How to Win the Internet: Writing for Sketch Comedy

1. Idea Generation & Target Audience: - hello and welcome to how to win the Internet Writing for sketch comedy. - Thank you guys so much for signing up for the class. - It's gonna be a lot of fun. - Obviously, - we're gonna learn how to write a 14 minute comedy sketch. - So let's get started. - So this first units called idea Generation target audience. - Those two concepts may seem like two different things, - but I'll show you how they're actually kind of tied together. - One difficult thing about teaching this class is writing is not necessarily something where - I can give you ideas and you could just take them and apply them to your script. - You know, - the idea generation process, - something that has to do with your own personal experiences in your own creative mind. - And so, - basically, - for this unit, - I will be giving guys kind of exercises that I do to kind of help my brain kick start and - you think of those sketch comedy ideas. - So during this process, - feel free to look at the project steps, - and the additional resource is the additional resource is, - I think will be really helpful. - I've listed about a dozen comedy troupes, - which I really enjoy it, - I think, - have a really seemed to talented funny sketches. - So if you're new to the writing game, - I encourage you to write down a list of about 5 to 10 movies, - TV shows, - videos, - comedy that really resonates with your sense of humor This way. - Once you get that list, - you'll be able to kind of take a step back and see Odo I gravitate towards maybe a dryer - sarcastic sense of humor. - Or do I enjoy slapstick? - It's just a good way to kind of take a step back and see, - You know what comedy you find the funniest, - and it's probably gonna be the kind of comedy that you're gonna want to write. - So another approach I like to take is writing down five topics that I'm passionate about, - things that I passionately love or passionately hate on. - This really kind of allows me to get a sense of a concept that I want to say something - about. - That's one nice things about sketch comedy is that it's a platform that allows people kind - of give their opinions about certain things. - One of my favorite sketch groups is a group called Mitchell and Webb, - and they have this one sketch that's a writer and his agent or producer manager or - something. - And the writer goes in and he gives his concept for the book that he's about to write, - and the producers, - like I really like it really good. - Let's take that and change it into something about Jaws. - Let's just do jaws and throughout the sketch that produces just throwing out these terrible - ideas. - And he's not even listening to the writers actual ideas. - And when you watch this sketch, - it's really funny and you think to yourself, - Oh, - you know, - obviously the writers of the sketch had a bad experience about something, - and that's what they're writing about. - So this Mr Five topics that could be like bigger political ideas that say something. - Or they could just be little things that you've experienced. - It really stuck out to you, - and you want to show the world how ridiculous the situation is. - So another good thing to get in the habit of it's just start Your Day with 3 to 5 comedy - sketches takes 10 to 15 minutes. - It will start your day off on a good note on bits research, - so that's always good and examples of some sketch comedy groups could be found in those - additional Resource Is that was telling about. - So carry a notebook or a smartphone or something with you and write down ideas that you - have as soon as you have them. - Things that you see that are funny. - Write them down immediately. - You will forget if you don't write them down, - especially if it's late at night. - You have that idea you think is genius. - If you don't write it down, - you're going to sleep on it. - Forget it. - And I'm always playing the what if game. - So if something happens to me, - that's kind of funny. - I take that situation. - I say, - OK, - that was interesting. - That happened. - What if it had gone a step further? - What if instead of this, - this had happened instead? - A lot of my ideas are actually thinks that kind of happened in real life, - and I just take them to the next level. - So what I do you have for sketches? - I was at the park during first be with a dog and I through the first being end up in the - bushes. - The dog ran in the bushes and bring it back to me and in my head I thought, - Oh, - there would have been funny had I from the Frisbee in the bushes and the dog comes in there - and it comes back with, - like, - a human arm or something, - you know? - So it's just thes thes, - seemingly tame ideas that happen in real life and just constantly thinking of, - you know, - what is the funniest thing that could happen in that situation that didn't happen and right - that and suddenly sketch. - So, - really, - the most important thing is just having that what if attitude going throughout your day and - seeing these moments that could be taken to the next level? - What if this happens? - What if this person had said this instead and just really analyzing life in that way? - It will really help you generate ideas that are not only funny but things that you really - connect to. - A swell and combining ideas is another option. - Maybe you see a sketch that you really like. - The two main characters take those characters, - change them enough so they're your own, - but based them on someone else. - And then, - you know, - have them go through a different situation. - It's a really good starting point to build a sketch is taking