Do you 'grade' prior to editing?

[Nigel Stanford]

We're working on a new app, which I think you guys will be excited about

Can I ask a question: When do you give the footage a 'look'?

NOTE - I used the word 'grade' in the thread title (which I can't edit now) but I'm really talking about a one-light 'telecine' style of adjustment.

 

[Zac C]

Why waste time grading a shot, that in the end, you never use?

That's always been my philosophy

 

[Nigel Stanford]

Why waste time grading a shot, that in the end, you never use?

That's always been my philosophy

I agree... I guess I'm asking if anyone sits there doing a 'one light telecine' to their footage so that the editor has something nice to look at. So what did u vote for?

 

[Miltos Pilalitos]

How can you grade shots before editing when you don't know how they will inter-cut together?

Then again, people work in mysterious ways...

:001_rolleyes:

 

[Nigel Stanford]

How can you grade shots before editing when you don't know how they will inter-cut together?

Then again, people work in mysterious ways...

:001_rolleyes:

I should not have used the word 'grade'... I should have said one light. Doh

 

[Shawn Booth]

I agree... I guess I'm asking if anyone sits there doing a 'one light telecine' to their footage so that the editor has something nice to look at. So what did u vote for?

I do. Always. I do not want director/editor falling in love with "raw" look or any other version. Give them an close approx to final and hope I get to come back for the grade (if there is a grade)....

EDIT: This is 1 advantage with using RED that I love tremendously.

 

[Zac C]

I should not have used the word 'grade'... I should have said one light. Doh

haha, you brought yourself into a mess of trouble with that error.

But no worries, I usually don't touch my footage color-wise till I'm done with it

 

[Nigel Stanford]

I do. Always. I do not want director/editor falling in love with "raw" look or any other version. Give them an close approx to final and hope I get to come back for the grade (if there is a grade)....

Do you use redcine-x for that?

 

[Shawn Booth]

Do you use redcine-x for that?

I'm still on old REDCINE, but yes. (Will use X as well.)

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Depends on the project and how much footage there is to work with and other factors... like the current state of RED workflow!

Right now, my current workflow, if I want to make use of the latest color science is to do a one-light in REDCINE-X and export to 4K ProRes 4444, full debayer, full res. Then I online with the 4K ProRes files right in FinalCut, round trip through Color. I'm finishing up two 30 spots with that workflow right now. Looks great.

Once REDCINE-X is updated with XML support or we have a way to conform that way, or other tools (RubberMonkey) facilitate the new REDCODE specs and tools, then the onelight won't make much sense anymore. Once FCS or Adobe are updated with proper support for all the new REDCODE specs, that will be great too.

I'm not shooting anything feature length, most of my stuff is about 20 minute pieces or less and finished on a smaller budget. I keep waffling on assembling a SCRATCH station; I've been "this > < close" for the past year, but my actual RED work over the past six months has been irregular to say the least with our goofy economy and a local market that doesn't seem to care whether I shoot on a XH-A1 or RED, just as long as the final deliverable can be called "HD".

 

[Bruce Allen]

Glad to hear you're working on an app!

Here's my process (more of a crazy perfectionist than most

ONE LIGHT:
I always do a one-light grade before my edit - in RedCine before, RedCine-X now (everything else cheap seems 2 color science generations out of date - doesn't make much of a difference but I'm paranoid . Render to DNxHD36.

If I had the easy option to do quick secondaries, I would. Ironically, I usually don't like the reds that Red produces (for me they usually end up being either brick color or purple-ish) and 80% of the time I end up tweaking them. Also, the greens sometimes end up a bit screwed up due to IR contamination. Yeah, I know... IR filters This may change with M-X or new color science.

NEAR PICTURE LOCK - GET THE MOST OUT OF EACH SHOT:
Once I'm reasonably sure of the cut, I go back and bring color close to final - for the shots that I have selected. I still use the color looks developed in RedCine-X as a basis though. Just tweak them & render out at higher quality, then apply color looks in After Effects, etc. I also do things like noise reduction, rough effects work, tone mapping, sky replacement, etc. I want to see that everything WILL WORK. I still don't let whites blow out or crush blacks too much.

PICTURE LOCK - STAGE ONE - "FINAL STYLISH DESKTOP ONLINE"
Go through all shots - apply a heavier, more stylized, destructive color look.

PICTURE LOCK - STAGE TWO - "DEVICE-SPECIFIC FINISH"
- for theatrical: take my footage to a color calibrated stage and do final tweaks in that environment
- for DVD / Blu-Ray: test colors across various monitors (both "professional" and consumer), tweak a little bit if necessary, apply extra sharpening / NR
- for Web: tweak colors, try on Mac & PC, apply extra sharpening / NR

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[jimhare]

I do.

