and then i select a color in this case skin so i just click the skin here and that is it then i add in colors that i also want right so when i done that so now i kept clicking all right so i click here i kept clicking it keeps on adding but if i want to add colors separately i can just add in colors with this little add button right so this little add dropper i can then click on colors that i want to select as well all right great now if i want to well of course get rid of particular colors and i can do it that way as well but that's pretty obvious next we've got the feather tool if i want for example to feather little edges here i can do that by holding down the click button and then going over patches that i want added in the frame but really softly all right this is a tool i rarely use to be honest what i do use a lot is the matte finesse options so i go nuts on the clean blacks clean whites blur it out a little bit so you know all the edges are softer so the the change in color is not so obvious and once i've done that and i've got a clean selection i then add a new node and i add this blue box to the other blue box or like the triangle what it does is it copies over all the data all the the qualifying data that i've added here to this node why do you want to do this well it gives me a lot more control because i can now add in all the color changes on one node while still being able to change the whole selection on my previous note without having every every color added in if i would do it on one node i could never undo this all right so that's why i always use this this two node structure basically all right so um one little extra tip let's copy this so i can put it back if you add a node and you click you know you connect it with this alpha and your image starts to look like this it cancels out the colors that you um that you qualified that's not what you want so what you do then is you go to your key section you click on this little button and everything is swapped around exactly how you want it all right so what i did here is i went to my log wheels yup and then i pushed in a lot of oranges the reason for this is because you have a lot of control over the high ranges and the low ranges of your image right so the luminance levels of your image with these two sliders so i push in a lot of orange and i could also push in a little bit of blue and then by increasing or decreasing this slider i can choose exactly how much of that orange is added in my frame all right so you can see the the whole like scope shifting as i increase the low range all right so now it's super orange and now it is pulled nicely toward the middle ground all right same goes for the high range if i up it all the way it is super orangey and if i lower it down all the way everything get pulled gets pulled out so this way you have a lot of control over what kind of color you want added in what part of the image does that make sense hopefully it is if not let me know all right now if you want to get away from this window again just click this little highlight button or shift h and you're exiting out on it so um next we've got our film convert tool right so this is where i add in my film print emulation now for quick reference how i would normally do it before i started using film convert is i would make two notes on one note i would add a new color space transform then go from rec 709 to arie lock c all right because a film print emulation is working from a lock based image and then here i would here i would add in a lut then go to film looks and this is built in into resolve d55 for example and that's how we do it now this is of course way too intense so i would compound it and then go to my key section and then lower the key output this way is how i was used to do it well because of course film convert is extremely like flexible and it gives me a lot more control over how i would want the image to look all right so film convert has a lot of extra tools that i'm not using here which i will go over into a separate video a full fledged tutorial on film convert later but for now i'm only going to use the film settings and the green settings all right so the film settings is basically a bunch of film looks all right so we've got uh you know i know just a lot kodak portra very popular uh you know just a bunch of these but the one that i really like to use is the codec 5207 vision three and then the cool thing here is that i have full control over the film chroma so the output of the light itself the film look itself the film print emulation and then also over the luminance levels so what it does to the luminance value of the image all right now you can also change on what it was shot at so super 35 or full frame to me right now it doesn't really make a difference i need to look into this more of what it is doing so i can't really tell you know honesty rules um then we've got the crane settings and this is where film convert blows any other plugin out of the water because right here you've got grain settings and you can just you know put more grain into the the shadow area take it out of the highlights and i don't know it is just so intuitive on how they work this out you know and um i haven't really seen such an easy way to work with grain in other plugins basically even the the grain plug-in from resolve itself is not as as easy to use as this film convert plugin is so if you want to play around with film grain this plugin is the best absolutely and of course you've got a lot of control over every other parameter in this whole in this whole plugin so yeah it is a great tool you can export your light blah blah but you can also do that of course here so that doesn't really make a difference but of course you know it is overall really nice to use and i really like it especially for the film grain and film settings all right so um that is basically it that is everything i do for this project and of course as i mentioned before all the the the clips have the same note structure but are adjusted individually to get where i want it to go all right something that you see here in the first sequence where they are scouting birds is that i always try to block the frame so i wanted an intimate feeling and in order to get that you want to try and get depth all right the way to get depth is to block the frame with something in front so here i use the bush right here i use the kid's face right here i use the binoculars you know right here i used his face so that way you create a lot of interest and you draw the viewer toward a specific point because of course his face is not in focus but her face is all right so that way i i try to put emphasis on a particular object all right same thing happens here um you know we we we have this light in front which is of course a very highlighted thingy and then the focus is on the book so you're you're sort of drawn toward that area this is you know the beauty of composition um really quickly back to this area because otherwise we'll uh go back and forth um the colors are of course important here she used a red hairband and also some red in his jacket which helped to separate them from the back and the foreground that really worked well because otherwise if they for example would wear green they would blend in too much with everything around it right so using again a complementary color is extremely important if you want to create separation on the other hand here this whole image leans more toward a monochromatic color palette because every color is sort of situated in the same kind of um color palette i think resolve even has a color palette generator uh color let's see ah color palette boom yeah so right here you can see that all the colors are basically in a monochromatic color palette so this is exactly what i showed you before in the color wheel thingy now if we would do the same on this one for example let's add the note alt s and edit you can see that we got a green and a red one green and a red one these colors are of course quite pastel e but still they are opposite from one another on the collar wheel not a straight line but more a little bit crooked but still they come close to opposite you