I’m quite sure that no one could imagine, just a few years back that Sony could get such a huge market share in the filmmaking industry. Apart from the high-end production CineAltas, no filmmaker in the world would think twice between a Canon and a Sony.
These days, however, it’s almost sure that whatever the event may be, videographer in charge will be using a Sony mirrorless camera. But what kind of file is the best to choose? Most will bet on S-Log, but that’s not always the case. Oftentimes, the Cine4 profile can be just as good enough. Here, you can check out MAURO’S FILMS tutorial on how to grade footage captured with this particular setting in a few easy steps.
Even if it’s often overlooked, the Cine4 picture profile is actually an excellent choice. It retains a lot of information and makes for a good color grading. That being said, Mauro starts shooting underexposing a bit to preserve the detail in the highlights.
Then in Premiere Pro CC, he suggests bringing up a little bit the shadows when needed and then adjusting exposure and saturation. You can also do a slight S-curve in the Curve section of the Lumetri panel that will also give back contrast to your image.
This goes to correcting the image, but then it’s time to do proper color grading. At this stage, the artistic choices are virtually limitless, so any procedure is valid.
Mauro opts for adding a little bit of blue in the shadows and a warm tone in the highlights and mid tones. As a finishing touch, he adds a vignette to focus the viewer on the subject of the image.
FilmConvert is another great way to add some extra punch to your image. You can use the plugin as a standalone app or install it as an add-on to your NLE so that you can apply it directly to any clip inside Premiere Pro CC.
In the plugin’s settings, you can match the brand and model of your camera alongside the picture profile you used to shoot with, and based on that, you can pick the look of your favorite film stock and tweak it on the fly. Finally, you can bring back some of the colors in the various color ranges if the film stock conversion took away too much of it.
There you go! That’s how you can easily grade your Cine4 footage while avoiding the hustle of S-log files and still get some amazing results in post.
[source: MAURO’S FILMS]
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