A couple weeks ago I finished color grading the music video ‘Slow Burn’ by Rebekah Wiggins. I wanted to give everyone a look into my thought process, technique, and workflow.

If you haven’t seen the music video, check it out at the bottom of the post. Before and after shots also at the bottom.

I did all my grading in Davinci Resolve Lite. It was perfect timing because the new version came out about a week before I began. To read my article about the new version of Davinci Resolve Lite, CLICK HERE.   

 

 

AT A GLANCE:

When I was handed the project, I didn’t have a specific look the director or DP wanted me to follow. This was great because it allowed me to try out different idea’s and put my own take on the style.

GRADING:

The first thing I did was create a lone Serial node. This was more or less my ‘equalization’ node. It put all the colors where they needed to be. And it was from there I applied the different styles I was going for.

Initially, I added a bit of contrast, and upped the skin tones in the white bedroom scene. After showing the director and the producer the first draft of the scene, they decided they wanted it to be stylized. They asked me to do another draft that had all of the skins tones a bit desaturated to create a ‘white cast’. Once they saw the second draft, we actually decided to split the difference, landing the final grade VERY close the original footage.

In the bar scenes the first order of business was taking out all the green tones (assumedly from the florescents). I also spent a lot of time focusing the attention on the main subjects (i.e. the band or bar tender). Do this, I used windows on a parallel node to isolateand put a ‘spotlight’ where necessary.

 

 

Additionally, I not only focused the light on key pieces of the frame, but significantly brought down distractingly bright pieces of the scene. In all these shots I used Resolve’s built in 3D tracker to track the window into the shot. The tracker is magical. That thing tracks windows like white on rice. USE IT.

 

 

My favorite shots to work on were the ones in the cottonwoods. These really gave me a chance to direct the light, and accentuate the sunlight. This is one of my favorite things to do stylistically to both video and photos. I will intentionally wash out one corner of the frame, and subtly darken the opposite. It creates a very dynamic effect.

 

 

Last to grade were the dark bedroom scenes. For these shots, I first added a bit of contrast and made sure they were all matching. Then I added a very subtle mist effect on the outskirts of the subject. For this I once again tracked in a window, and used the mist on a parallel node.

 

 

WORKFLOW:

I figured I’d save the boring part for last.

The workflow I used was essentially a Final Cut Pro round trip. I got a full resolution ProRes file from the editor, exported out of Final Cut. Aditionally, I received the EDL from that exported timeline. I imported them both and Resolve which the EDL to make the appropriate cuts in the video file. This system worked flawlessly.

Once I finished grading, I exported the clips out, and generated a FCP file for the editor to reference the exported material. Easy!

The only thing that is tricky using this method is the lack of flexibility on the editorial side. Once I had rendered out the graded footage, there were no handles for the editor to work with, since Resolve sliced up the full length Quicktime. This same workflow can be done using handles (upon import), but the music video was already at picture-lock, so there was no point in going through the extra steps.

BEFORE AND AFTER:

Here are some before and after spit screens:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘SLOW BURN’ by REBEKAH WIGGINS: