@shian So my past two shoots I've been utilizing your expose in the zone method for skin tones and when I get home to check the scopes, 80% or more of the time, I'm dead on in the waveform and vetorscope. Thanks so much and of course, it's always a learning process. Now just to work on getting the whole scene in the 20-80 range!

@vicharris Thanks. It's good to see that I'm helping. I sometimes wonder if my tutorials actually help people or if I just confound them so much that they're just stupefied into saying, "Oh, yeah...that makes sense."

You are welcome - I hope it finally makes sense. Once you understand it, you can use it any way you want. Most cinematographers I talk to use different methods relating to the Zone System depending on their style and approach. I have taught you the way I use it. But you might find other approaches.

I've also taught the way I use a light meter - which is different from what others who have worked so long in film have done because of the latitude.

I use an incident meter to read each light. Where as some will just point it at the camera to average the light and expose that way. I like knowing what each light is giving me so I have pinpoint control. I consider the "pointing it at the camera" way the lazy approach, which you can get away with on film and higher end digital, but DSLR shooters can run into trouble pretty quick if they're not careful.

There is a correlation chart between false color and the zones using skin tone as a pivot for generic FC monitors and for RED now on the page under the Zone System tutorials.

And the plot thickens, looking forward to it.

We should have some test footage online in, like, September.

If any of you still have doubts about Color GHear... let them rest. I would say it is one of the best investments you can make for your post production, period.

Shian is truly a pro. I am a huge fan of ColorGHear and Shian's film school videos (I've learned a lot). This guy is sharing years of his experience and expertise, and years of tweaking his preset grades for such a small fee it would be absurd not to buy it. Considering the time, effort and money that goes into making a production work, cost-wise, this should be near the top of your list of must have tools. Besides this, he's a way cool, positive guy, and will help you out as much as he can. I hope everyone can recognize his tremendous contribution to helping people educate themselves to become better filmmakers.

I just recently used ColorGHear on my first music video for a local artist. Using it with Adobe AE is an extremely powerful solution which allows limitless hierarchical tweaking. Since the production budget was very low - not much of the lighting could be controlled (save two reflectors), and there was limited time to complete it (Let alone render it in AE! Sorry, next time, film grain...). It is not perfect, but I really liked how the video looked when it was done, and I'm proud of what we could accomplish with so LITTLE .... Hats off to Shian. You are much appreciated, and you have enriched my knowledge and filmmaking experience tremendously!

Please support this guy's work while doing yourself a huge favor.

Shooting on GH2 with random old glass, + 14-140

Crane shots with 5d Mk3 + Zeiss lenses (Thanks to an awesomely talented crane guy, Aaron Leong)

Directed by Owen Burgess

Cinematography by yours truly, Neal Brandon

Sorry to disappear for so long. Been dealing with some serious shit. But I'm slowly getting back in the saddle. Great looking stuff, guys.

@peternap I'm always going to assume that anything that starts with a baseline that has better compression than AVCHD is going to grade better and have less blocking.

@shian I've been using CG to play around with my BMCC footage in Resolve. Works great to throw on some fast grades to get looks out there without all the fussing around.

@shian Do we get a free upgrade from 9? I can't remember.

Wow...from 26min down to 5min. I knew AE was inefficient but, wow.

It's so frustrating knowing how indispensable AE is but at the same time how poorly it does so many things. Back before Puffin sold out to Pinnacle (to die a double death) I'd replaced as much of my workflow as I could with Commotion because what the two packages shared was so much better in the Puffin implementation (roto and tracking especially).

It's sad because Commotion, like Nuke and Katana, were created by actual visual effects professionals and not a software company with mostly academic experience. So much hardware gets thrown at trying to make After Effects faster when it's really a software problem.

Sorry if this is a dumb question but have to ask.. do you guys do primary correction first and then add gears or use the gears exclusively?

@shian Show off