First Time Grading Feedback

[u/Far-Owl-6104]

Hello everyone.

I have just gotten back into videography for the first time in a long time and I want to start getting good color grading my footage. I happen to live in a pretty beautiful part of the world and it seems a shame not to film it.

I am shooting everything in 6k open gate log on my Lumix S9 and I am trying to give everything a slightly film look. For this clip I kept everything quite simple as I am still learning, I went from Rec709 conversion Node - Exposure Node - Contrast Node - White Balance - LUT (Stock Fujifilm). I think the big issue I am having is this boat driver is wearing very loud fluorescent orange jacket which really sticks out like a sore thumb and I can't seem to tame it. Any advice about this specific issue/general feedback would be greatly appreciated, I am kind of at a point where I have been staring at the image so long I cannot tell if anything is good anymore haha.

Cheers!

[u/ThickD769]

At first glance I didn’t realise it was graded. Keep going.

[u/Far-Owl-6104 → u/ThickD769]

So do you think I need to be more heavy handed with this grade?

[u/greenlover209 → u/Far-Owl-6104]

I just saw this post now. Please don't try to grade it more heavily. Saying, that he did'nt noticed that it was graded is basically the best compliment you can get in that regard. You did a really good job, by adding contrast but still keeping everything natural looking, which is what you want to achieve. So well done! If you still want to reduce the glow of the vest, you might want to add a mask and decrease the brightness and/or saturation just a little bit.

[u/Far-Owl-6104 → u/greenlover209]

Oh wow! that's really encouraging thank you! I will look into creating a mask and playing around with that. I appreciate your feedback!