FXPHD – GRD201 – The Craft of Color Grading

Building upon our successful Craft of Editing series, The Craft of Color Grading looks to explore the world of the colorist and the craft of grading from an application-agnostic approach as much as possible. The lead prof who has helped develop the course is Chicago-based Craig Leffel, who has over 20 years of experience grading the top commercials finished in the city. He'll be helped along the way with some of his friends who are some of the top colorists based in the United States.

The goal of GRD201 is to tap Leffel's and the other colorist's years of experience from both a creative standpoint as well as a practical standpoint. So we'll not only be covering how to make beautiful imagery, but also things such as how to deal with the often-conflicting viewpoints of dealing with divergent views from clients. They'll also be sharing some of their favorite grades they've seen from movies and other projects and critically breaking them down and speaking about why they feel it's top work.

Course members should be comfortable grading in their application of choice. This is not a course designed to teach the operation of software, but instead is about creating great looking imagery. The primary software used by the colorists will be Baselight, but is taught with the goal of showing techniques that can be used in any application.