Building A Show LUT to Keep Your Looks Consistent

Day 8: 24 Insights in 24 Days 2018 New Year Marathon

Creating A Show LUT – Keeping Things Simple

In this insight we are going to take a look the idea of using a “Show LUT”.

What Is A Show LUT?

I’m not sure if this is the correct term but I’ve heard it used many times.

A Show LUT is when you decide the look of a certain scene or location you can then use the LUT as a starting point for your grade.

In this Insight below I show how it can be used to take a simple but hard to replicate look that I spent hours getting just as I wanted it.

We then create the LUT using the automated process in Resolve and apply it to other shots in the scene and also some other scenes in the film.

Do you work in this way?

If you use Show LUTs or Show Transforms I’d love to hear more from you in the comments below.

As I work in commercials my work is always after everything has been shot and decided upon.

Also most jobs are totally different from each other so I never get the opportunity to try something like this!

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Comments

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Discussion
January 8, 2018 at 3:08 pm #33058

Dan Moran
Participant

This is the discussion thread for the Insight: Building A Show LUT to Keep Your Looks Consistent
Creator

Discussion

Jason Bowdach
Member

January 8, 2018 at 10:15 pm

I’ve worked on a few projects using a show LUTs, but never created my own. Would you consider providing the show LUT to editorial while they cut or would you rather provide media with a “look” burned in? Appreciate you sharing the lesson you’re picking up as you work on more long form projects. Thanks!
Dan Moran
Member

January 9, 2018 at 4:49 am

I think they would probably end up getting burned in. I’m hoping for 2018 to be much more involved in productions and possibly build them custom LUTs to load into their monitors on set for preview. I’ve had great success with that on a couple of commecials that have gone down that road. The DIT could easily bake that in then for editorial
Jamie LeJeune
Member

January 9, 2018 at 8:54 pm

Any reason to use a LUT over just collapsing the saved grade into a compound node?
Marc Wielage
Member

January 10, 2018 at 2:13 am

Although I’m often “Mr. Anti-LUT,” I have to admit that a custom-created “Show LUT” can totally work for a project. At the very least, it can show you what the editorial team saw during the edit, and that’s very helpful. I think it’s almost always possible to convert the LUT to an actual correction, and in many cases that has more range than a fixed LUT.
Dan Moran
Member

January 10, 2018 at 5:16 am

None really, I think clients are just so used to hearing and seeing LUTs it got in my head also. I guess the cross application benifit is the only reason you may have to bounce down to a LUT.
Scott Stacy
Member

January 10, 2018 at 12:45 pm

Thanks for the cool Insight, Dan. I’ve seen show LUTs used on TV series for editorial purposes. John Brawley’s team used them on Queen of the South and pretty sure on the Resident – shot on Alexa Mini and Ursa Mini 4.6k. Not sure if the show LUT for each scene is a starting point for the final grade, though. I’m curious now … worth asking.
Davis Alfano
Guest

March 31, 2020 at 10:57 am

Hi @tao-ml-eccbc87e4b5ce2fe28308fd9f2a7baf3:disqus , I’m new over here awesome Mixinlight and I love your mission guys!! I really appreciate this website!
I’ve just read this article and in my opinion this workflow depends about the project you are working in. Example to all the guys that say: no I don’t use any any LUT! How can they say that? there is often on movies proj a DIT on set to create LUT+CDL and I start my session from there. So It’s inevitable to work output out with. Isn’t it? Cheers!
Dan Moran
Guest

March 31, 2020 at 11:15 am

Hey! Yep totally agree. I find on short form projects it’s generally ok to grade what ever gets the best result on the day but for longform narrative projects I find people are really attached to the LUT + CDL so if you radically change the texture and feel of the movie you are going to have a lot of shocked people. I’ve also found my looks on longer projects are a little more simple as they have spent so much care and thought with camera/makeup/costume tests that it looks so great right off the sensor
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