characters from pre existing - things, - and I'm not saying steal them. - I'm saying, - you know, - take something that exists already and tweak them so they are your own, - but they're very similar to something else, - So this unit was called a degeneration and Target audience. - Now we're getting to the target audience part. - So Target audience is an interesting thing, - because oftentimes it ties in with the actual concept that you're trying to do. - If you're some marketing professional brand ambassador or something, - you're probably taking this class because you want to know how you can write a comedy - sketch that will be good for your product or business. - So knowing your target audience really helps, - one thing that's really strategic is going through your friends and just kind of seeing who - of your close friends air plugged into which communities. - I'm currently working on a sketch series right now, - and my cousin is plugged into the soccer community, - so it would be smart for me to do some kind of sketch on soccer, - so you get the idea, - you know, - if you know someone that's plugged into a powerful community on the Web. - It's really strategic, - too. - Do something that kind of cater to their likes. - And maybe you're working on a sketch that you don't really know the target audience as well - . - You know, - find a friend that you do know is very plugged into that community and just pick his brain - for an afternoon. - His insight will help you land those jokes that you don't really necessarily know would hit - or not. - So that's why I come up with my ideas before you guys go into the next unit. - Why don't you go ahead and take a few days, - go through life without what if mentality. - You know, - start each morning with a few comedy sketches and eventually write down what you want. - Your 14 minute comedy sketch to B and B detailed. - Don't just give me a one since description tell me a little bit about the characters and - kind of the world that we're living in and what you want to say with the sketch, - as well as the actual concept of sketch. - So if you guys enjoy the first lesson, - have that idea ready for next class and I'll see you then 2. Script Format: - All right. - So you spend a few days, - you watch some comedy sketches and now you've come up with your very own idea. - If your comedy sketch and to make your comedy sketch into a reality, - we gotta put into a script. - So this unit, - we're gonna cover script format, - and the additional resource is Page. - I've included a link to a free screenwriting software called Celtics Celtics is one of - those free software Is that just in no way should be free. - It does a lot of things, - and it works. - Justus well is the $250 counterpart final draft, - So let's jump right into it. - Back in the day, - people used to use the phrase fade in at the very beginning of their sketch. - That was for film and television. - And for those I still start my scripts with fate. - And but for a comedy sketch, - it's just 2 to 3 minutes. - There are no fate ends in the Web. - You just jump into it and you're there. - So we start with a scene heading or is the industry people call it the slugline? - There's three components of a slugline. - The 1st 1 is interior or exterior. - You can also use an i slash ET to represent kind of. - Both things get tricky if you're driving in a car standing in a doorway. - The second part is the actual location, - bedroom, - apartment, - park, - restaurant bar. - You know, - where are you? - And the third component is day or night. - Some people get fancy with evening and morning. - Just stick to day or night unless the sun is setting. - And that's important to the scene. - We don't really need to know specifics, - and the scene headings are always in all caps, - and Celtics should automatically format that for you. - So after the scene heading is the action. - Action is not in all caps in action should always be in the active tense. - Instead of saying John is walking to the store, - you would say John walks to the store. - It is a little knowing at first to try to put everything in the active tents, - but it is how the professional world works. - So if you're wanting to learn how to properly write scripts, - you should learn how to always put things in the active format. - So in the first bit of action, - you would introduce kind of what the location looks like. - Possibly, - if it's important and you would introduce the characters characters names upon, - their first introduction will be in all caps. - You would say something like Benjamin, - 15 and kind of scrawny, - calls his friend on the phone with sketches. - You don't have to be to in depth here, - feature films or television. - The action would be a little bit more in depth, - but sketches air so in and out, - and we don't really need to set up the world because we're probably not gonna have a lot of - money on production design. - It's probably just gonna be a found location. - You don't really need to spend a lot of time setting up the location unless there is - something that's important to your story. - So then, - after your action, - when the character talks, - you see their name and then their dialogue, - which is kind of condensed in a smaller form in the middle of the page. - So you may need to go to the top to change the type of texture about type. - If transitions are important, - you can put in transitions as well. - If they're not included, - we assume that we're just gonna cut from one location to the next. - You could possibly do, - you know, - fade to another scene, - fade to black, - fade in transitions really aren't that important. - But if for whatever