About a week ago there was a post about color grading Driftwoods' various GH2 hacks, and while that post will probably resurface I thought it might be fun to share some color grading tips/tricks etc.

I shoot with a hacked GH13, and have used this little "Monster" of a camera on 3 music videos, including my most recent video for Asher Roth's "Last Man Standing" feat. Akon. The most beneficial part of the hack for me has always been what I can subsequently do with the image in post without worrying about the degradation of image quality.

I generally have 2 methods of color grading, and I have included examples of both. The 1st way is incredibly time consuming, but produces very otherworldly HDR-looking results. I begin by exporting an image sequence from quicktime, then I open up one of the resulting TIFF files in Photoshop and adjust the levels to my liking. 3 rounds of unsharp masking later, as well as a boost to the Vibrance of the image, and I'm ready to create an Action and batch process all of the images. After all of the images have been batched through photoshop, I drag them onto a Final Cut sequence (making sure that each image is only is only 00;00:01 long) and export a raw quicktime movie. Obviously this is not for everyone as it drains ones mental sanity faster than you can say High Dynamic Range Video, and you may have some sync issues on longer clips because of the 23.98 and 24 fps disparity - but the results are cool and not achievable in FCP.

My second method is what I use to make video look more like 16mm film - It's fast, easy, and works with almost anything you can shoot. It utilizes Magic Bullet Looks and Final Cut's 3-way color corrector. I begin by applying "Looks", and starting off with the "Blockbuster" preset. I delete the diffusion filter, the vignette filter, and I slightly lower the highlight part of the "Curves" filter. Then I add the "3-Strip Process" filter and adjust the strength to around 6%. Based on how the image looks now I will usually adjust the the individual color channels of the "Curves" filter so that I make sure my Blacks are not too Blue, and my highlights are not too Yellow. Add some "Film Grain" at 3% and turn off the color mode, and you're done with the "Looks" part. Back in FCP, I add the 3-way color corrector and use the Auto Balance Color function to, again, make sure that my blacks aren't too blue, and my highlights aren't too yellow. Then I crush the black's slightly, raise the Mid's a touch, and actually crush the white's a tiny amount. Adjust the saturation to taste, and then I'm done.

I realize this is long winded, but I hope it starts a fun conversation, and I am more than willing to answer any questions about my process.