Sometimes the eye is drawn to an area or section of the shot that isn't the desired focus. Fortunately, there are tools you can use to influence where the eye focuses to create more captivating shots. Watch this video tutorial to learn about altering hero shots to control the eye in DaVinci Resolve 11.
- Building upon the work we did earlier in this chapter, I've assigned all of these clips to the group power grade. Now what I want to do is take a moment to control the eye a little bit. You know, when I look at this shot for instance, let's take a look at this wide shot. One of the things I do when I'm color correcting an image is pay attention to where my eye is looking and right now it feels to me like the left hand side of the screen is demanding more attention. So, the first moment when this shot pops up I feel like I'm being pushed to the left hand side of the screen, which is kind of wrong.
I mean, the band members are what's important here. There is nothing interesting on the left hand side of the screen. If this were an infomercial where maybe this number was readable, this phone number, maybe that would work for me, but it doesn't. So, the first thing I want to do is go through this hero shot timeline shot by shot, and decide how I want my eye to move around the screen. We'll just do a couple shots here together to give you an idea of how I do this. I will shift F out of this. I'm going to go ahead at the end of this node tree option S, come into my power window and I'm going to add a gradient power window right now.
Again, if you're not quite sure which direction to point your gradient power window, because I want to do is kind of something like this maybe, or do I want to do it like this, because I want to darken this half of the image. Well, shift H will show you, yeah I want to do it like this. So that I'll be darkening the lower half and the left hand side of the image and adjust my softness to taste, and that looks like a good starting point. What we'll do, is let's try it here as a curve. Let's just change it up and try a curve.
Yeah, that kind of works for me. There we go, that's better already. Then I'll option S. I'm going to do one more shape and I'm going to do a custom shape that's a bit of a triangle, a three pointed shape. Option F and then command minus to shrink it down so I have a little bit more room to work out here. I'm going to add one point up here, then one point down there. I'm going to click and drag to turn it into a rounded edge. One more point down here, click and drag, rounded edge, and then close out the loop, and then I'm going to option click to pull out and round this out.
I love this kind of shape because it's similar to an oval, but doesn't look to the eye like an oval. It feels a lot more organic. I set it up this way because it kind of matches the shape of the light coming out from the window. Now I'll put in some inside softness and a lot of outside softness. That's probably a little too much. Let's back it up a touch. Now I'm going to invert this and let's take our gamma, drop that down, and again, I'm doing some outside darkening for the whole point of, if I turn off the shape, command D, turn the node on and off, again, I'm taking my eye and pushing it up towards the center of interest on this shot.
Let's pick another shot. Again, I want to reemphasize a point here of looking for sources of light to help motivate you when you're trying to direct the eye. Once again, I'm going to option S. Again, we'll add the three pointed user shape. I'll option F. Now I'm going to let this shaft of light help me define the shape that I'm about to build. Then close this up and then option drag on this point or alt drag if you're on a PC to really soften this out.
Again, I will soften the inside and then soften the outside. Then what I might do is just adjust this a little bit to allow it to come over the faces of our two band members. But still allowing the shape to kind of be defined by the window. Maybe in this case I'll add one more point just to pull it out, but again, nice and curved.
Once again I'll invert, I'll hide the wire frame. When I do this, I like to take a little bit out of both the gamma and the gain. Then if I wanted to enhance this look, I could even do an outside node which would be right click, add outside node, and then increase the gamma a little bit, brighten up the inside a little bit, give this shaft of light a little bit more to work with. But I'm not entirely sure this is the final look I'm going to go with.
We're working at the clip level here, so I don't think I want to do that because I also want this to be able to work with the other looks we're creating, and it actually might work against those other looks. So, I'm going to delete that node. What I will do is just very quickly flip to a different group. Let's look at poppy. Let's see how that looks there. Let's hide the wire frame. Yeah, that works for poppy. Then let's take a look at contrasty and it works for contrasty as well. I'll flip it back to the power grade look and I continue moving through these shots in this manner to help the eye focus where it needs to focus, while also adding a little bit of drama, a little bit of texture to the image while I'm doing this.
Author
Released
11/7/2014In these tutorials, indie-feature-film and broadcast colorist Patrick Inhofer guides viewers through color grading with DaVinci Resolve and Resolve Lite 11. With emphasis placed on real-world techniques and workflows, the course will help editors and aspiring colorists edit in the timeline, perform primary and secondary color corrections, match shots from multiple cameras, create mood-rich looks, and render out movies to share with clients. Interspersed throughout the course are "lingo" movies, which will help you learn the language of colorists, and "in action" chapters, where Patrick applies the lessons learned to a real-world music video for the band Minimus the Poet.
- Building a Revolve system
- Comparing Resolve and Resolve Lite
- Tweaking preferences for better performance
- Getting clips, timelines, and projects into Resolve
- Editing footage in Resolve
- Evaluating images like a colorist
- Working with serial nodes
- Making contrast and color adjustments
- Making targeted secondary corrections with keys and shapes
- Creating looks with third-party plugins
- Matching shots
- Rendering, delivering, and archiving footage
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Creative Suite 6: Video Production
with Maxim Jago3h 16m Beginner
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Introduction
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Welcome3m 16s
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Using the exercise files9m 50s
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1. Building a Resolve System
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Who uses DaVinci Resolve?3m 52s
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Upgrading DaVinci Resolve5m 30s
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2. Understanding Databases, Users, and Projects
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Databases: Disk-based5m 30s
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Updating databases6m 36s
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Managing users4m 27s
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3. Getting Started with DaVinci Resolve 11
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Interface overview7m 36s
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Customizing the interface8m 50s
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Working with dual displays5m 19s
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4. Editing a Project in DaVinci Resolve 11
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The Edit page in detail4m 45s
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Keyboard shortcuts5m 38s
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Editing into a timeline7m 32s
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Working in the Edit mode6m 39s
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Working in the Trim mode7m 5s
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Working with audio8m 51s
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5. Moving a Project from a Nonlinear Editor (NLE) to Resolve
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6. Image Evaluation: Seeing Like a Colorist
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7. Understanding Nodes
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What is a serial node?9m 39s
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8. Primary Color Correction Tools
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The Primary sliders4m 9s
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Y-only vs. YRGB adjustments5m 57s
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Adjusting hue and saturation2m 16s
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The RGB mixer5m 1s
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Raw controls7m 50s
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Working with log footage7m 59s
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LUTs in action5m 22s
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What are 1D and 3D LUTs?4m 53s
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9. In Action: Primary Color Correction
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10. Secondary Color Correction Tools
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Using the Hue Vs. curves8m 4s
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Tracker: Fundamentals8m 31s
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Tracker: Advanced tracking3m 59s
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Tracker: Stabilizing shots5m 25s
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11. Shot Matching
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What is shot matching?4m 31s
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Overview: The gallery8m 40s
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Gallery: The Reference Wipe7m 42s
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The split-screen view6m 46s
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Matching exposure8m 13s
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Matching color7m 53s
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12. In Action: Secondaries and Shot Matching
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Hero shots: Fixing problems6m 51s
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13. Building Looks: Essential Tools
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Node and input resizing6m 46s
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Render cache: User mode8m 33s
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Render cache: Smart mode7m 37s
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Keyframing fundamentals8m 27s
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Temporal noise reduction7m 58s
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14. In Action: Building a Look
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15. Rendering, Delivering, and Archiving
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Rendering: Individual shots10m 56s
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Final rendering and delivery4m 52s
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Backing up and archiving5m 30s
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16. DaVinci Resolve Updates
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Conclusion
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Goodbye2m 54s
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Video: Hero shots: Controlling the eye