Just thought I'd share some color grading that I've been fiddling with. I shot a bunch of footage at the local carnival a month back, and now I'm working on grading it for one of my personal music video projects.

I've used my own take on a bleach bypass process that simultaneously adds the teeniest touch of blue to the lows, then with a couple more nodes, I've tweaked exposure and of course that nasty red/orange/yellow/green zone of color (that seems to always make or break skintones) has had some subtle adjustments.

Lemme know what you think!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/68917223@N05/sets/72157634804640007/with/9375308962/

shot 95% of this in 2 days just to do a little more testing of the weight of the BMCC on a Glidecam HD2000 and a 12ft CobraCrane. I didn't put a whole lot of time into grading, and this isn't a video showing off DR, raw ability or flaws, just simple "FLoATing BMCC" video. If you notice I purposely shot on some rough terrain to see if any jello would pop up but It did fine.

I shot some footage at 50fps on my GH3. After ocking a movie on Premiere (at 25fps) I moved it to Resolve 9 Lite via an XML file. For some unknown reason some clips (only some of them) show different in/out points than the Premiere version. All clips were shot in a 30 min time window. I suspect that it might be because of the Timecode settings of the original clips, inherited from GH3 settings (maybe cause it shifted from 3:xx:xx to 4:xx:xx during shooting?).

What have I done wrong? If it's related to Timecode settings: How should I set my camera to prevent this from happening? How can I fix it in post (either Premiere or Resolve)?

Thanks for answering!

P.

Also do you think that one should start with a simple color grading tool like Magic bullet Colorista/Looks or Color Finesse or move directly to more advance stuff like DaVinci Resolve. Also i heard some criticizm of Adobe Speedgrade, what is your take on that?

Do you need well lit scenes for color grading or can you grade scenes that are lit using only the sun?

Where it was stated that shooting flat in 8bit was a terrible idea, and the nonsense we've heard over and over that you can't bring that color back, which everyone who has seen my work knows is just not true.

While it is true you cannot magically turn 8 bit color into 32bit color. Working in a 32bit environment does allow your corrections to enhance your footage rather than deteriorate your footage.

@FilmingArt FCP X, Premiere Pro CS6, Vegas Pro 12, Smoke 2013, are all 32bit

Just go to my vimeo channel to see tons of video's shot using this method on 8bit cameras https://vimeo.com/channels/shianstorm

And then check these threads for why you are catastrophically wrong about "noise and all kinds of other problems." And welcome to the discussion.

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1817/colorghear-toolkit-color-grading-system-for-ae/p1

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/5346/colorghear-toolkit-color-grading-system-for-ae-part-2#Item_10

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/3773/expose-in-the-zone-getting-the-best-image-for-grading./p1

Is out there something like that? Midi mapping is a very nice solution used in music production that could be used for grading as well.

What should i use to transcode the footage to something that will work with da vinci like quicktime or prores without losing quality?

Thanks

I wanted to share this film with you to get some real critics from you. I'm active on a Swedish forum already and usually put my films over there to get some feedback but I wanted to hear your opinions as well.

The film is a school project I had, and I wanted to make a short film where I could really show my color grading. So even though I directed, edited and made the vfx in this video, I did it almost only to show my grading skills to then have something to show post companies as a portfolio after my graduation, which was a few weeks ago.

What do you think is good, what can I've been doing better?

I was using GH2, Orion v4b, Nostalgic (-2-2-2-2). Lens was Samyang 35mm 1.4.

Software used was After Effects CS5.5, Premiere Pro CS5.5, Twixtor, DaVinci Resolve. Converted all my files to Cineform .MOV before editing.

You can visit Class on Demand site (register and get it free) http://www.classondemand.net/online/bmd/getting-started-davinci-resolve-lite-training.aspx
or download as one file http://files.mail.ru/62UCLD .

Here is a little before and after comparison video to show how far you can push hacked footage during a color grade.

Hope ya like it,

Michael "Pixelphile"