I was the Colorist on this music video and my weapon of choice was FCPX!

I consider myself an editor first but I love Color Grading.
I’ve been using "Color" and “Resolve" but the production team (to my surprise) had edited with FCPX so I decided to finish it in X. Oh and I did the light bulb flares with the mflare plug-in for FCPX
www.motionvfx.com/mplugs-1.html

BTW the BCam on this was a Nikon D90 which was horribly blown-out in some areas so a lot of my work was a salvage job lol.

I’d love to hear what more experienced Colorists on this board think of this. As I said I consider myself an editor 1st but I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the craft of Color Timing, Grading, Correcting whatever...



Official music video for "It Is What It Is" by Olga from the album Whatever You Want available on itunes here:
itunes.apple.com/us/artist/olga/id446559285

Not bad at all, you sure have bigger balls then others for doing your finishing in FCPX.
You know what would be cool is a behind the scenes block on using FCPX!

Very nice. So you just used FCP X just 'cause? Interesting. Looks really good. How much did you have to do secondaries and masks?

Wow, that was impressive.

I'd also like to know a little bit more on how you did it, as I'm not really too impressed with X' color tools (or my ignorance on how to use them correctly).

I just finished production on a video course for macProVideo about the typical professional color grading workflow, based on what we taught in the old Color class.

I'm not 100% sold on the color board, or as we call it, the "Squeel" (square color wheel). Personally if they put the complimentary colors on the lower half of the board, it's make sense.

But yes, it is nicer in most ways than legacy FCP. Aside from my issues with a Squeel.

I know Mickey, he's a former student and in our local user group, and does amazing work consistently. I'm VERY interested in the techniques you used, secondaries used, masks if any, etc. Do tell buddy!

Thanks for sharing. Though I'm not one of the professional colorists you seek for their opinion, I have done some coloring in FCP 7 & X. However, as a director & media consultant, I feel I have an eye for art. This is particularly applicable to your work here, which is impressive.

This is probably the most professional, or broadcast ready music video I've seen on this site in quite a few months. The song, talent, concept & deployment all come off nicely. I was particularly interested to see in the closing credits that this was shot in a studio, having been completely sold on the idea it was actually an old house.

As a colorist, it appears your efforts are greatly rewarded, the rich tones you've imparted give a real deep filmic tone. The lighting works well with what you've done. Some of the shots down the hall with the wall paper framing the doorway, bestow an almost renaissance painting feel. In one of these she is swaying to the music as the light dances across the back of her dress, this is high art.

You've worked well with the costumer & set decorator by bringing out the deep reds & textures.

There is one curious editing choice near the end, that I might have to watch again to decide how I feel about it. This is when the angle cuts are back & forth juxtaposing a bright image (perhaps this was one of the "washed out" images you had to work with), with the regular deep filmic toned image. I use the word "regular" here, as that is the type of image you've treated us to thus far.

All in all, very impressive work with the new FCPX product. As you can see from the other comments, anyone that has colored, wants your secrets. Perhaps a tutorial video is in order?

In a word... Good job! Oh, & thank you for silencing the whining nay-sayers that claimed FCPX wasn't for producing professional grade film & television.

Wow thank you all for the great feedback! I’ve been learning my way around FCPX since Day1 and this site and you all have been an invaluable resource.

Happy 4th to everyone, I’ll plan on posting a more thorough breakdown of the process but I just wanted to thank everyone for the responses so far and answer a few questions.

Well the deal was I came on this project very last minute, it was already shot and edited and they wanted to make a screening deadline but it really needed a lot of Color work.

Once I saw the team had actually edited in FCPX, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to see what FCPX could actually do from a grading/finishing perspective.
I’ve been using Color and learning Resolve but I’m not that great in Resolve yet and the deadline just didn’t allow for any workflow/user errors so I wanted to keep it in X.

2 things I miss from Color are tracking and custom masks but I made do with just shape masks.
If I remember right any given shot has at least 4-6 secondaries, and within those secondaries are shape masks isolating just the singer and various elements within the frame. Since there is no way to track these shapes I manually key-framed certain masks to track her hair, lipstick, eyes and other minute details within the frame.
Even though I had to manually do this and I oh so miss Colors tracking engine I was able to do this very quickly.

