2 Pro Color Correcting an Older Video

Twocalf · Jul 30, 2022

So I did some color corrections on the clips from a 2019 video that I had put together of various critters in my field. The clips were shot in early fall with manual shutter/aperture settings (4k at 24 fps). There were a variety of green colors in the shots along with some washed out tans and straw colored stuff and a bright early evening sky that made dialing in the "correct" exposure tough. I don't know if my color corrections blew things up or not but here it is:

dozzn · Jul 30, 2022

Wonderful video!! I could watch these deer for hours!

Twocalf · Jul 30, 2022

Thank you! Yes, I'm lucky to have been able to capture some interesting interactions between the young bucks and other scenes of deer grooming themselves was I found to be very candid. Unfortunately our local/regional whitetail deer population was decimated with a disease last summer so I don't have the luxury of watching/filming them but they'll be back. Still plenty of turkeys here though!

akdrone · Jul 30, 2022

Twocalf said:
So I did some color corrections on the clips from a 2019 video that I had put together of various critters in my field. The clips were shot in early fall with manual shutter/aperture settings (4k at 24 fps). There were a variety of green colors in the shots along with some washed out tans and straw colored stuff and a bright early evening sky that made dialing in the "correct" exposure tough. I don't know if my color corrections blew things up or not but here it is:

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Very nicely done.

Twocalf · Jul 30, 2022

akdrone said:
Very nicely done.

Thanks!

Twocalf · Jul 31, 2022

When I said color correcting I guess I was really doing color grading and didn't know it! So on these clips I used a commercial LUT and then used Adobe Premiere's Lumetri Color functions to "improve" the clips. I found that by clicking on the Auto "fix" button gave me an idea of what might be a good starting point and then I made modest tweaks to temperature, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, etc. My question is that in general, do these clips look overly processed? TIA as I'm always trying to improve my hobby.

akdrone · Jul 31, 2022

I think you did a great job. They don't look over-processed to me. If you like it, it's good to go (but I do think these are fine). I think your approach makes good sense. Just be sure you are shooting the highest quality you can - cine..dng...log...raw..whatever... so you have the most to work with in terms of color grading and such.

Twocalf · Jul 31, 2022

akdrone said:
I think you did a great job. They don't look over-processed to me. If you like it, it's good to go (but I do think these are fine). I think your approach makes good sense. Just be sure you are shooting the highest quality you can - cine..dng...log...raw..whatever... so you have the most to work with in terms of color grading and such.

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it! I think you're right about shooting with the highest possible quality and I should try again with the DlogM that's available with my M2P. When I first got my drone I dabbled with shooting some clips with the 10-bit DlogM setting. Like advertised, the clips came out flat, but I saw that indeed I could bring out more detail in post but I grumbled about the sluggishness of my computer when editing or rendering those clips. I did all this before knowing about proxies! Since then I use proxies for my 4k clip editing so I should try that with some new Dlog clips to see if that will be a good workflow for me. Cheers!

jphoto · Aug 1, 2022

My perspective on Dlog...whatever, and using LUTs is that any LUT is just someone's idea of where to start. It's not even necessary at all, as you have enough tweaks and scopes in Premier or FCP to do the whole job sans LUT. The problem is, whatever's already done in the LUT is an approximation, opinion, guess, or in an ideal world, specific to a particular sensor, and if it's not what you want, you'll tweak anyway. Anything I shoot in Dlog just gets tweaked without slapping a LUT into the mix.

bassnbeau · Aug 1, 2022

Twocalf said:
So I did some color corrections on the clips from a 2019 video that I had put together of various critters in my field. The clips were shot in early fall with manual shutter/aperture settings (4k at 24 fps). There were a variety of green colors in the shots along with some washed out tans and straw colored stuff and a bright early evening sky that made dialing in the "correct" exposure tough. I don't know if my color corrections blew things up or not but here it is:

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Fantastic video. Don't know how you do it, but I try and take a video of the deer at our deer farm in Pennsylvania, and as soon as they hear the Air 2s, they scatter. Have tried all types of props to no avail. Great video!

Twocalf · Aug 1, 2022

jphoto said:
My perspective on Dlog...whatever, and using LUTs is that any LUT is just someone's idea of where to start. It's not even necessary at all, as you have enough tweaks and scopes in Premier or FCP to do the whole job sans LUT. The problem is, whatever's already done in the LUT is an approximation, opinion, guess, or in an ideal world, specific to a particular sensor, and if it's not what you want, you'll tweak anyway. Anything I shoot in Dlog just gets tweaked without slapping a LUT into the mix.

I think you're spot on with regards to the LUT's. I was pretty intimidated when I first started color grading. Simple exposure or shadow treatment isn't a big deal but I'm unsure of myself when messing around with things like saturation and temperature so I picked up three LUT's from the Film Poet (Skygrade series) and began to see what each one did to key settings. This color grading business is definitely an art form! Thanks for your take!

Twocalf · Aug 1, 2022

bassnbeau said:
Fantastic video. Don't know how you do it, but I try and take a video of the deer at our deer farm in Pennsylvania, and as soon as they hear the Air 2s, they scatter. Have tried all types of props to no avail. Great video!

Thank you very much! There were at least two generations of whitetail deer living in our field that got used to my drone flying out amongst them. I started out by keeping my distance with some elevation and over time slowly moved in on them never making quick moves. The amazing shot was the young doe that walked up to investigate the drone that I had hovering 6-feet above the ground. As I mentioned in the initial post, we had a bad case of hemorrhagic disease go through here last summer and it killed about 90% of the herd. The rare survivors I see out in the field are very skittish and scatter like you described. I guess they felt emboldened in numbers and the fact that the annoying buzzing thing never hurt them! I guess I'll have to "learn up" another generation!