Color 101: Rookie

Prerequisites:

Students should have the following prerequisite knowledge prior to attending the course:

Basic knowledge of the Macintosh OS
Level One Final Cut Pro End User certification is preferred. Ideally, students will have attended a Final Cut Pro 101, 200 or 250 course.

Course Description:

This two-day hands-on course will familiarize students with Apple's masterful new color grading and finishing software. Start with the basics of color balancing and correction, move on to the fine points of secondary grading, including scene matching, using vignettes to isolate and track regions, creating advanced color effects and "looks," skin tone adjustments, adjusting the composition and framing of a shot, and much more.

On Completion of this course you will be able to:

Navigating the Color Rooms.
Understanding Waveform and Vectorscopes.
Using trackers.
Color Correcting Contrast.
Color Correcting for Brightness.
Working with Vignettes.

This course includes the following modules:

Working with the Color Interface

• Setting Up Your Computer
• Setting Up a Project
• Understanding the Eight Rooms: Colors Task-Based Workflow
• Navigating Your Sequence
• Exploring the Setup Room
• Applying Basic Grades
• Viewing Your Images
• Performing Secondary Grades
• Employing Color FX
• Applying Final Touches
• Panning and Scanning
• Utilizing Still Stores
• Correcting the Sequence and Introducing the Render Queue Room

Basic Grading

• Exploring the Primary Room
• Using the Auto Balance Control
• Grading with the Color Balance Controls
• Grading with Curves
• Understanding Additional Controls

Basic Secondary Grading

• Three Types of Secondaries
• Performing Key-Based Secondaries
• Keying with HSL Qualifiers
• Performing Vignette-Based Secondaries
• Creating a Look
• Secondary Curves

Advanced Secondary Grading

• Using Multiple Secondaries
• Combining a Key and a Vignette
• Using Multiple Keys
• Creating Custom Mask Shapes
• Combining Vignettes
• ncorporating Curve Effects

Grade Management

• Managing Grades on a Single Shot
• Switching Between Grades
• Adding and Deleting Grades
• Duplicating a Grade
• Setting the Beauty Grade
• Saving Corrections and Grades
• Deleting Saved Corrections
• Organizing Corrections
• Saving Secondary Corrections
• Saving Grades
• Moving Grades from Clip to Clip
• Dragging Individual Corrections
• Grouping Shots
• Applying Grades to Groups
• Working with Multiple Grades

Color Effects

• Using the Color Effects Room
• Applying Nodes
• Building Color Effects
• Controlling Node Order
• Monitoring Inactive Nodes
• Adding Nodes to Existing Trees
• Saving and Reapplying Effects as Presets
• Modifying an Applied Preset
• Working with Preset Color Effect

Common Recipes

• Black Hawk Down/Mogadishu Look
• CSI Miami Look
• Schindlers List Look
• Flashback Look
• Saturated Sunrise Look
• Skin Diffusion and Beauty Tricks

Keyframing Effects

• Animating Effects in Color
• Manipulating Keyframes
• Navigating to Keyframes
• Deleting Keyframes
• Keyframing Other Rooms
• Changing Interpolation Settings
• Animating User Shapes
• Adding Intermediary Keyframes
• Keyframing Color Effects

Recomposing and Tracking

• Using the Geometry Room
• Recomposing Shots
• Animating Pan and Scan Effects
• Applying Tracking Data to Corrections
• Offsetting the Vignette
• Manual Tracking

Primary Out and Rendering

• Global Changes and Final Tweaks
• Modifying and Replacing Primary Out Room Settings
• Creating a Stylized Look for a Finished Project
• Applying Stylized Primary Out Corrections to Grouped Clips
• Manually Controlling Broadcast-Safe Output
• Adjusting Black Levels
• Limiting the Range of Black Level Adjustments
• Manually Adjusting White, Black and Chroma Levels
• Rendering Color Projects
• Adding Clips to the Render Queue
• Rendering Shots and Sending to Final Cut Pro
• Using Colors Archive Feature