The scenes with the light bulbs have a secondary on each bulb and the mflare plug-in is tweaked and manually key-framed to match the exposure of the bulbs and to track with the camera dollie move. Again automated tracking would have made quick work of this but I became quite fast with keyframing inside FCPX lol. if there was an easy way to roundtrip to Motion so I could have just worked on those segments I would have done that. (fingers crossed we see round-tripping/open in editor return)

Well idk I have mixed feelings, I do miss the 3-way color wheels but I’m loving the Color Board. I find myself almost able to grade at the speed of thought with just a few clicks and mouse swipes. I find the board to be very sensitive to the slightest adjustments and I find I can achieve results within the board that would have taken 3 or 4 separate filters in legacy FCPX. The only thing I don't like is that within certain elements of the board it can become quite cluttered when moving your controls around especially if you need to bring your globals, mids, etc close to each other. But for me after a little practice it became 2nd nature and I can now work much faster than in FCP7 or even Color…

I disagree with showing the “complimentary" Colors on the negative side of the board. I think it would become distracting seeing all those colors within such close proximity of one another. I think after some practice/tutorials its very clear whats happening as you are manipulating the colors.

So say you are working to add or reduce a Red overcast in your shot, Drag your control for global/mid, etc. to the Reds and drag up into the positive for more Red or down/negative for less Red. If you want to start adding in more Blue then do the same within the Blue segment…

I think I understand what your talking about but again I’m not so sure I personally would like that…I think as it is visually it works.
Now if Red Giant would get Colorista working within X then we’d have some seriously powerful tools for everyones taste..

HAHAHA!! yea I’m just really trying to push the app and see what happens.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t gamble on client projects, I’ve been working in X for awhile and I’m very comfortable with what it can/can’t do but sometimes we just have to make the plunge and leap off the edge but we always have the undo button…


Again thanks for the feedback guys I really appreciate it and I’ll follow up again with a more detailed “concept to finishing” post and I’ll try and get around to posting some ungraded/graded comparison grabs.

TrixTrax9000 wrote:

HaHa I just thrive to do the best work I can do and for me I’m able to achieve great results in FCPX.

Thank you greatly for your feedback! You indeed do have a great eye, you saw right through my thought process as far as designing the Color palette for this project.
this was a great team that put this together and my goal was just to expand on and compliment what they had done during production. (plus they stressed we really needed to try and salvage the D90 material)

Yes this was one of the technically problematic shots I had to work with from the D90.
In the original footage it was borderline Black and White. I don’t know how or why but the camera did not resolve any color info whatsoever especially compared to the rich tones the Canon (t2i) captured in-camera.
She had absolutely no color in her skin, there was nothing to work with and this proved to be very difficult to manipulate in post. I basically got it to the point to where I was “ok” with it and I told the DP, director/producer that with a few more hours I could get it a little better but it would take some more work.
Even though we all weren’t 100% happy with those angles we made the call to just roll with it and deliver it as is.

You are correct in that the images/angles are juxtaposing together, the intent of the different look is to show 2 different sides to the singer which, not go into to much story detail relates to the song but to me and we all felt it just didn’t quite work…but they made the call to keep it as is.

How would showing complimentary colors in the lower half of the Squeel be distracting? It is simply showing exactly what hues you're introducing to remove another. It's simply showing what factually happens. I don't get how that would be distracting.

But the work you did is really nice. Would love to see a comparison or split screen between the graded video and the ungraded.

Looks great!

Now I am tempted to make a music video

I thought your film looked great and it's good to see that you like the colour board the way it is, I'd also prefer to see it stay as is and would love to see some trackers in there.

I also found it became very easy to work with multiple secondaries, but would love to be able to rename them.

Did you notice that you can use the icons/titles "Globals", "Shadows" etc. below the colour board as switches to select the pucks? This is great for if they get real close, it would also be ideal if they introduced a single wheel as an option.

Noco has a great tip I use a lot. And to add to that line of though, I almost never drag the hockey pucks around. I always click and drag on the numeric fields. I find much more precision control that way.

And I still think not showing complimentary colors is counter productive. Sorry, it's a very hard core issue for me, personally. Seriously, tell me what color is "negative blue"?

Ok, I'll lay off that issue now.

Mickey, did you use multiple masks on each Correction set, or one per set?

It's just a personal taste thing Ben, negative blue isn't a colour, you can either add a certain colour or remove a certain to colour to the same effect. You know that and you know everyone else knows that.

Some people would like it to work different and some like it the way it is. No ones wrong for liking it the way it is, it works very well for the people who like it. And those that don't aren't wrong for wanting an option.

I know I did not describe the system in the most scientific way but where did I say “negative blue”? I never worded it such as it was an actual color. What I meant as I’m sure you know is the colors within the positive/negative spectrums within the color board.

Now I see how you can prefer to see this change visually but I personally really like the way it is.

I mean when your manipulating colors in the color board, lets say you want to pull a green cast out of your footage, when you pull the control into the negative space you are removing the color green (or whatever the exact shade is depending on where your control point is) not necessarily introducing/increasing more Red, again you are removing Green which is what the negative value visually indicates.
I prefer to see the exact shade of color I’m affecting.