I work with 90 minute takes across 7 cameras for live shows. I basically do a 1-light of each to make them pretty darn close to each other and the final look I want. I then do very minor tweaks as I go, usually with a 3-way corrector to match contrast/color.

Have been using Rocket Cine X for this but expect to transition to RedCineX as time goes by.

 

[Ravi Kiran]

It depends on the shoot. On one music video shoot I did one-lights in RedCine on-set and saved the picture profiles so I could apply them back at the studio before transcoding. We had some color temp and overexposure issues that I was able to correct in RedCine. After picturelock, I color-corrected the ProRes files in Color. This way, not only do the editor and musician have something nice to look at, but I did the heavy color-correction using the R3Ds. I liked this workflow, but since then I've learned how to relink to the R3Ds in Color.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

One light yes

One light yes

Ideally I do the first color pass on set in Scratch (with the DP if I am DIT on the job) and send a look through editorial that reflects the creative intent. In many cases for an HD finish, this gets written out as ProRes files that end up being both the offline and online media. Final tweaking is done, like Jeff, inside of Color in FCS.

IF a major change in creative direction happens then I create an EDL in FCP and do a more traditional conform so that a proper grade can be done from the r3ds in Scratch. In this case the one light grade is basically tossed, but at least you know what they don't like, which can be useful information - just sayin'

Cheers - #19X

 

[mikeburton]

I always do a one light on RED footage for editorial. Of course, it needs to be approved by the DP.
My workflow for the feature film "Cafe" was as follows;

- Download, create one light RSX files for each scene, transcode 720p ProResHQ files for editorial.
- As the Colorist, strip all the metadata, start over grading off the RAW files in Scratch.

Of course there are different workflows for different projects under different timeframes. I think its important to have a visual consistency throughout the process and cater to the way the film is meant to be seen, even if its only offline editorial. Sure its not 100% necessary and under certain scenarios I might not have the time to do so but if I do have the time (which I like to account for ahead of time) I will do a one light. Good to hear your working on a new app!

 

[Nigel Stanford]

Thanks guys, that's awesome info. Keep it coming - and don't forget to vote at the top of the thread

 

[Jon B.]

Could anyone chime in on 'one light' criteria if there are any?

I feel one light is tint, contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows, mids etc,.

Is it metaphorically a pulling the reigns and/or lengthening the field so to speak on all the basic settings?

It seems like a general term as opposed to specific set of adjustments

 

[Jens Jakob Thorsen]

I all ways(when shooting RED) take a copy of the footage home and explore, after the family goes to sleep. I do this using REDcineX on my Macbook pro 17" hooked up to my 50" KURO. These are off course fairly crude attempts of grading, but never the less very rewarding. I get an ideer of what direction I want to take and have learned a lot more about grading in this past year of having this practice. When comparing it to my last 20years of "not actually being at the controls" experience as a DP, it really feels like I am now a better "director" of grading when it comes down to working with the pro graders. I can only hope they feel that way too;-). I know that there is less fumbleling on my part....
To actually answer your question: I never do anything to pregrade....5000K, REDspace,320ISO....They allways use prores for offline and its still percieved as a "film onelight", so where I am at, people expect fairly radical changes in the final grade. You have to make it look excellent on the monitor, but there is fortunately still a lot of "cinema magic" happening in the grade;-)

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

I often cut with proxies, so I work with what look was used while monitored on set. If I cut pro-res, that it's usually to a un-tweaked RED Space/RED Gamma setting. All the grading takes place after the cut is locked, unless we are prepping green screen for the pipeline, that gets transcoded/graded ahead of time. Final grades are made from Camera RGB/RED LOG space DPX intermediates.

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

Could anyone chime in on 'one light' criteria if there are any?

I feel one light is tint, contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows, mids etc,.

Is it metaphorically a pulling the reigns and/or lengthening the field so to speak on all the basic settings?

It seems like a general term as opposed to specific set of adjustments

The term of course originates from the film dailies process and later applied to the telecine process and now to transcoding dailies. I take it to mean there is only one setting applied to the whole roll of film, if you will. I think this often meant the printer lights were set at default mid values, 25/25/25.

"Best light" always meant to me that one shot was fairly well graded, and that grade was applied to all the film, so your dailies or your inter-positive were getting a look, but that look was not tweaked from angle to angle.

I have asked for labs to give me a best light, setup to a grey card, as prep for a file based color correction when film is involved.