know so that's a really cool way to check what your image is looking like all right sweet all right next up we've got this shot this is of course a little bit wider you see the kid the father they do research in the book to find out what kind of bird it is or something and of course the main key here is the light this was a real oil light got hot as hell really like you couldn't touch it so it was pretty sketchy but the quality of light that this light is producing is insane it's so nice it's so warm it's so soft you know so yeah that you can really see that and that really creates a nice warm intimate feeling they have in this tent all right these two shots are also part of this sequence you can see that it's a lot darker here right here it is a lot lighter as you can see in the water here but that's why we didn't have a wide shot of this tint but you know you could see that we're in a tent but we couldn't really fake it anymore because this was shot in the early morning um anyway the shots here are of course the same yeah frame is blocked i'm pointing to the screen which you cannot see but the frame is blocked by his hand focuses on the girl well this is a more overall shot a more total shot so you can see what they're doing but here of course same thing blocked focus blocked focus all right cool so the two shots here are are working great because they have a color palette that is complementary all right let's add in that little note again so alt s and then command v because i copy it you can see that darker blue lighter darker blue lighter lighter blue and then a little bit of a pastel orangey look yup same thing here if you add it in you can see it very light orange and then bluish so nice complementary contrast it's created here let's move on to the sequence where they're older right so this is uh in the present day this was shot in 1990 as they say it um right here the daughter grew up the father grew up got a little grayer um they're doing the same thing you know scouting birds and uh having a good old time uh you know family time it's important anyway our drawing skills uh got a little worse i guess or this was the father of course well anyway well i'll let you be the judge of that um same thing happened here all right so we were shooting this in the evening so you can imagine it was a long day early morning late evening um so they're sitting here nicely same thing happened yeah so i'm blocking the frame focuses on the on the binoculars and the book this is a nice wider shot and then here blocking the frame focuses on the book blocking the frame focuses on dead this way you create a lot of interest so this composition is something that i really like to do as you can see but of course framing out and and showing a more total view of what they're doing is also important same thing what what happened here is i used a longer lens in order to isolate them a little bit more and then create more interest because the rest of it is nice and shallow and you know the ground here is nice and shallow and the water is is is abstract yeah cool anyway so color wise same thing happened they used a newer version of the light an led light which you definitely can see in the cul in the quality of the light in my opinion but overall the whole structure is the same same notary different tweaks here and there but the same rules applied to the previous clips here this clip in particular was done with the light up a little bit so it hits the eye basically how i pursue this it was just they were doing their thing just you know laughing having a good old time and i was just shooting around it so really hands-on and running gun then the next sequence one of the last sequence of this breakdown is the night sequence something that i really like to do is because we didn't have the tools to light this whole scene you know create a nice soft fill light i worked with hard silhouettes i always like to do that because it creates a lot of interest in an abstract shot because you don't really see exactly what is happening but you your imagination takes over and that is fun all right so here i'm focusing toward the dad and then the next shot is of the dad reading a book and then a nice close-up of his face reading the book of course the light in this shot is positioned a little bit differently than in this shot to create a nice shadow on his face but that yeah that's all like things that you need to keep in mind while shooting all right so um yeah a little bit more silhouettes here and there more silhouettes well not necessarily because i'm now shooting from a higher angle so you can see her face but a nice super heavy contrast look a nice smile here so uh here she zips zips the tent and they go to bed after this a really fast sequence is is sort of coming with a lot of shots from what we've shot before um but you can see that in the end of the video so if you're interested stick around um all right so a little bit extra on the color palette here of course this is a super obvious monochromatic color palette it is all in the same range all one color and then different shades of that color yeah same goes for this one right a little bit moodier a little darker um so it's nice to play around with these you know if you want to create a more peaceful or soft image a monochromatic palette really works if you really want an exciting or you know like an image that draws the attention a lot more a complementary color palette works better in that case so it's nice to experiment with that and also just to try it out to see what happens and to see what your um feeling says when looking to an image you know go to a shot deck for example and scroll through thousands of these um of these shots and and see what your feeling says or you know wants to say about an image man i don't know what i'm saying anymore but you get the point you just have to accept your feeling about a particular shot and see what kind of color palette they used ready cool okay so that is it for the breakdown um very clear very simple it is one note tree uh it's pretty much one or two kinds of compositions that i used a wider total shot or a nice frame blocking shot and then for the color palette we we switch between a monochromatic color pedal and a complementary color palette so that's that as you can see color grading is a lot of fun but it becomes even more fun when you discuss everything with the people on set rather before you get on set because this will ultimately result in the best result possible because everybody is on the same page and i've witnessed a lot of times that i was hired as a colorist and had to do a job that was just undoable they wanted to have sort of a color palette without having the colors in the frame i'm sure if you've done some color grading jobs you are definitely familiar with this case because some people have just no clue what they're asking of people you know that work in the field so yeah if you're a director or anyone that you know produces a shoot make sure you discuss everything with the people on set color palette clothing the lights everything that's it for this video hopefully you liked it if you're watching until this point i can assume you did i had fun shooting this video so hopefully you had fun watching it that would be a win-win wow now go get yourself a nice coffee i'm sure i'm gonna do it because right now it's 10 26 in the morning so let's dump coffee bye susie ears [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] here [Music] [Applause] [Music] canton [Applause] [Music] totally new bin

Channel: Sjoerd Wess

Views: 27,268

Keywords: My color Grading workflow, DaVinci Resolve 18, davinci resolve tutorial, resolve 18, color grading davinci resolve beginner, davinci resolve 18 beta, davinci resolve tutorial for beginners, davinci resolve color grading, how to use filmconvert, how to get film look in davinci resolve, how to color grade in resolve, davinci resolve 17 tutorial for beginners, davinci resolve 17, sjoerdwess, color grading tutorial, davinci resolve, filmconvert nitrate, filmconvert davinci resolve

Id: 2r8ZkrCPlwU

Length: 28min 43sec (1723 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 13 2022