Yes technically when you are removing green you begin to see shades of red start to show through but I don’t think you are actually working on the Color Red and introducing Reds directly, this is just a consequence of what happens when removing green.

Now if you want to directly adjust your reds, move your control point to the reds, etc.

so again to me its not a matter of introducing certain colors but increasing/decreasing the value of any given color which I think the board represents perfectly.

As someone pointed out I don’t think there is a right or wrong in this matter, just preference so we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this matter of how the color board should be configured.

Again I appreciate your feedback Ben and I would not be doing what I’m doing without you!

That is a good tip!
I always use the numerical values when it comes to exposure and saturation controls but I grab the control points (hockey pucks lol) for the color controls.
I find I can quickly drag them around within the different color spectrums but I’m going to start using the sliders once I have my blacks, mids, etc very close to one another, great suggestion!

"lets say you want to pull a green cast out of your footage, when you pull the control into the negative space you are removing the color green (or whatever the exact shade is depending on where your control point is) not necessarily introducing/increasing more Red..."

Truth of fact is, you ARE introducing red. Science of color is that you can not remove a hue, without introducing it's compliment. Physically impossible. That's my point. Negative of any color is Positive of its complimentary color. That's not some random theory, that's the science of how color acts.

Pull blue to its very extreme negative, and tell me you've not introduced more of its compliment. Do it slightly, same thing. It inhibits knowledge of science, of fact, and makes it a consumer color tool, when Apple claims its a professional color tool.

Again, my one and only pet peeve is the Squeel is its consumer misguidance of color grading fact, and thus not a professional science. As several well known leaders in the industry have agreed with me, it put training wheels on newbie colorist, with no way to take them off and go beyond the consumer basics. That's all.

Color X needs to come back. That being a pipe dream of mine, Resolve LITE is an awesome workflow between FPX and "professional" color grading tools.

Just expressing a personal pet peeve, not going to debate it, we all feel differently about, I get that.

But yes, as for the click-drag on the numerical values of degrees (why measure a rectangle in circular degrees?) and percentage. It constraints you to very precise adjustments. That part I really like. Very much so.

And the fact that individual correction sets are processed in parallel (like in Color) and no in series (like in legacy FCP). That is totally awesome.

I've been experimenting with using shape and key masks in the same and in different correction sets. Seems once you get in to it, there some really cool stuff you can do.

Especially since you can key frame shapes now.

But back to the original post, I think Mickey did a fantastic job. He really is very talented.

Ben, you say you don't want to debate it but your airing your views on a public forum, you can't just decide it to be a one way thing and declare that you want to put your point across without debate.

If you don't want to debate it it's simple, keep quite about it, if you do, then no problem it's a public forum and that's what its for.

No one is disputing this fact, all that is being said is that it isn't necessary to see that graphical representation to know that, another graphical representation (as the board is now) offers a different perspective and the same thing could be (has been) done with a few dials and no graphic representation at all.

Painters mix paint all the time with no graphical representation and they are truly stuck in this world where colours must be added to remove their complimentaries.

The truth of the matter is that a true understanding of colour theory, whether working with paint or light, offers a simultaneous action/understanding. I know what colour I am adding as I am subtracting and vice versa.

Professional colour grading isn't done with a set of colour wheels or a board that shows a range of colours, professional colour grading is done with an understanding of colour theory.

Sorry to interrupt the debate, but I have couple more questions...

First for Mickey G - The dancing light on the back of her dress at the end of the hall, did you do that or is it a product of the lighting? It looks entirely real, but not beyond the realm of FX manufacture.

Secondly, for all the colorists here - As mentioned, my experience is more with direction & consulting, but since I wish to learn more about these technical aspects, could one of you please refer me to a video tutorial where I might learn more about Secondaries & Masking, as alluded to in this thread?

Thank you for that.

Earlier when I'd asked here about colorizing in FCPX - I was pointed towards the Darren Riddle videos, which I found to be excellent. Thank you, much appreciated.

TrixTrax9000 wrote:
Are you referring to the shot around the 2:05 mark?
If so the lighting was done in production however I did put a vignette around the singer to up the saturation of her red dress and played with the contrast inside and outside the vignette. I also applied a "light flicker" filter.
All of this expands on the lighting design and makes the production lighting more noticeable as she is walking through the pools of light throughout the hallway that was set up during production.

I as well would love to hear of any other Coloring resources.

www.amazon.com/Apple-Pro-Training-Encycl...ection/dp/0321432312

I would recommend this book, yes it mostly refers to FCS but Alexis goes into much detail about Color timing in general.