reason, - maybe there's a scene where someone you know punches the camera and it cuts to black. - That's kind of important transition, - so that would need to be included. - And transitions are in all caps, - and they're in the bottom right hand part of the scene. - So, - honestly, - that's the basics. - Those things that I've just told you are the fundamentals of writing a script. - There are a few additional things which are covered really quickly. - If the characters talking and voiceover, - you would put a V O next to their name. - If the character is talking from off screen, - you would put an OS or possibly O C for off camera. - If you want to designate a specific shot, - it looks like it's in the same place as action, - but it's in all caps. - Typically, - you don't include those type of things because that's more for the cinematographer. - If you are working on a bigger thing, - but since you're possibly shooting your own script, - it's good to include those just so you can remind yourself later down the line and make - sure to fill out your title pages. - Well, - that's something that I typically forget. - And when you save it as a PdF, - then you come up with this page that just kind of has placeholders, - and it doesn't look good at all, - so it's pretty much it. - One important thing to note is that typically one page of script is equal to one minute of - screen time. - Now this is for movies and television with a lot more action there. - So scripts that are heavier on the dialogue tended run shorter. - So maybe a page of dialogue is only 30 to 45 seconds, - whereas a page of action would be about a minute half. - When you have a nice balance between the two, - it's about a minute per page. - So these 1 to 4 minute comedy sketches should really be no more than six pages. - Absolute maximum chances are they will be between 3 4.5 pages. - So before you start writing, - it's always good to write out a character list, - a brief description of all the characters in your sketch, - who they are, - where they're coming from. - And even why putting these characters together would cause friction and comedy and why this - is a funny dynamic toe have as people within a scene. - So once you've downloaded the software and played around with it for a few hours and - written out your character list, - the next step before we go to the next lesson is to write a sample page of your script. - Don't worry too much about content, - since we haven't talked about how sketches or structured yet will probably redo a lot of - the writing. - But this is just an exercise to kind of figure out exactly how scripts work and how they - look. - So that's it for this unit. - The next you know, - it's actually going to be the most media of all these units. - It's the one we will actually cover sketch, - format and structure and theory so that one will be a little longer. - But I hope you guys are enjoying it so far, - and I'll see you next time 3. Writing the Comedy Sketch: All right. So you've got your concept for your sketch. You've written on a page. Now we're gonna jump into how to write a sketch. So keep in mind that I'm teaching You guys had a right traditional sketches. I'm not teaching you how to write surrealist or absurdist sketches and those air completely different beast s. So I'll include some examples of those. Those could be really, really funny. But the weighted teach those is such a different style that we're not gonna be covering those in this class sketch structures. Interesting because it actually kind of emulates feature film structure accepted a very small capacity. So at the very beginning, you have your set up. This is the 1st 10 to 15 seconds of your sketch. You're just kind of learning the world. You're learning the characters, You just getting settled in business as usual. Nothing's happened yet. And then about 2nd 15 there's the turn. The turn is when the actual concept with sketches introduced. So one of my favorite sketches is this dinner party sketch where the 1st 10 15 seconds. This guy walked to the door. He's dressed real nice. He just make some small talk and that about 2nd 15 he says, Man parking was a nightmare, but it wasn't exactly brain surgery I should know. And then from that point on, you realize that this man is a very proud brain surgeon who always tries to bring it up in every conversation possible on. That's what the sketches about and in the middle part of the sketch, where the build is actually the most difficult part of this sketch. There's nothing more frustrating than a sketch that's just joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. And then we're out. We haven't built upon anything. We haven't said anything. We've just said that funny lines and wrapped, um, good sketches, one that each joke builds upon itself. Each joke is funnier than last, and each joke introduces some kind of new approach. Some really good sketches at an act breaks in the middle of this build where they add a new character or the scene turns a bit something where it's not just a scene that's 15 versions of the same joke before the sketches over, and then the sketch should end in some kind of punch. The punch of something that's the best joke we've seen so far. It's a different type of joke that maybe flips the sketch on its head or some kind of call back to an earlier joke or something that really kind of nicely wraps up the sketch and let the audience know, Hey, we're done. You know, some people get Saturday Night Live a hard time about the ending of their sketches because they start to sketch, they have a good turn. They have a good bill joke after joke gets better and better. But then they end in some kind of dance party, and