One of our favorite parts of the editing process is color correcting and grading. A while back we did a post on how color grading can affect a shot. You can check it out by CLICKING HERE
There are several programs, plugins, and filters available out there to help with the process of color grading. If you’re editing on final cut studio, then you know about Color, the program that comes with Final cut.
In the beginning stages of our crazy editing lives, we only used FCP’s color correcting plugin! The Color program was soooo foreign to us. It was actually a little intimidating:) One day we finally gave in to learning the program! We searched online and watched probably every tutorial on color that there was. We never found just one tutrial to explain everything there is to know about Color, but instead, we searched for certain tutorials for color. For example, we did a search for “apples color tutorial, secondary.” There were a ton of helpful links and videos that came up! One of the coolest videos we found was one for how to do selective coloring. Hahaha…now at the time it was kind of new and pretty cool to do. We never have been able to actually find the video tutorial we used to figure out how to do the fun, but ever so out of style, selective coloring. Now we wont bash people who do it, but for us its lame, and has been done a billion times! If you’re wondering if you should do selective coloring or not, we’d go out on a limb and say not to:) 9 times out of 10 it just really really makes a video scream cheese:) But even with that said, there are still some pretty cool times where doing selective coloring can be cool! Here is a pretty cool example of how to use the program Color to use selective coloring in a pretty neat way! Apple Color Tutorial
Another freaking amazing plugin we use is Magic Bullet Looks from Red Giant This plugin has quickly become one of our favorites for color grading. We are so far from experts at color grading that it isn’t funny! Magic Bullet looks however gives us the ability to get the look we want without being a pro at color grading! There are soo many things you can do with Looks, that its actually out of control:) hahaha!
Check out the shot below The first shot is before we used Looks, and the second image is after we applied our Looks filter.
When it comes to color correcting, no one, but you can say what is right or wrong. What one person really likes colorwise may drive the other person crazy! You have to decide the look you’re going for and do it. During our 1on1 sessions we show how we get certain looks but always encourage editors to experiment. By experiment we mean go to the extremes of the spectrums! Bring your blacks way up high and see what happens and then do the complete opposite! You’ll get a better feel for how certain things will affect your footage!
While we may be extremely against going from black & white to color, that may be your thing. Maybe you like your footage to have a green tint to it? There is absolutely no wrong way to grade your footage. Some color grades may look completely ridiculous, but no one can tell you its wrong.
The worse thing to do though is to not color grade your footage at all! (unless of course you do all of your coloring in camera)
But leaving your footage untouched, we think is a waste of a video! If you’re going to spend all that time to get great shots and capture the footage, why not go all out and put that WOW factor on your footage?
by 2Duce2 Videography
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