Grading R3D Stills

[Andrey B]

Looks like Juan Melara uses magic glasses (spotted on his avatar) to achieve the best result!
Juan can you comment your exposure selection please? Do you think that your image underexposed a bit? Are you used underexposing for more dramatic feeling?
Thank you!

 

[Mike Van Laanen]

Shot this during the summer and would love to see what grade you would give this.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2qb2gn4jlo69duy/A001_C031_061949.0000655F.R3D?m

It was part of sequence I worked on about wind turbines. Wind that day about 20 mph. The grass moves in waves across the screen.
Thanks for any help or advice you can share.

 

[Matt Ryan]

Matt Ryan - Very nice! I like the desaturation levels of the 2nd one best to match the state of purgatory. But I LOVE #9 strictly as an artistic look. In fact I'd like to have a high-res version to keep if you still have it available!

Hey Roy,
What your email and I can send you the high res. Are you talking about the 9th one down? Do you want Tiff, JPEG, DPX?

 

[Juan Melara]

Juan can you comment your exposure selection please? Do you think that your image underexposed a bit? Are you used underexposing for more dramatic feeling?
Thank you!

1. Exposure selection should be dictated by what the mood of the scene calls for. I didn't feel the original higher exposure was really fitting with the seriousness of the scene. I guess you can say the lower exposure does add drama. That said, It shouldn't be too hard to make this work in a higher key.

2. I like the creaminess that a shot can take on when the highs are dropped a bit. Compared to the other shots in this thread, my grade does seem a little underexposed. But to my eye it looks more filmic than having everything high key.

This style does seem to be pretty popular. I had a quick look at 10 or so titles on blu-ray.com and found the shots below.

 

[Matthew Scott]

Hey Roy, I decided to try an extreme grade instead of standard balance and tweak, hence the yellow and grain - Thanks for sharing your r3d. And yes, I made that RedCine-X tutorial, cheers

 

[Juan Melara]

Shot this during the summer and would love to see what grade you would give this.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2qb2gn4jlo69duy/A001_C031_061949.0000655F.R3D?m

It was part of sequence I worked on about wind turbines. Wind that day about 20 mph. The grass moves in waves across the screen.
Thanks for any help or advice you can share.

Going to need an establishing master shot that shows off the wind turbines, sky, clouds etc as there really isn't much in this shot to sink teeth into. Any grade idea that people come up with would most likely not work on any other shots in the sequence...

You guys may have noticed that I add a bit of grain to the fullsize versions of my grades. Check out my post on page13 in this thread here and follow the link that talks about the positive effects of adding grain. Actually, read the whole thread if you haven't already, it's a good discussion.

There's also a small grain comparison using the image below. If anyone is interested in having a go, the original R3D by Will Wernick can be found here.