Warm (Essi)

So I watched a video on professional color-grading last night, how they do things in movies like Joker or Tenet. What I was doing with my adjustments was going in the right direction, but how I was getting there was introducing some problems with crushing color ranges and tonal contrasts. Now, when you start at 3d you do not have the same input as a film or still shot from a camera, since in those mediums you want to increase contrast to get an eye-popping effect (since the default of photography seems to be a lower default contrast). In 3d, the contrast out of the box is cranked to an absurd level, so we reduce it to get a film look. This is why I think a lot of VFX looks strange, the contrast is way too high for it to look real.

Once you get your tonal values set, your skin, black, and white points - then you do color. Never do color first, think of the picture as if it were a black-and-white shot and get your black-shadow-midtone-highlight-white levels right first. Then, do color. After that, special effects.

This is what it is like being at the top of your game, what you need to learn does not decrease, it increases.

-Ren