Need color correction advice for this 30 sec spot

This was all shot on a GoPro 3+ in Protune so there is room to correct. I did my grade and this is what I arrived at. Not crazy about the results. Any recommendations are welcome. Feel free to download the video to get rid of Vimeo's mush.


Password: j_vega
vimeo.com/119302090

Assuming you want a richer & more saturated look, I'd start by going to exposure and reducing the center dot (to lower gamma). Then boost overall saturation a bit. Forrest shots can generally benefit from boosting greens (a bit) in the mids and shadows. Color correction is such a subjective thing that you really have to play around with the settings and then keep what you like. There are a lot of great tutorials from Ripple, Lynda.com, etc. and having a strong knowledge of the color correction tools in FCPX will help a great deal.

That being said, obviously a dedicated color correction software (i.e. DaVinci Resolve) would do a much better job at making this footage sing.

---> Jarrod

I agree with Jarrod. It's too flat now.

- Increase the contrast (in exposure, set the blacks darker and try to raise the middle and the highlights)

- Increase slightly saturation

- Create a secondary correction for green, to make the trees pop up.

Resolve is always good but you can totally manage with FCPX.

Also, very important: it looks bad on Vimeo because you're compressing too much. Give it more bitrate.

I agree that FCPX's color correction tools can still improve the footage greatly. One of the benefits Resolve would give, however, is the ability to keyframe the corrections on shots that change dramatically during their length (like the ones that have flares at the beginning that go away as the camera moves). The built in motion tracking for corrected items also comes in handy with a kinetic piece like this.

In the end, it really depends on how detailed you want the coloring to be. For a commercial it would make sense to spend a lot of time on each shot getting it perfect.

---> Jarrod

+1

I'd keep it simple, and all in FCPX. First, adjust contrast. Bring down the shadows, safeguard the highlights, adjust mids if necessary as needed. Then, use a color matte to bring the greens out a tiny tad (don't overdo it). But first and foremost is to look at that Vector Scope and make sure your flesh tones are right. You get that (easy to do inside of FCPX) and 99% of the rest of the image will look right. Be careful not to over complicate color grading. I see my students do that so much. Keep it super simple, grade for contrast, then flesh tones, the rest will fall in to place.