“Been doing a lot of research into learning more color science type stuff. I’ve been again changing my methods, mainly to bring about a more accurate, and less “look” based grade. Specifically I’ve now been using Cineform Firstlight which I use to flatten and remove the tints from the image. To be able to use the program I do all the upsampling and upscaling process as one preceeding render resulting in files that get to ridiculous 300 GB per hour. That said, the amount I can raise the shadows (and to a lesser degree the highlights) is astonishing. It’s almost like taking the blu-ray and interpolating a RAW file from it. It’s far perfect, but it solves all the previous banding and noise issues I had in CG-heavy sequences. From there I’ve gone into AE where I keep the workflow 32 bit and use numerous adjustments to give it a filmic color response. I did research into techniques used to create film emulation lut’s so that I have more control over the process (also because LUT’s are designed for specific color profiles/cameras that these movies don’t line up with). I haven’t quite nailed it yet, but I’ve been able to get a satisfying filmic appearance without drastically changing any color decisions inherent in the film.”

Here I still left the highlight rolloff, and pushed shadows only slightly up. I’ll set the highlights and shadows to better levels as I finalize the curving adjustments.

EDIT: Well that’s a first…it was blocked despite leaving out the audio track, could’ve been it was too long of a clip. Hmm…gonna have to upload to Vimeo maybe.