From The Grading Room – Turning A Session Around

Great insight Dan ! I like these hybrid techniques, sometimes when nothing works, this can actually be really helpful !
It brings back some memories. Not so long ago, I was in session with a DP who mastered Photoshop and After Effect, so I basically let him drive me through the grade. He wanted to give the program a very warm look but he was affraid it’s gonna look artificial. So we ended up blending a B&W node with very low opacity (I used softlight if I remember well) to keep the overall consistant and the result looked terrific ! At the end of the day, everyone was happy, and I learned a new technique that I haven’t thought of that is now part of my toolset. When you bring the best of the two worlds only good things can happen 🙂

Fantastic insight Dan, thank you! I had a supervised grade just last week where the clients wanted to see a glow effect and I used softlght and mist as well, for a dreamy blownout look. Unexpected and some difficult communication at the beginning, but in the end lots of fun.

Have you watched any of these retouching tutorials. I always learn something. http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/retouchpro-live/

Gah… nothing is worse than a client with a *little* bit of knowledge. But I see Dan’s point: often, you have to open up your mind to a different point of view, particularly if it helps you survive the client and give the client what they want.

I moved from postproduction for print to video postproduction and i am still amazed how actually different yet the same the two are. This sounds like not a person with a little bit of knowledge but a person with quite a lot of very relevant knowledge but just in the stills area, which is always extremely hard to work with. I work with a lot of photographers and as very established people they always want to lead the session in a particular stills kind of way, normally meaning a ton of starring at a single frame, a lot of very specific tweaks and masks. I think i always get the session back in my hands when people realise that once you press play a lot of that doesn’t work, because it’s not stills it’s moving and some things can be ignored and others addressed.

such a great point!

I find people with a stills or graphic background always want to refine that frame – but as I’m found of thinking/saying we’re working with 1000s of frames if not 100,000s. This logic also plays out with shot matching etc. Many people new to video color correction want to take the still approach of mastering the single frame – it can be hard to explain adapation and the longer you look at something the less likely you are to get it looking great

I had this similar experience in a session last week!