Damage Control - Creating A Look With Difficult Footage

Series	Damage Control

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!

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Discussion
March 5, 2015 at 5:23 am #33645

Dan Moran
Participant

This is the discussion thread for the Insight: Damage Control – Creating A Look With Difficult Footage
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Discussion

DELAUNAY Christophe
Member

March 6, 2015 at 5:42 am

This Insight echoes very well with ML0055 (‘From The Grading Room – 7D Korean Horror’), where you also did a tremendous job grading another DSLR shot. I like how the blown highlights retrieve some texture.
AlexGrey
Guest

March 7, 2015 at 10:20 pm

Any tips for if the footage is wonky in other ways?, like on the magenta green axis with no grey point in sight. I cant ever seem to get it out of the skin on dslr footage if the WB is too messed up, even on raw footage if the IR contamination is really bad I have issues getting rid of it. I would love to hear your thoughts on fixing footage like this aswell as hue related issues .
Jason Bowdach
Member

March 13, 2015 at 10:53 pm

There is actually some neat IR reduction power grades from CaptainHook that Ive found very useful, but aside from that IR contamination is tough. Anything from the season pros, esp when not shot well in other aspects (DSLR, Blackmagic or even earlier Red and assume some rough cam oping due to run n gun)?
AlexGrey
Guest

April 22, 2015 at 9:42 pm

Hey, Thanks. I Downloaded Hooks luts a while back actually and they work great.
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Damage Control – Creating A Look With Difficult Footage