it's like, Hey, that didn't really put any kind of cap on this sketch. You just let us exit. So especially if the sketch has been really good the whole time and has been building the whole time. If this punch isn't strong, if this punch doesn't say something great, then the audience is gonna feel really cheated. And then the final part of the sketches the button the button is optional. It usually comes after some type of branding or credits or something like that, and it exists at the end of the sketch, and it's It's typically a joke, which didn't really fit in the body of the sketch, but it's still a really funny joke that the director would like to be included. So they put at the very end just so they can include it. And the interesting thing about the button is that it doesn't necessarily need to chronologically work at the end of the sketch. It could even be a joke that was introduced at the beginning of the sketch. It could be like a separate scene with same character. It could be some kind of flashback. There's really no rules to the button of the sketch, just something that ends on a great note. So today's comedy sketches are typically between 45 seconds and 3.5 minutes. 10 years ago they used to be a lot longer, but our attention span and shrunk and shrunk and shrunk that in five years from now I have no idea what's gonna be. Maybe we're just all gonna be making 12th movies. Soas faras characters go common sketches typically only have two characters. They can have more, but you typically see two characters who are very opposite in nature. You know, the classic example is you have the straight man versus the loose can the guy who wants to play by all the rules and the guy who doesn't want to play by any rules? And the reason that you see opposites and comedy so much is that opposites cause friction and friction allows opportunity for comedy. But one thing to note is that if your characters are just the archetypes of straight man, loose cannon, it's not anything new. It's it's It's something that we've seen before, so there's no reason to see it again. One thing that I heard one time that I really like is that in all your characters minds, they're all the straight man in every action they do is justified. Everything they do is justified. But maybe two other people, they're kind of loosen outrageous, you know? Think of Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld. He's is kind of outrageous, loose cannon guy. But in his mind, everything he's doing is appropriate, you know, so each character should have elements of the straight man and the loose cannon. So maybe one of your characters seems like the straight man, but he's actually afraid of babies or something. So so something Where the two personalities that we've seen 1000 times before. You got to give some kind of variation on that, you know, And maybe your characters aren't opposites. Maybe your characters are almost identical, but the people they come in interaction with our opposite of them think of something like dumb and Dumber. Both those characters are hilariously stupid, and they're very similar. But everyone they come in contact with is the straight man. So one thing that I like to do already in Comedy Sketch is to not right set in stone dialogue. My scripts are very loose, and I allow my actors improv, which allows for very natural organic reactions. So a lot of times I do something called a beat sheet instead of a script. A B sheet is basically like a bullet point outline that has situations, has maybe some quotes for jokes, but it's very loose and still allows a lot of leeway for the actors, Toe added in their own things. One benefit of this is that when people watch your sketch, they think you're actors air super talented when in actuality, even if you have talented actors because it's loose and organic like that all the reactions Air Natural. So it's not them acting really well. It's them just being normal. So the beach sheet approached something that's really helpful, and I know in this class we're writing a script. But to do both the script and beat sheet gives you a really good grasp on what your content is, and it allows you leeway to kind of go off the page, have stuff that's a lot more natural and just organically funny, because chances are you won't be working with professional actors. Chances are you might be working with some friends. So if you know that your friends are acting and that they're not the most talented actors in the world, this is a good method to kind of get the best performance out of your actors. Another strategy I like to do is I like to write for my friends. This may sound like a short cut, but if you know that one of your friends is really kind of crazy and outrageous, then write a really crazy and outrageous part and see if your friend can play, you know, at least get him to audition for it, you know, or maybe you know that one of your friends is really uptight and stuffy. So you write a part that's really uptight and stuffy and try to get your friends audition for it. So this isn't as much cutting corners as it is using. The resource is that you have available. Another important thing with sketches is to always remember the funny, Um, every time you write a joke, that's really hilarious. It's funny the 1st 2 to 3 times you hear it. But then, after that, it's just repeating words. So always trying to really remember how funny the inception of an idea. Waas is always good when you're, you know, weeks down the line when you've been looking at the script 100 times, when you've already shot it and you're editing it and you think yourself. Is this even funny anymore? It's always good to look back on the moment when the joke