Damage Control – Creating A Look With Difficult Footage

Damage Control – Creating A Look With Difficult Footage

Grading well-shot footage is a lot of fun but what happens when the footage you get is “less than ideal”?

I worked on a music video recently shot without lights on a DSLR and very very clipped so I had to think outside the box and come up with something that looked good!

I found it a great challenge as I couldn’t save the highlights so I had to run with it and try and find a look that embraces a harsh and narrow dynamic range.

This reminded me of a look that I think works well with clipped footage and can save the day when you need to make something feel “Graded” but don’t want to go too crazy.

I first ran into this idea when grading the music video below. We pushed the look hard to cover up the 5d feeling and I’ve been working with variations of it ever since.

Check out my insight below to see some of my terrible camera work in action and my look to solve it!