I've been editing my short film and I'm hitting a wall with color grading, specifically trying to achieve a cohesive, cinematic look that matches the melancholic tone of the story without making every shot look muddy or overly teal and orange. I understand the basics of primary correction in DaVinci Resolve, but my attempts at creating and applying a custom LUT feel inconsistent across different lighting setups from the shoot. For colorists working on narrative projects, what's your workflow for building a grade from scratch that supports the story? How do you balance creating a distinct look with maintaining natural skin tones, and what are the most common pitfalls when matching shots from different scenes or times of day?
Sounds like a great challenge. A practical workflow I’ve used for narrative projects: (1) pick a reference frame that embodies the look you want and note its exposure, white balance, contrast, and saturation; (2) set your project color space (ACEScct or CinemaRGB) and ensure your footage is transformed consistently; (3) do a base grade on one representative clip, focusing on fundamental exposure, white balance, and a neutral tonal curve; (4) build a separate creative grade in parallel nodes to avoid tampering with the base; (5) clone the base grade across all clips and then do scene-by-scene tweaks; (6) establish a shot-matching workflow using a chosen anchor frame per scene and match the rest to it using lift/gamma/gain, keyframeable curves, and color balance; (7) monitor skin tones with a vectorscope target, ensuring skin hue sits near the skin tone line and luminance stays natural; (8) test on different displays and finalize with a light saturation check so nothing reads muddy on mobile. If you want, I can lay this out as a step-by-step checklist you can print.