Grading 4K Raw in Cambodia wasn’t something I had expected when agreeing to take on a mentoring assignment in Phnom Penh.
I had never been to Cambodia so had the impression that the post industry would be a little behind Vietnam, having previously graded projects in HCM City and taught classes in Hanoi.
The company I was visiting was called Hang Meas, a TV station with their own production and post facilities. They have Sony F55 cameras, Premiere Pro for editing, Flame for VFX and DaVinci Resolve, including BMD panels for grading.
The Resolve was running off a MacPro feeding a Flanders Scientific CM250 monitor.
My job was to mentor their 2 main colorists, plus their support team of editors and junior colorists.
Day 1
We started with some routine color training (color space, scopes, Log grading, curves). The team at Hang Meas had a good handle on the software but were mainly self-taught via other software and Youtube videos. I was pleased to hear that they had enjoyed my online FXPHD classes and had paid for them!
I rounded off my day with a trip to the Riverside area. Cheap 0.75USc beer, if only someone would take my $100US note! Facebook story here.
Day 2
Having spent the first day going over the software using my footage, (what I call nuts and bolts training) I wanted the second day to be about the F55 and their workflows.
I am a big fan of getting the balance of the picture right first. Too many students want to dive into secondaries, tracking and softening. Get the balance right and you might not need to do any of those things. Sometimes this means using a mixture of RAW controls and Resolve tools to achieve this balance.
We pulled a bank commercial and a music video, looking at the pros and cons of grading RAW v S-Log XAVC. It was refreshing to see Hang Meas had really bought into grading RAW and were keen on investigating all options in the camera metadata tab. We also tried the DIY grade v LUT approach and each time we felt the primary balance was a little better coming from the RAW when the colorist had controlled the process.
The final part of the session was based on my two day ‘Looks and Matching’ class where we concentrated on creating something funky. This is something junior graders find very hard. Some of the initial questions were: Where do you start? How do you know it looks good? How may looks are too many for a client?
Music videos are a great place to experiment with looks, but as I explained, creating them was the easy bit and matching them was the hard part!
I think my visit really helped with the confidence of the team, they are making good pictures but need more experience.
We rounded off the weekend at a karaoke bar with a few bottles of the local brew Angkor. (not enough to get me on stage singing)
A great weekend, thanks Hang Meas for inviting me to Cambodia.
Warren Eagles CSI
Freelance Colorist.
Australia
