Replicate this color grade?

[Benjamin Hilton]

So I've been watching this TV show recently, and I would love to figure out how to replicate this specific look. Kind of a muted, but still saturated look, with soft highlights and really rich creamy shadows, and the skin has kind of a brown cast but still looks natural. I've been trying and trying and still can't get anywhere close. Are any of you able to do it? I know it's partially lighting, lensing and such, but I feel like I should be able to get at least close.

These three screenshots are from the show:

 

And here's a sample frame I have been working on, just Panasonic V-log converted to C-log with the WB balanced:

 

And this is the closest I have been able to get to that look, which still isn't very close...

[Geoff CB]

Willing to bet they added glow/had a filter to smooth the skin tones and dropped the exposure on all the greens. Bottom shot definitely added a mask to the main character and dropped the exposure on the entire background. 

 

Additional one where I lowered the contrast in the background.

[BrunoCH]

Not easy. This is the best I can do.

[herein2020]

Isn't there a trick you can do in Davinci Resolve where you bring in a screenshot of an image you like and there's a technique that lets you nearly exactly match the source picture. I would think though to pull an image in that many different directions you would probably need to shoot in raw and of course as you mentioned, lighting, gamma curve, camera, etc. had a lot to do with it as well. I've seen some other videos where after you use the shot match feature they go in and start using selective color and wave forms to more exactly match the source image.

 

 

[Jeremy Clark]

7 hours ago, herein2020 said:

Isn't there a trick you can do in Davinci Resolve where you bring in a screenshot of an image you like and there's a technique that lets you nearly exactly match the source picture. I would think though to pull an image in that many different directions you would probably need to shoot in raw and of course as you mentioned, lighting, gamma curve, camera, etc. had a lot to do with it as well. I've seen some other videos where after you use the shot match feature they go in and start using selective color and wave forms to more exactly match the source image.

 

 

Premiere also has a color match clip option, but of course it all depends on the source footage you're working with (how far you can manipulate it). 

PS - The Chosen has been pretty solid compared to your general Christian Film industry. Interested to see how the new season turns out.  

[kye]

Attempt number one.

Reference:

Grade:

and the node graph which quite obviously shows that this is the wrong way to go about such a thing:

Attempt 2

Reference:

Grade:

Node graph - simpler but still awful:

The absolute best way to match scenes is to get any camera and point it at something that looks like your reference.

[kye]

19 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

So I've been watching this TV show recently, and I would love to figure out how to replicate this specific look. Kind of a muted, but still saturated look, with soft highlights and really rich creamy shadows, and the skin has kind of a brown cast but still looks natural. I've been trying and trying and still can't get anywhere close. Are any of you able to do it? I know it's partially lighting, lensing and such, but I feel like I should be able to get at least close.

A few thoughts:

Look at your scopes - look at what the waveform monitor is telling you about the levels in the image, and their colour balance.  Check this out:

You can see that in the shadows there is pink below green, that means that there's green in there.  You can see in the middle and on the right there are much higher levels where red is highest and blue is lowest with green in the middle, that means warm tones at a higher luminance, which in this case is the girls skin tones.

Put a global adjustment over your reference image and your grade turning the saturation right up, it will make your vectorscope much easier to see, and will accentuate all the colours so they're easier to see.  It's like colour grading with a magnifying glass.  Match the colours like that and turn it off and it will be a much better match than it looked when you were doing it.

Apply an outside window and pull gain down to zero to crush the whole image (except for your window) then look at the scopes to see what just that part of the image looks like.  Hover the window over the skin tones and see what the vectorsope is telling you - where is the centre of the hue range?  how much hue variation is there?  how saturated are they?  
Hover over other parts of the image too.

Use a glow-style effect to bloom highlights to match the reference before you apply any other adjustments - they radically effect your shadow levels and contrast overall.

When playing with shadow levels and black levels, crank the Gain right up so that most of the image is clipping and you've "zoomed into" the shadows - now 10 IRE might be up to 100IRE and you can easily compare your reference with your grade.

All these are useful for grading your own footage in reference to itself too.

[kye]

16 hours ago, herein2020 said:

Isn't there a trick you can do in Davinci Resolve where you bring in a screenshot of an image you like and there's a technique that lets you nearly exactly match the source picture. I would think though to pull an image in that many different directions you would probably need to shoot in raw and of course as you mentioned, lighting, gamma curve, camera, etc. had a lot to do with it as well. I've seen some other videos where after you use the shot match feature they go in and start using selective color and wave forms to more exactly match the source image.

