Ok, here is my modest grading version:

I went with less being more...

Meh, I went with it. It would have been nice to grade something with a little more "palate"...

Oh, and what did I win? :D

Another fast grading test 2:

No scopes or anything else used, just my eyes.

@producer Your second version is very interesting. I like it.

I didn't realize we were posting these here, and apparently we can post multiple attempts?

This is the one I settled on. Super yellow vintage. I guess I may post one of my more contemporary attempts if multiples are allowed.

@s_maurice Nice one :)

Greetings from Sweden :)

Graded in FCPx. Overall, not too far off from the original. Gave a boost to the natural warmth in the scene to tie the whole thing together a bit more. Used a window to add some punch to the woman in the foreground and take the contrast down in the background. A crop (apologies to the DP) to focus a little more attention on her. Finally, a grain overlay (tough to see on Vimeo) for a little more character. Approached it as a scene I imagined in a feature. Still a fairly bleak scene, though...maybe she is a spy who can never return to her family. Or her cat just ran away. All it needs is some moody music.

Here is my entry. Color graded in AE with the curves/saturation tool(no scopes). A cold, bluish, low contrast look. I also applied a touch of holygrain film grain.

I agree, this clip is not suitable for a color grading contest. We need a scene(2+ shots) with more colors and detail.

Wow people, didn't think this would get this popular only in this thread. I hope you read the article in which I wrote that you should send your entries to my mail to easily help me organize all your grades.

Anyway, the deadline was this Saturday and more than 40 people from all over the world was attending. Here's a post about the winner: http://davidhjlindberg.blogspot.se/2013/03/winner-of-grading-contest-windy-winter.html

@Vitaliy_Kiselev Definitely, I've used this straight from the GH2 which of course is compressed H.264 which sucks when it comes to grading. But that was partly the main challenge in this contest as @producer said. I usually grade in RED raw which is a lot easier than grading poor stuff from GH2. But this actually makes me think it's more interesting to grade these kind of footage, 'cause it's such a harsh line between setting a grade or breaking the image apart. But I've asked some people on Twitter if they're interesting in testing some raw or prores444 footage instead and it seems like that would be the material in our next contest.

@rockroadpix Liked it! Natural and well balanced!

@s_maurice Gorgeous! You have a good eye!

@producer You're probably right about all those things! I'm not a very good photographer so I may have been setting up the camera in a non optional way. If you're interesting in the equipment I used a GH2, Carl Zeiss Planar 1.4 50mm and Apocalypse Boom.

Thank you all for posting all these wonderful grades!

@Vitaliy_Kiselev Ah I see. What I thought would be interesting in this picture is that different grades could make this look either scary or romantic because of the emotion in the models eyes. But yeah, there could have been a better shot for playing with the colors for sure!