Since it's Friday I decided to make a color grading tutorial for you guys on how to create the cinematic golden look as you can find in the beautiful film A Very Long Engagement.

I'm doing this all inside of Adobe Premiere Pro since that's the most common software you guys asks me to do a tutorial on.

Hope you'll like it!

Simply I wanted to thank the people who developed the hack and the patches and say to the world how much I like this camera, it's unique, go grab one and feel his vibe.

Greetings.

Been away for a long time having a blast shooting all sorts of wild things and acting directing. I thought I would share this little clip (to show off my new car ** cough ** I mean spaceship) and also show 60fps vs 30 fps vs 24fps in the same shot.

24p film look vs 60p live look in ONE file so you can see the psychological effect. You'll need to DOWNLOAD and play (only 1280 x 720p sorry full 1920 x 1080p was too big. This switches in REAL time between the two in the same shot so you can really feel out the difference. I prefer 24p for narrative story telling and 60p for POV horror or news live look or 3D holographic shooting which I have been doing lately (not with the gh2 - using modded sony 3D pro cam, consumer ts10, and red epic for that). Note: this will only stream at 30p online (i really dislike 30p) you must download and play to see what I am talking about, No current online streaming service that I know of except for LIVESTREAM currently supports 60i or 60p streaming. I HAVE done it with livestream on my site which is astounding WHEN it works but it is still a little unreliable as of yet you need a business class hard wired ethernet cable and black magic card and an upstream of at least 20mbit down 5 megabit up CONSTANT. 1.5 won't do. Wifi won't do even dual band it gets blips. I can do 848 x 480 and sometimes 1280 x 720p live with a 4G card.

Enjoy... hope everyone is well...let me know what you think.....more to come!

http://vimeo.com/michaelbiggins/filmlookvslivelook

PS - just for fun and giggles - Disney let me toy around in one of their sets with Trumpet:

;)

Michael Biggins AKA Blackout BLACKOUT'S BOX STUDIOS Hathouse Films New York City - Florida - California 877-9-BLACKOUT michael @ REMOVETHISandSPACESforspam blackout.com

ProLUT is a color grading pack of looks based on real films and movies.

It comes in every format you can think of so that you can use it in whatever software you're using.

Watch the demonstration video here:

More info http://www.davidhjlindberg.com/?product=prolut

Since the introduction of Digital Cameras it became easy to film and to learn making indie films, you just grab your camera and experiment with it. However the look of the digital footage(even color corrected and graded) still leaves amateur and domestic camera impression, the digital footage doesn't look as good as straight out of the film camera.

What is it about film that people like so much? Simple - it's color. Maybe some will say dynamic range, some will say the motion and flares. But the best feel about the film is that it looks unique and cinematic. People say that film has a unique color processing that can never be achieved by a digital camera. I take a more scientific approach and after many researches I found some breaking points in simple After Effects effects profiles and LUT usabilities and achieved unique fake color caps which gives that beloved film feel. The limited color brightness is one of the most important things when trying to emulate film look.

The hardest part in grading Digital footage is that it needs to be RAW or LOG, that means a flat footage taken out of expensive cameras. Then it is graded digitally by shifting colors of keyed parts, adding tints and editing curves. Amateur and Indie filmmakers sometimes doesn't have all those REDs and Black Magics and ARRIs and other beautifully named machines and anyway they want to look pro, so what we all indie filmmakers do is not called grading we just do the color correction - just create some interesting looks by shifting and tinting video. But there is certain points and colors that will leave that digital and domestic feel in the DSLR video even when it is color corrected. The colors overbright, and oversaturated areas doesn't change with color correction. Many of indie filmmakers lowers the saturation, but what happens is that they desaturate all areas of the footage so colors in shadows becomes undersaturated. I tried to fix it by collecting some unique braking points of Adobe After Effects CS6 as known as ColorGhear techniques but instead of doing it manually I tried to automate the process. The process is not grading nor color correction - it's something very different and unique and is used as a simple preset for After Effects CS6, which will be available soon for just a few dollars ($5-$10).

So I made some tests. At first I didn’t even think that I would come up with something interesting but now I actually need your opinion, it is usable? Does it really make a difference and most important – does it make the footage look like FILM (kodak). It does certain things to a simple footage: adds color bright limit, adds saturation limit ONLY to oversaturated areas, increases saturation to undersaturated areas, makes overbright colors(not whites) more visible and appealing on screen (for human eye).

There was a guy who tried to create and then disappeared his plug-in known as "Filmvision plug-in" I think he used similar techniques.

What do you think ?

Also I will make a video with just original color limiting process because the current video also affects the overall saturation and makes it more blockbuster Blue Orange type of thing.

I think what Coppola to see shots of the GH2 was somewhat familiar with this movie great unknown but which he felt so proud. I'd love to ask him about it, but that is almost impossible.

Excuse me if this thread its trivial and offtopic, but wanted to share this impression.

And I recommend to all screenwriters and directors see this movie frugal, sometimes with limited resources and without a very complex story, but well told and surprising elements can do a good job in this case is a masterpiece.

Attached some pictures of it.

PS: Sorry for my poor English.

I think Tokina wold come to the M4/3 bandwagon and manufacture this optical to work fully with our cameras.

PS: Sorry for inaccuracies with the english.