Jazzy Bluesy Colors

I shot this recording session a few month ago with my hacked GH2. After the editing on fcpx, I denoised the footage with neat video, and then graded it with Nuke and Resolve 8.

Hope you'll like it.

vimeo.com/50317623

I'm curious; what was done in Nuke, what was done in Resolve?

Resolve did well for isolating the dress and the keyboard screen.
Nuke was helpful to draw quick garbage mate around the bassist's t-shirt and for rotoscoping the guitarist's pink shirt.

Love the color isolation concept, as immortalized in Schindler’s List. Of course the color theme works perfectly here & fits nicely with your song lyrics. The audio track is engaging so we’re onboard from the start. Perhaps some readers here would be interested to know which hack you chose for your GH2, was it the LOW 3GOP?

For me the editing works well with the musical tempo. All fairly straight forward with the usual shots for a performance video. A few personal touches were appreciated (the focus work down the neck of the bass up to the musician. The artists were portrayed in a great light, not regarding the luminosity but rather the exuberance & passion they expressed was captured for all to see.

At about the half way mark, I’m beginning to seek a bit more variety. The pink shirt is a welcomed respite when it comes, but I think a few more isolated colors (yes I know it’s considerably more work), could really set this off.

There is a line she sings about the color of the soul, & it seems to fit that each of the musicians should have at least one color on them. This theme is broken as the guitarist has 2 colors connected with him, the shirt & the guitar. However the keyboardist only has the little blue light in front, but no color on him. His wool hat though subtle in tones, would be sweetly enhanced with a gentle hue to work with, especially the band around the hat, maybe the same blue as his keyboard light, or similar. The drummer has no color, sadly. Though, I love his look at the end.

The color isolation effect is compelling, but at the length of this piece it becomes a tad sparse. At first I was looking for other opportunities for tiny splashes of color. The hanging striped fabrics behind appear to be colors that could have been recruited into service. This idea I soon rejected, favoring the black & white surroundings & all that symbolizes, even the instruments too, though I wouldn’t mind an effect of each musician’s identifying color occasionally flickering ever so subtly through his instrument with the playing. His light is expressing itself through his instrument. Her color could glow through the mic & the ringed wind screen from time to time, brighter when she hits that high note. I really like the idea of each musician having at least one color on them, this unites them all in the spirit of the song. There’s also a beautiful subtext as the woman is a singer of color (in the skin sense), yet our multi cultured group are wed somehow by these little colors & the creative collaboration as the song is birthed.

Nice piece of work, thank you for sharing.

J. Matthew
Global•Watch•Media•Consulting
www.GWM2.com

Thank you for the very interesting feedback.

The patch I use is a gop 3 indeed, called Flowmotion (an old version).

This video is the first of the five songs the band recorded that day. Each video will have a different color grading style (this one is the only one with such a strong visual effect).

You may be right, about giving each musician a color. I was tempted to do so, but I though it was better to avoid strict rules about that.

I'll also keep in mind your suggestion about the glow and color variation, depending on how high she's singing.

Thanks again.