Shot Matching Challenge – Match My Shot Part 1

Shot Matching – The Challenge

I had an eye-opening experience in my grading suite this week.

Some clients of mine asked me to match grade some new shots that were going into their existing commercial.

They actually had the shot graded in years previous but needed 5 more seconds to drop into the new commercial.

I thought this would be a simple task, and boy was I wrong!

The person that graded the original commercial was an amazing colorist, and it took me around an hour just to figure out how he/she made it look so beautiful!

I was both frustrated, and my pride took a beating!

Why Is Matching Another Colorist’s Work So Hard?

The main reason is you are not them!

Grading is a very personal process, and everyone thinks slightly differently.

Matching someone’s look can be quite an easy process but matching someone’s exact grade so it can be dropped into the edit seamlessly is very, very, very difficult.

The difficulty factor is that each of us thinks and orders our nodes in a totally different way.

To prove this example, I’d like to issue you all with a challenge.

I’d like you to match the shot I just graded.

In Part Two of this insight, I’ll show you how I did it and see if anyone came close!