Colour matching with 2 views

[David Eaks]

Just a tip for color matching.

Say you have two angles of the same subject, a CU and a wide. The subject is on stage with a colorful background, CU shot is primarily skin tone and colorful background, while the wide shot has a lot of black in the frame surrounding the stage. These won’t color match well because of all the black. If you temporarily scale the wide shot way up so it is at least similar in overall composition to the close-up, it will match much better. Then reset the scale back to normal. You might be pleasantly surprised by how well (and fast) it can actually work.

For manual color matching have you used the Event Viewer? Select Window> Show Event Viewer. It should be just what you’re asking for.

[Kris Forge]

Thanks for the tip David, sounds like a great idea. I’ll be sure to try that out on a future project. In this project the clips are already very similar, 2 angles of an interview. I’ll try it anyway.

The event viewer is not really what I’m after as I want to see a clip in the timeline that I have already corrected. Then be able to compare that to another clip later in the timeline that I want to visually match.

Thanks for your help.

[T. Payton]

This is what I do:

1- Create a new event and call it “Color Grades” for example.
2 -Show the Event Viewer (Control-Command-3)
3 – Make a compound clip of the already corrected clip in the timeline, store in the new event. (Option-G)
4 – With the now compound clip still selected show the frame in the event viewer with Shift-F.
5 – Back in the timeline, restore the original reference clip with Break Apart Items (Command-Shift-G)
6 – Move your playhead to the clip you want to color correct by option clicking and it will load it the now timeline viewer and you can color correct.

This sounds like a long process but it is actually very fast. For larger projects I find that creating that additional event is very helpful. I store not only my color grades, but also references I like from other movies, stills, etc. I tend to make only a few master grades to match to, rather than matching to every previous shot.

I also like to open up scopes to match both the event and the standard viewer.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Kris Forge]

Thanks for that detailed work around. Sounds like a good solution to my problem. I new to this so I appreciate the help. It surprises me though that something so basic is not achievable as standard in fcp.
Thanks all.