My Project:

For our Zenith projects we could do anything we wanted that was related to Film and built on all of the skills we have learned so far. I chose to learn more about color grading and colorists. I chose this because before I found film I was into photography, so now in film I like to focus on the visuals. The first film class I ever took was on editing in film, and after that most of what I made was focused on editing. Learning about color grading put those two things together. I’ve always liked color grading a lot because it gives your film a more professional look if you just put in a little bit of time to learn how to do it.

My plan was to learn how to use Davinci Resolve, because it is the industry standard software for color grading as opposed to Premiere Pro which is what I had been using, then write shoot and edit 3 scenes with different color schemes, color grade them, then make a video explaining how I did everything.

Process:

I started by looking for shots that I liked in Shotdeck. I ended up with three different looks that I wanted to recreate.

Before I shot anything I learned a little bit about Davinci resolve so I would be prepared when I needed to edit my scenes. Davinci at first glance was very different from Premiere Pro, so I had to take some time to figure out how to navigate it. I learned a lot from youtube videos and trial and error.

After learning Davinci, I storyboarded briefly and shot the 3 scenes. I shot 2 in HDR and 1 in LOG.

Here’s my video explaining how I color graded by scenes and my final product:

Reflection:

The Zenith project was somewhat nerve-wracking at the beginning because I was nervous to present, but once I found a project that I was excited to work on, I was motivated and excited about it. I am so happy I learned all of this because it will inform my future filmmaking projects and learning. I also am happy that people learned from it, every once in a while I will be talking with a friend or family member and they will mention something that they learned from my Zenith project! I also learned a lot from making this and now when I watch movies I am more in tune with the meanings of colors and how they support the story.