Introduction to Color Grading & LUT & Looks in Premiere Pro

Hi there, the next kind of group of videos, we're going to start looking at Color Grading. So remember, earlier on, Color Correction is kind of like this. I started off washed out, now I'm a little bit richer, because I was playing with, remember the Lumetri Panel. So I'm dragging the sliders here to make myself a look a little better. So that is Color Correction. Color Grading, the two terms that come underneath Color Grading, is Luts, L-U-T-S, and Looks, we're going to look at both of those. They're basically the same thing, and they have this, where we go and change the feeling of it, to give it a vibe, Instagram filter style, and there's a bunch of them, look. All sorts of different Luts and Looks, that gives a certain feel and quality to the image. 

Now we're going to do those, plus we'll look at things like black and white, we'll look at black and white. Black and white with some film grain. We'll look at some stuff, like this kind of orange and teal as well. Anything else? I've written them down. I was going to-- we'll do vignettes, my favorite, see the coolness. I use this too much. And that is kind of what we're going to be doing in the next few videos. 

The other thing I'd like to point out though is that, this is a applying a Lut or a Look. It just changes the-- you take the raw footage, and you just kind of change it a little bit, but for really true color grading, the cameraman and the lighting people, who need to be involved, I'll show you like, this is, I just flipped through all the filters there, using the Easy Panel that's in Premiere Pro. I'm pointing over there, there's nothing there. It's going to be over there soon, but I just flicked through all the filters. 

What needs to happen really is, this camera, just got these lights set up the exact same way. So let me change it a little bit to try and get a different look; you're ready? See, what do you think? How is the transition? Did I click at the right time, look in the right direction? I'm probably not sitting in the right spot. Hey, amateur. 

All right, but you can tell the difference, right? Like this is, I've done nothing with Color Grading, I just changed the way I've set up my lights. I guess I show you this because I'm definitely not a very good lighting person. It's more, I wanted to show you, because I got disappointed as well, like I'd go off, find this amazing videographer that I loved, buy the Lut, because it looked really cool, and I'm going to apply it to my footage, it's going to make it look really awesome, and you apply it, and you're like, "Hmm." It's kind of changed it but not really, because what you need to do is, you need to put effort into kind of the shoot. Know what you want it to look like at the end, so that when you are shooting you can talk, with the camera person, the lighting person, to work with them to kind of get the effect you want. 

The right lenses, the right camera, the right Frame Rate, the right lights. It might be out of what you're doing now, but if you do enjoy this type of, you know, the camera side of things, you can spend probably, a teeny bit of time, and be way better than me. I just wanted, I guess, show you, yeah, the possibilities of why Luts potentially don't work as amazing as they promise to, and why, lighting and camera is important. 

What I might do is quickly show you what it looks like-- we'll do a little bit Color Grading here, what do you think? This is my favorite. I'll show you some of the setup that I have just for these two. Again, not a professional lighting person, but I'll show you what I did just so you get an idea. This is the first thing that you see, you've seen all through the course. I've got a bunch of lights in the roof, I put in some LEDs that are the sunlight Kelvin, or bright day Kelvin, at least. I run those, I also have these two lights. They're the LED lights with soft boxes over the top of them. And that's what gives me that look. 

I like just a really bright look. Sometimes people like to ask, well, catch you off, asking what kinds of lights. That's the brand of this one, there are lots of knockoffs of this one. They're fine, these ones. They are actually just, let me show you. They are actually just, they come like that. Actually come with like, fences on the side, or gates, on doors. Can't remember what they're called, but that's it, it's like an 500 LED panel. That's dimmable, which is cool, and then later on, after a few years I bought these soft boxes. They're just, they're not made for that brand. They're called Diffuse, there's a bunch of these as well. Just Velcro's over the front of it, to diffuse the light a little bit more, because I'm looking for that real gradual light. 

I found it was a little bit harsh with just the LEDs, but that is my setup, let's look at the other one. Okay, this is the second setup. So that light that I had over there with the soft box on, I took it and moved it over here, and used it as a fill light, just to kind of, so it doesn't look like us recording in an empty cave. So it's called a Fill Light, fills the background. I had that little guy on as well, just give it a little bit more. I'm not sure how much he's doing. That light there I turned down a little bit. You'll notice I turned all the lights off on the roof. Then I thought I might need this, this is just a ring light, my beauty shots. I thought it might need it to cast on the other side of my face, but I ended up, it looked a bit dumb, so I turned it off, and that's why that's there, but that's the second setup, that's all I did, really was, move the light that was there, and face it that way, and turn my head lights off, well, the top lights, you get the idea. So actually let's go ahead and do some Luts and Looks.