Grade School: Ask Me Anything Edition with a Senior Colorist

Get your color grading questions answered by a senior colorist during this AMA edition of Grade School! Pro colorist and Grade School host Cullen Kelly will be fielding your questions, helping you become a more efficient, heart-led, confident, and expressive artist and business person.

00:00 Introduction and announcements
1:55 ‘’Unexpected’’ interruption and course announcement
10:38 How do you work with remote grades? Where do they fit into the process?
15:02 How would you replicate a Pantone code color? How would that process be in an HDR workflow?
19:18 Do you use a fixed node structure or does it change from project to project?
22:19 How would you approach recreating and reverse engineering a very specific look like Cruella’s?
26:05 What are your thoughts on Resolve 18 and do you have any wishes for future versions of it?
27:40 What is the best node structure to make primary corrections?
35:33 How would you discuss with clients when they want a colorist to take more of a VFX role during the grade?
38:27 Would you recommend setting the white balance first and then the exposure?
39:44 When grading live do you begin sessions by showing them pre-made look options or do you start the process with them?
42:10 Do you usually grade under a LUT? There are differences between a well lit commercial and a documentary?
45:39 Can you explain the difference between a LUT operation and a non-LUT operation like curves, primaries, HDR wheels?
48:48 What programming languages should we study to build our own DCTLs?
50:03 What are some of the bad habits that beginner colorists have that would be good to avoid having early in your career?
53:31 Auditioning the new 2383 v2 LUT
56:03 Do you use bias lighting in your grading suite?
56:58 How to deal with graphics and titles when using timeline adjustments
58:32 Do you change your grade for Youtube compression versus something you would be delivering for like a film festival?
1:00:36 How do we apply color workflow in production?
1:05:05 Final thoughts and recap

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[yorkunt]

It is happy to see two of my best color grading mentors came together.

[stevestrasser]

Great episode! Especially the last question about exposing correctly in camera got me thrilled. Would be great to have a dedicated episode about this topic. In non controlled run and gun situations, I tend to ettr to get the noise down in post. To correctly middle expose the subject is tricky in these situations. But great advice anyway! I use in camera spot metering, point it at the subject and I get the exact ire value.

[BruceMoyle]

Fun episode. Funny seeing Darren pop in.

[tcwonder]

Incredible series of videos! Easily the most reliable source of colour correction information on all YouTube

I have a question that I hope you can answer here or in one of your future videos:

When balancing under a ‘look’ that might have a palette that deliberately shifts skin tones away from memory colours, how do you balance consistently across multiple shots/scenes? Does it just require shot-by-shot subjective assessment of whether skin tones fall into the ‘look’ versus the more objective approach of whether skin tones sit near a memory colour? Essentially I’m wondering how to balance in the broadest possible way across different lighting etc in the scenario where ‘normal skin tones’ are not a consistent anchor.

Long question, but hope it makes sense
Thanks :)

[stathisath]

Darren's trip to the US is a treat.

[joeld]

Amazing live! Thanks for answering my question!

[BlackWinterProduction]

The new version of the 2383 LUT is definitely an improvement! The biggest difference is that it keeps more natural skintones. Tested in DWG, both light and dark skintones look more pleasing. The yellow and lime green neon hues look more tamed. And it provides better colour density, especially noticeable with deep dark reds instead of muddy pinks (similar to the experiment shown in Steve Yedlin's article). So, congratulations and thank you Cullen! Was happy to see Darren, too :)

[StefanRingelschwandtner]

Nice to see Darren "photobombing" your video. :)

[ameramdouni]

how to grade a one take shot, & characters coming & going out of the frame , Any tips !!

[mmumdzic]

here are the first couple of mınuts backstage :)

[alexbulliofficial]

Erewhon jar cameo

On a real note - the 2383 v2 is a game changer! 
Such a big leap from v.1 and the legacy Resolve Cineon LUT - using it on a project tonight