What is your approach to colour grading?

Slyelessar

Slyelessar

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Slyelessar
Edit My Images
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This will get the standard ‘depends on footage’ and ‘depends on taste’ standard responses.

So let’s give specifics examples of how and why for various situations.

Colour grading is something I am still picking up as I am going along, and I find my tastes change week to week at this point. What are your approaches to general colour grading footage in different scenarios?
 
I shoot all of my video on DSLR's or drones which produce heavily compressed footage in H.264 4.2.2. 8 bit, as a result I try and get as much right in camera as possible. If you are used to shooting RAW stills and sorting everything in post then the lack of flexibility available on compressed video can come as a bit of a shock.

Yes you can push the footage around in post but it very quickly turns into noisy mush.
 
If the exposure is not right in camera then i usually bin it. It is possible to do quite a lot with 4k10bit material but i always leave it to the end user to make any adjustments they need
 
There are normally 2 stages:
Colour correction - get all cameras looking the same with correct monochromes and skin tones. It's preferable to use a known reference for this.
Apply artistic intent.

The amount you can push a video is limited by what the format is.
 
Start with getting exposure right in camera with a flat profile. I’m using Canon 5DM4 with clog and very happy with that. Then apply relevant LUT and any basic corrections. This may be enough, sometimes add more creative adjustments.
 
I'm not sure a LUT will ever hit the Vectorscope skin tone line without very accurate work in the camera to colour balance the lighting. And then you're assuming that whatever method you're using to properly expose the image is accurate (reference card, zebras etc.)

You can do most of the first pass in the waveform monitor and vector scope to line up your footage.
 
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