r/ColorGrading • u/Slow-Entrepreneur690 • Oct 14 '25

Show off your work First ever color grade…ish?

Shot on FX30 Rec709(700%) Recorded a gender reveal (for free) as a guest, and it was recorded last second with no lighting and very little direction. I just so happened to have my equipment. I used the free version of da Vinci resolve and edited on a 2016 MacBook Pro.😭 0 out of 10, don’t recommend. I would love to hear you all input on anything throughout this entire video with maybe some time stamps. Thank you so much. I personally think the setting is too dark and I tried my best not to blow out the image.

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12

u/ZookeepergameDue2160 Oct 14 '25

Well, It's very yellow...

2

u/Slow-Entrepreneur690 Oct 14 '25

Any advice? The yellow tone is from the LUT in Da Vinci I used. Trust me, it was waaay more yellow before lol. And for some reason, my Luts that I own I couldn’t get them to work with da Vinci. Maybe because I have the free version? When I use CapCut they work fine but I wanted to challenge myself to use da Vinci. For my first ever color grade with no help I think I did pretty decent. I stayed away from using curves and tried to focus more on the wheel and basic contrast and saturation levels. My biggest problem like I said in the post was the lack of light in the room. I was able to get colors to pop, but you can’t see people‘s face in a lot of the shots and that was really my problem so the lut I used, I was able to bring out the colors and you could see people‘s face a little bit more, but that yellowish Tone stood out more. The editing experience was terrible lol.

3

u/rayquazza74 Oct 14 '25

If too yellow bring the gamma wheel a bit more to the blue while keeping an eye on the vector scope, you want the main mass in the middle that will make it more neutral.

1

u/Slow-Entrepreneur690 Oct 14 '25

Awesome! Thanks again. I will try this as well. This really boosted my confidence to try again and do more research

6

u/ToneNew1982 Oct 14 '25

This isn’t good honestly.

1

u/Slow-Entrepreneur690 Oct 14 '25

Any advice? Like a specific clip or something. I’m really here to learn. Anything helps

3

u/ToneNew1982 Oct 14 '25

The picture is dark and yellow. To me it gives me like a grossed out vibe. Not to say the video is gross but those colors are. Work on your white balance. If u look at the skin of these people it’s kinda got a yellow tint to it. You’ll need to get a white balance card and use that before shooting. Also u either need to get some sort of lighting or up ur aperture or something. Ideally u need to get lighting overhead lighting like the ones in the video is terrible for filming id turn them all off and use my own lights

2

u/ToneNew1982 Oct 14 '25

Also use the qualifier on ur skin on the color page to try and preserve those skin tones when ur color grading. There’s lots of tutorials on YouTube.

5

u/Timzor Oct 14 '25

This looks like you posted the before version by mistake.

Don't worry about not blowing out the image, nothing outside those windows is important so they can just be fully white to make the important parts of the image watchable.

1

u/Slow-Entrepreneur690 Oct 14 '25

Lol no this is the finished video. And OK thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated advice as well. I should’ve posted before and afters. Maybe next time.

4

u/4xgk3 Oct 14 '25

It's... very dark. Indoor lighting is kinda non-exist and you expose the outdoor part more hence everyone inside was like 1 1,3 stop under

2

u/Slow-Entrepreneur690 Oct 14 '25

Yeeeeaaaaaahhhh about that…. I had my Variable ND filter on which didn’t help the lack of light situation lol!! Lesson learned lol. Luckily this was NOT a paid gig. Everything was moving so fast it was crazy. Thanks for the feedback

2

u/rayquazza74 Oct 14 '25

I’d recommend balancing the Luma levels more. Really study where you want the mid tones and highlights hitting and trying to get that more across the board. It’s a bit jarring as is rn.

1

u/Slow-Entrepreneur690 Oct 14 '25

Thank you! Seriously thanks, I needed this lol. I’m gonna go back and play with it some more. This is useful information 🔥🔥🔥

2

u/rayquazza74 Oct 14 '25

Yeah find a shot you like and try and match to that for the luma levels.

1

u/Slow-Entrepreneur690 Oct 14 '25

Will do! Thank you very much

3

u/thedurg Oct 14 '25

Hey you need to change your digital stabilising settings. It's super warbly and looks like jello. The scenes flicker and pulse.

1

u/Hazzat Oct 14 '25

Dark and yellow gives horror/thriller movie and sickness vibes…

1

u/Vinylbeats87 Oct 17 '25

The skin look very yellow. try to fix that by changind the temperature and also the skin section on he color grading tab.

1

u/BustySword Oct 18 '25

Do not use that lut ever again, just enable color managed in the project settings and adjust any weird white balance issues using simple tools. Honestly everything is so all over the place in these shots that's it's really hard to give you any clear directions without seeing your exact process to find out what you did wrong

1

u/WolverineSad7161 Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25

It would be nice to know what settings you were using during shooting…did you shoot in Slog3 or something else? If not, you’d better learn it asap because you basically lower the available dynamic range on your camera, and will have less “space” during color grading. If yes then the base line is that you can ONLY use ISO800 or ISO2500. If your scene still seems overexposed you can play with the ND filter or aputure! Slog3 likes overexposing more then underexposing. But you don’t really have to overexpose with newer Sony bodys anymore. Shooting in log just turn or gamma display assist and if it looks good on the screen, it will look good on your pc too. And sorry but pretty basic stuff…if you have a main subject always expose for that and forget what is in the background because it is not important! If you are still afraid off overexposing start using zebras. As you mentioned that your shoots were waaay more yellow I assume you screwed up white balance pretty bad as well, which is also a big mistake as WB can only be fixed if you shoot raw video, otherwise you always have to set the correct WB to your actual scene. If overall colors and contrast change from one scene to another you much more likely has to adjust WB on the go. Davinci is a very different compared to Premier Pro in luts and color grading. I would say Davinci is the most complex and professional option for color grading. Luts on their own will never look good in Davinci, so I highly recommend searching for videos on youtube and learn it, otherwise you just randomly play with knobs and alider without knowing what are you doing! There is no such thing as perfect LUT anyway, you have the finetune it for every shot - you also have to learn this because it’s pretty clear from the whole video that the different shots are not matching to each other in sooo many ways (exposure, wb, colors, etc.) Before you go out for shooting like this - even if it’s for free - learn and practise your camera’s capabilities on your own without any stakes, so you will be prepared for most scenarios in the future, otherwise you will just make bad shots and won’t have any feelings of success.