Second grade / look pass

A while back, I posted about my Live Streaming Studio V3.1  setup, because many people wanted to know what gear I’m using and how I get the “cinematic” look on a live Zoom call. And to achieve that look, one of the things I had to learn from scratch – in addition to operating a digital cinema camera and properly use lighting – was how to color grade.

For reference: Non-graded image without look and effects applied, DNG RAW (BMD Film Gen 1) to rec709 / Gamma 2.2, exposed to the right (ETTR).

Below, after some grading, applying a ton of stuff for the look, and even throwing in some effects to emulate anamorphic edge distortions and a fake film gate crop for good measures:

BTW, do you need help with creating a great custom “look” for your film or video production, your camera, or your podcasting or stream? Give me a ping, and let’s talk. I wasted a silly amount of time and money making all kinds of mistakes starting out, so I’m happy to help you avoid that.

In this post, I’m sharing a bit about my further digging myself into a hole adventures into color grading with Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve Studio (free download of the non-studio version). It’s an incredible piece of software, by the way. If you’re thinking about ditching Adobe Premiere – just do it! It’s a joy to work with and I’ve never regretted it for a second.

This is not a primer on color grading. It’s just me dumping writing up and sharing what I’ve learned that works best for me so far. If you too wish to start (or continue) on a color grading learning journey with DaVinci Resolve, Cullen Kelly’s YouTube channel is probably the best place for that.

The following assumes you’re already familiar some of the concepts of color grading – or at least have a faint interest in how to create a cinematic image with digital tools. If not, fair warning, this post will bore the living daylights out of you is probably not for you.

What started as a necessity during the lockdown era (aka building a professional-looking online tele-presence) turned into a path of rediscovery, reigniting my passion for the cinematic image. Fun fact: You might not know that I actually started out studying cinema with the goal to become a film director – but I dropped out after only two years as university and studying film wasn’t really my thing – and then the commercial Internet happened and the rest is history. 

As a person most likely somewhere on a spectrum of some kind, of course I can’t, I won’t, and I don’t stop digging until I’m getting somewhere interesting, somewhere where I can feel a sense of mastery and understanding of the full stack (in this case lighting, lenses, physics, camera sensor, cinematography, color grading, look development – everything that goes into the sausage factory of a nice digital “cine” image), aka being able to make predictable outcomes and making those outcomes look cinematic and pleasing – to me. It’s become sort of a new time sink obsession hobby of mine (in addition to helping other startup founders go farther faster, of course).

And I’m still digging.. .

Read on below for this long non-startup (but hey – still full of tech & geekery) post.

A lot going on under the hood here.

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