Here's the result of that Shot Match feature, just so you're aware:

I think the video you're looking for from Aram K is this one:

 

[kye]

Ultimately, the best thing to apply for this look would be one of these:

 

[herein2020]

1 hour ago, kye said:

Here's the result of that Shot Match feature, just so you're aware:

 

I think the shot match feature did a pretty good job what do you think? With a scrim like you mentioned it would get you 90% of the way there in a few clicks. It seems to have crushed the shadows and midrange a bit, but those are far easier to fix than starting from 0.

From there you could just convert the grade to a LUT, throw it on an Adjustment clip and you've got your grade for the whole project or at least for those scenes.

[herein2020]

1 hour ago, kye said:

Ultimately, the best thing to apply for this look would be one of these:

 

lol, no way am I setting that thing up for a few pictures, unless the client has the budget for me to bring at least two assistants and a good insurance policy when it blows over. When the sun is out I tell my clients...lets walk over there to those trees. It's always a balancing act between budget and meeting the customer's expectations.

[maxmizer]

the problem is right here ... you want something that has been explained to you how to do it ...
it is done with lights and panels

[kye]

1 hour ago, herein2020 said:

I think the shot match feature did a pretty good job what do you think? With a scrim like you mentioned it would get you 90% of the way there in a few clicks. It seems to have crushed the shadows and midrange a bit, but those are far easier to fix than starting from 0.

From there you could just convert the grade to a LUT, throw it on an Adjustment clip and you've got your grade for the whole project or at least for those scenes.

What do I think?

I think you should give it a go.....    everything looks easy until it's your turn 🙂 

58 minutes ago, herein2020 said:

lol, no way am I setting that thing up for a few pictures, unless the client has the budget for me to bring at least two assistants and a good insurance policy when it blows over. When the sun is out I tell my clients...lets walk over there to those trees. It's always a balancing act between budget and meeting the customer's expectations.

Shade works too, but it's a pretty simple equation, if you want what they got then do what they did.

If shade was the same as a diffusion panel and the shot-matching feature did 90% of the work then why would those things exist? 😬🤔🤔

[kye]

25 minutes ago, kye said:

😬🤔🤔

WTF, that first one is totally not the emoji I picked!

 

[herein2020]

28 minutes ago, kye said:

I think you should give it a go.....    everything looks easy until it's your turn 🙂 

 

 

Nope, I'm no colorist 🙂, if I can't get it in a few clicks I move on, to me life's too short to try to learn everything. If I had a customer with this request (fortunately my customers couldn't care less as long as it looks good) I'd just use the shot match feature, convert the output to a LUT, apply it to an adjustment clip, grade the source clips to rec709 then throw the adjustment clip over the top and call it a day. If the client really wanted to get closer to the look I'd outsource to a colorist and bill the client for the custom work.

[Benjamin Hilton]

On 8/24/2020 at 4:29 PM, Benjamin Hilton said:

So I've been watching this TV show recently, and I would love to figure out how to replicate this specific look. Kind of a muted, but still saturated look, with soft highlights and really rich creamy shadows, and the skin has kind of a brown cast but still looks natural. I've been trying and trying and still can't get anywhere close. Are any of you able to do it? I know it's partially lighting, lensing and such, but I feel like I should be able to get at least close.

These three screenshots are from the show:

 

And here's a sample frame I have been working on, just Panasonic V-log converted to C-log with the WB balanced:

 

And this is the closest I have been able to get to that look, which still isn't very close...

I actually think this is pretty close, would you mind sharing your grading process for this?

[Benjamin Hilton]

4 hours ago, kye said:

Ultimately, the best thing to apply for this look would be one of these:

 

Yeah, totally😂 I also wonder if using a polarizing filter to take the reflections out of the skintone and such would help with the look, I know Shane Hurlbut did that for one of his period movies, gave a similar kind of look

[thebrothersthre3]

Yeah I am sure they were using diffused lighting, just makes a huge difference. Harsh lighting regardless of color just looks a bit ugly. 

[BrunoCH]

I tried one more time today

[kye]

10 hours ago, herein2020 said:

Nope, I'm no colorist 🙂, if I can't get it in a few clicks I move on, to me life's too short to try to learn everything. If I had a customer with this request (fortunately my customers couldn't care less as long as it looks good) I'd just use the shot match feature, convert the output to a LUT, apply it to an adjustment clip, grade the source clips to rec709 then throw the adjustment clip over the top and call it a day. If the client really wanted to get closer to the look I'd outsource to a colorist and bill the client for the custom work.

That's a good strategy, although it makes me a little confused as to why you would comment in a colour grading thread that there's a magic button that will match any shot to any other shot and then it can just be converted to a LUT and you're done....

Kind of like a colourist telling a cinematographer they can just take their cell phone out of their pocket and wave it around to get cinematic images, but when told why that won't work they just reply "oh I just hire people for that, I'm not interested in learning anything new...".