was introduced and remember how hard you laughed at it. So what? You have your idea that you love and you're about to write the script, and we think that this is the most original idea ever. Go ahead and Google it because it's always good to see if that idea is already out there. Um, there's a good chance that it is. So if that idea already is out there, watch the version that is out there and make sure that your version is very different than that. It's okay to do a sketch that's been done before, as long as it's not like a super popular, iconic sketch. Um, but make sure that your you have your own take on it. Make sure you're not just stealing someone else's idea. Make sure that you're coming at it in a new light. So for this unit, let's go ahead and actually write out of beach sheet. Let's go ahead and do that for our scripts. We're gonna make a script version of this anyway, but the B sheets something good where you can see the whole sketch. On one page, you can see the bullet points. You can see the moments, and it really kind of helps you shape the script. So after finishing watching this unit, we're gonna write the first draft. We have our character lists, we have outlines. We have our ideas. We have everything in place. Now we just need to go for it. And once we finish that draft, go ahead and compare it with the character list that we wrote in the last unit. Putting the two together and seeing how similar they are is going to allow you to know if you've kind of hit the mark. And even if the script is very different than the character outline, that's totally okay. There's no law that says that you need to stick to the character outline unless this sketch is a part of some bigger Siri's. If the characters were already established, you can't go changing the characters, sexily instance, in which the character list and the script really need to match. So once you finish the rough draft, sent it out with some friends, send it out to some fellow classmates were gonna get feedback. And over the next you know, we're gonna talk about feedback. Talk about the way in which we should receive feedback and the whole reread process so it would look on the first draft. Good luck on getting feedback from all your friends, and I'll see you next class 4. How to Create Likeable Characters: You could have spent the past six months of your life writing the best screenplay you've ever written. It can have these twists and turns to get tug at all the heartstrings, they could do everything right? But if the audience doesn't care about your characters, none of it matters. We live in a time of infinite entertainment possibilities. And if you don't hook the audience within the first 10 or 15 minutes, they're just going to go about their day. So today we're just going to talk about the character introduction, quick interaction, that's a microcosm for your entire characters essence. We'll go over many different proven techniques that professional writers use to create instant empathy between an audience and their characters will cover humor, intrigue, resiliency, and a dozen other character traits that establish immediate character likability. And then from there we're going to look at a case study of Martin fly. In fact, the future. We're really going to dissect how the filmmakers used these techniques to make us fall in love with Marty. And just a few quick minutes. So that's what I want to dive into today and pick apart. So let's jump into it. 5. Feedback & Rewrites: - So congratulations. - You've written your first draft. - You have sent it out to some friends. - You've gotten some feedback. - Now you have a list of all these notes. - You think your scripts terrible. - I'm gonna tell you what to do. - So, - first off, - compile your feedback into kind of one long document. - It's a tedious process, - but it is really helpful. - This will allow you to see which comments you've received the most. - If three different people have all told you that one line of dialogue is kind of confusing - , - chances are that line dialogue is confusing. - So compiling your feedback really kind of help you see the frequency with which you have - been receiving your notes. - So one important thing to note is that it's very easy to get defensive during the feedback - process. - People are telling you what's wrong with something that you just made. - One thing that's very important is don't fight feedback. - Just listen. - Just sit and listen. - Just read. - Don't. - If you're getting the feedback in person, - don't try to stop them every 10 seconds, - say, - but I was trying to do this. - But don't you see that I did this? - Just just let it all sink in. - It's important to note that there's truth in every bit of feedback. - A lot of times the feedback is indicative of a symptom of a problem and not necessarily - addressing the right problem. - Someone could tell me, - Oh, - this. - This part of the scene feels really slow when in actuality, - maybe the scene before it just went by too fast. - So there's always truth in feedback. - But trying to decipher what that truth is and where it's coming from is really the trick to - receive feedback, - never prefaced your feedback, - never sinned your script to someone and say, - Here's my script. - But keep in mind that this character is going to be changed and I don't know about the - ending and this might be bad. - Just give it to them. - If they come back with that feedback, - then you then that supports your theory of Yes, - that needs to be changed. - But if they don't comment on it, - maybe it's not a big of an issue as you think it is. - So wait until you received all the feedback from the person before you present them