Since we didn’t get a chance to Instagram during our shoot the other night, I came home, grabbed a frame from video, and put it up on Instagram! Once I posted it up on Instagram, Heather & I were lookin at it and I said “Hey…wouldn’t it be cool if we could color our footage that easy?” Then I started thinkin How hard would it be to grade some footage to look like one of the Instagram filters.

I’ll be the first to admit that we don’t always do things the proper technical way you should. With that said, here are a few shots of the progress we made on some footage we’re workin on.

Below is a quick vid showing the difference between the orignal and graded shots! BAM:)

Now like I said earlier, we don’t always do things the way the books say to do it. We just figure out the look we want, and then have at it until we get what we want. There are a trillion ways to get to the final graded footage that we got, but here are screen shots of the color grading progressions during our grading fun.

…Oh wait…ready for the kicker…We did this in FCPX…gasssp:) Each screen shot you see is a different color correction. There were 10 total, and then a nice signature Instagram vignette at the end:)

I think we got pretty close!! There’s still a lil difference between the two, but we wouldn’t want to make it look exactly like Instagram would we? (Okay, yeah we would, but I got tired and went to bed)

For real though, its not out of the ordinary to be getting your oil changed somewhere and the guy changing your oil tells you about how he’s workin on a new album. Honestly it was weird when we first moved here and quickly found out that everyone in Nashville claims to be musically inclined in some way.

After awhile I started to put people on the spot…

Random person: Yeah I’m in a band.
Me: Oh yeah… what kinda of music?
Random person: Oh I can do anything from opera to hip hop!
Me: Oh man…you’re really talented.
Random person: Yeah were waiting for our stuff to get picked up by a label.
Me: Hey I have an idea… sing amazing grace for me.

I’ve figured out a few things here with “artist” -They either come up with some excuse why they can’t sing it, or they’ll sing it and sound like junk! So just for fun and to humor myself I have this convo with almost every person who says anything about them being able to sing!

Why Amazing grace? Well you can’t hide if you can sing our not when singing amazing grace!
Honestly…anyone can sing pah pah pah pah pah pah pah pah po-ker face… (I know you just sang that song outloud…and Im bettin it’ll be stuck in your head for a while now)

Now moving on! The other day we had this model who said she was in a band at her church and that she sang!! OH man my ears perked up! Yeah we’re suposed to be shooting so we can get footage for the promo we’re gonna be doing, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity!

Me: Oh you can sing?
Katie: I’m alright! *Ladies and gentleman – another thing i’ve learned about artist. The ones who can really sing never admit it!
Me: (infront of all of the attendees at the workshop – NO pressure for Katie) Aight sing amazing grace
Katie: for real?
Me: Yeah

Oh man…This girl could saaaaaang!! Completely caught me off guard! Luckily we all had our iphones ready to catch some video:)

Katie..You’ve made a fan outta me!!

If you’re not using the C1-C3 settings, You’re craaaaaazy!!!

As Videographers, Eugene & I use these settings so we can save time, and not miss out on catching moments because we’re messing around with the settings on our cameras. I’m not going to go through and be your camera manual, instead I’m going to tell you how we use the C1, C2, and C3 settings.

A lot of times, you’re shooting in situations where lighting is different, which means your white balance will probably be different. Most of us are always shooting on manual, which can be crazy if you’re going back and forth between all the different types of lighting in a room

When we’re doing bridal prep, we pre-pick spots where we want to have the bride getting her makeup on and where she’s going to get into her dress. We start off in manual and get our camera set-up perfectly (white balance, iso, shutter…etc.) Eugene & I usually shoot with 3 cameras. Its not uncommon for us to start with one camera and end up with a completely different camera at the end of the day.

What I mean when I say that is this:

I Love getting detail shots, so I shoot with the 100mm macro pretty often. Obviously, I wont shoot the entire day with the 100mm lens, but Eugene and I use it quite a bit when we really want to make a moment super intimate. I also like shooting on the 50mm as does Eugene. We also have our hollywood camera with the 16-35mm on it. Gotta have the wide angle shots:) It could get real confusing and time consuming if we had to change settings all the time on the cameras everytime we switched with each other. Yeah we could just switch lenses, but thats just as annoying:)

When we first walk into the room, we set our cameras so C1 is set for where the bride gets her make up done. C2, is set for her dress, C3 is always set for outside. This helps us so much just knowing each Camera is already pretty close to being set.

Below you can see a few stills we pulled from video. I was catching a moment where the bride’s mom and the bridesmaids had an assembly line and were tying each other’s dresses. At the same time, Eugene grabbed the camera I had next to me with the 100mm to hurry over and catch the bride getting her makeup done. I had told Eugene I really wanted to get a shot of the bride’s eyes when she was getting her makeup done. (She had the prettiest eyes ever)

The photog had just walked out the door with the dress to get some shots, so we wanted to capture both moments at the same time so we could then go get some killer shots of the wedding dress. By already knowing that C1 was set for the bride getting her makeup done, Eugene was able to just turn the dial to C1 and catch the moment! We then headed outside and while the photog’s getting settings right on their cam, we were able to go ahead and grab our shots pretty quick because we already had our settings for outside.

Eugene stayed outside and got a few different shots while I went back inside to catch some great moments with the bride and her wedding party. We use radios, which also makes capturing the day even easier. I always radio Eugene when its time for the bride to get into her dress. When Eugene comes back, no matter what or where he was shooting before, he can turn the dial to C2 and be ready to go.

Its such a time saver & people are never waiting for us. We avoid being “that guy.”

Using the C1, C2, & C3 presets can be used for more than extremes like inside and outside. If you’re shooting a wedding where the bride comes down the aisle and it’s lit way different than how the grooms face is lit, why not have C1 set for the bride and C2 set for the groom?

We sometimes wish that instead of having all of the different settings like TV, P, or automatic, they just had the Manual setting and then had C1-C6.

We couldn’t have been more excited to hear this awesome news for these two! Allison of Food Network told Jason & Lori that she was so excited that they had been picked, & that their video was so well done!! She said it was sweet and it showed Jason & Lori’s personality so well; and she could see that Jason and Lori had a great chemistry together. Allison went on to say that she couldn’t wait to meet them and that she would be rooting for them and knows they will do great!!