M&A, watch/critique my Hood edit

B

blatt

Active member
Shot over two days. One of the days I got to test out Magic Lantern and the other was with regular firmware.

My big concern is how the colors were kinda all over the place. Looks wouldn't let me just drag and drop previous grades/corrections from clip to clip. So I did each clip individually. Anyone know how to fix that? Also if you wanna touch up on anything else let me know.
 
What you need to do to keep your color consistant, is you need to balance your black and white levels and then use the 3-way color correction "white wheel" to change the white balance. Shoot me a PM if you have no idea what im talking about because its alot of info you probably should learn.

After you balance your color on each clip, then you can start grading and then you can just copy/paste one looks effect into each clip. If you balance each clip out (white/black levels and white balance) then you will achieve consistency. Its hard, but its doable and usually takes awhile to get shit consistant.
 
Yeah my WB was all over the place as well. First day I was on Auto, then the next I was on a super low kelvin setting (slightly above tungsten lighting I believe). Looks wouldnt let me copy and paste either, which definitely rained on my parade :(
 
In FCP you can definitely copy and paste, i forget if you're using fcp or not. And white balance is mad easy to fix with color corrector 3-way or similar (in whatever you're using).
 
yep, FCP 7. Like it will copy looks in there, but it wont save the presets apllied via looks. So say I add a warm/cool in looks, and I try to apply that same wam/cool setting into another clip, it will put looks into the filters tab, but not the warm/cool preset. It's really wierd and I've never heard of this happening to anyone else
 
don't do it in looks, do it in fcp. open the clip with looks on it in the finder and then in the filter tab, click the looks filter and copy that bitch and then you can paste it in the same place.

That is the hard way, the easy way is to literally copy the whole clip in the time line then select the rest of the clips and right click - paste atributes then select filters. This is only a problem if you use a bunch of other filters, then you have to do it the hard way.
 
just tried copying the clip then pasting filters in timeline. I copy the clip with 3 way corrector and looks (warm stock). Both filters paste into the desired clip, but the looks file is blank, no warm stock. Real fucked up. I don't know if its because I tampered with something in sequence settings (highly doubtful) or something else. This is really fucked up on my end.
 
it pastes the filters over, but the looks "tools" don't transfer from clip to clip no matter how I try to do it.
 
Hmm, ive always made one look effect on one clip then copied and pasted the look effect to all of the clips at one time...
 
^ I don't see what reinstalling it will do...

As far as the edit, color aside I would say work on the intro, it just jumped from that timelapse straight into skiing, a transition period would have been nice. If you skipped the timelapse (which didn't add positively to the edit in the first place) and added some on slope, not skiing yet shots it would have been much easier to immerse the viewer in your film.

Over all I liked it though, riding was cool, vibe was nice. Good job!
 
Use the histogram to make sure you aren't clipping your blacks. Also, why are your whites analogous to your blacks (violet/red)?

Start by adjusting your blacks to the desired level, making sure they aren't clipping. Same with whites. Then adjust the mids (gamma) to a desired level. Remember, too much contrast looks just as bad as not having enough.

As for colors, what look are you after? If you want the "warm" look, give the mids a bit of a red/yellow push to taste (be careful not to overdo it; you don't want skin tones looking like snooki). Since the mids are "warm," you are going to want to give the blacks a complementary push, so tint them cyan/blue. Once you've done this, take a look at your whites. If they are too violet for instance, tint them the complementary color, or in this example, green.

I advise you to stay away from the automatic white point feature. This only works in a typical workflow, where you go through every shot making them neutral before grading. If you aren't doing it that way, the automatic white point feature doesn't work because "white" is relative. If you plan on making your image anything other than completely neutral logarithmically, the "white" won't actually look white. For your application, the best you can do is use your eyes and a histogram.
 
I've never really understood how the hisogram works, what am I looking for on the hisogram's graph? I've never really understood it's functions. I would look it up right now but Im working on trying to fix an FD lens -.-

And yeah I'm done with AWB, now that I got ML I use kelvin WB. It's nice but kinda hard for on-hill without a viewfinder.
 
I wasn't talking about AWB, I was talking about the white point selector in FCP.

5979623159_7e53344b3c_m.jpg


And as for the waveform, it pretty much graphs the frame on the tonal spectrum. Anything at or below 0 (labled "black") in FCP is clipped (crushed), meaning you have lost detail. The same applies to highlights being over 100.

5979623159_7e53344b3c_m.jpg


What you should keep in mind is that just because it may technically be above the 0 mark, it can still be "crushed" in the sense that the blacks are unproportionally dark compared to the rest of the image. This is why your eyes should be the final guide.

Here's a tip: getting good contrast with an image that is predominantly white (snow with small bits of dark trees/people) isn't achieved by dropping the blacks (sharp contrast between black/white), so ease up on the black slider! If you want good snow contrast, drop the mids, and raise the whites. Then adjust the blacks to fine-tune dark stuff. This way you can get plenty of dark detail and snow contrast simultaneously.
 
so the goal is to try and keep everything on the same area on the y axis? Sorry I'm used to just tinkering with presets and tools in looks til my shot looks pretty haha
 
No, the idea is to tweak the image until you reach a desired tonality. The waveform simply tells you where everything is; it's primary function is to tell when you're clipping.

1. Adjust to taste.

2. View in waveform. If clipping, raise blacks/drop whites until you are no longer clipping

3. Adjust to taste.

I say "adjust to taste" afterwards because color/tone is all relative. Often times one change means everything has to change, but not always.

And like I said earlier, just because you aren't clipping doesn't mean you're good to go. It's not like the goal is to get the pedestal as dark as possible before reaching 0 (aka 1), or the whites as bright as possible before reaching 100. If you do that, your footage will end up looking like the countless shitty DSLR footage where people have white spots on their cheeks and anything remotely dark is completely black. Like I said, too much contrast can be just as bad as not enough. Use your eyes.
 
The "whites" will turn up in the top 1/3 of the histogram and the blacks will show up in the bottom 1/3-1/4. Play with the sliders, white and black, and you see the histogram change with your image. As soon as you get used to doing this, man does it make the difference.
 
In Magic Bullet Looks you can create your own look. Just drag whatever you want to use onto your clip and then go to the top and save the look. Then you can just open that look and apply it for each individual clip.
 
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