with - questions, - get all the feedback first and then ask them questions like, - did you think the payoff was strong enough? - Do you think the characters clashed enough? - But never give them that at the beginning? - Because that's gonna put an idea in their head that that's already there. - It's really the key to feedback is you just don't want to buy someone's opinion. - You want to get all the information, - you want away all the information, - and you want to see it for what it is. - You don't want a place of your ideas in their head more than just what's on the page. - So for a final project, - we're gonna upload the script. - For those of you who have background in production, - feel Frito, - actually shoot the thing, - feel free to upload it to YouTube and send the link. - I'm not totally sure of skill share right now allows for Pdf's. - So what we're gonna do is we're gonna upload a pdf of our scripts. - We're gonna upload to Google Drive or Dropbox or something online where you can let your - script live there on. - Then we'll link to that uploaded file. - So thank you guys so much for taking the class. - I've really enjoyed teaching, - and I really hope you've gotten something out of it. - I do teach a couple other classes as well. - I'm looking into teaching some production classes. - So if you guys have a script that you really enjoy, - that you want to shoot as well, - Please look into those production classes and, - um yeah, - thank you guys again for signing up. - I hope this has been beneficial experience. - Please leave feedback. - And I'm looking forward to reading all the scripts. - So So you guys soon? 6. BONUS LESSONS: Color Grading Preview: 7. BONUS LESSONS: Color Correction Prep: okay, today we're learning about color correction and it's important to note that color correction happens at the end of your process. So you've gone out. You film your footage, you've edited everything. And now at the end, you're doing color correction. We do this at the end because if you were to do color correction before you start editing, you would have to color correct every clip that you bring in every part of every clip. And when it comes editing, you really only using 10 to 15% of your footage, right? So because of that, you only do it at the end. So you're Onley color, correcting the part that you need to. So you're saving yourself a lot of time and possibly a lot of money. So today we're gonna be using a adobe premiere and the concept that we're learning today our basic universal concepts. So even if you're on final cut pro or DaVinci resolve or anything like that, we're only learning about color correction theory today. So the tools that we're using are very basic and universal, and you should be able to use any software while you're doing this eso today we're going to take footage that looks like this, and we're going to turn it into something that looks a little bit more like this. So again, we're just doing color correction. We're not doing any fancy color grades or styles or filters or anything like that. That's for a later lesson. But today we're just going from kind of a bland, boring, de saturated image to something that looks nice here. So one thing that I like to do before I start also is I like to set my background of my desktop to this neutral gray. You can just search on Google neutral gray color correction card or something like that, and you'll be able to find something like this comes up now. What I like about this is you actually see what's true white. What's true black so you can get your colors adjusted accordingly. And you know professional colors actually have their entire color. Corrections studios painted this neutral gray so that they can see if if if colors have deviated from where they're supposed to be, So with color correction, you do use some some scopes and charts and things like that, but you're also using your eye. It's kind of a balance between the two. So I have my footage. I've set this as my background on and I'm about ready to get started. So what? Adobe premiere. Quick Little thing about the software. And then we're gonna dump, jump into concepts. Um, if you click on this color tab up top, Ah, you are able to easily have everything right in front of you and also on the left. I like to look at the scopes as well as my image, so I can kind of come at it from from all sides there. So I'm going to erase what I have done already, and we will get started with something new. So, uh, before I start color correcting, I like to think of factors that may have, um ah, adjusted things in my image. So when I went out and film this, it was overcast. And so that means with overcast days, your image is gonna be a little less saturated, and it's gonna have a little less contrast. So I know that those things might have been adjusted. And I also know that I filmed this using an indie filter. An indie filter allows you to set your camera to settings that you get this really nice, blurred background. However, sometimes it adds a little bit of green tent to the image. So I'm going to assume that we're gonna have toe at a little bit magenta to compensate for that on then. Finally, the lens that I used sometimes films a little cooler than other lenses. So we might have to warm it up a little bit. Um, and then another thing. With overcast days, it is typically difficult to get the color correction correct on overcast days so I could see my, um, color correction here between daylight are blue and orange. Basically, I could see that having to be adjusted. But when I look at the image, it doesn't look terribly off. One thing that was nice. I own one of these cards here that about on Amazon for maybe 10 bucks. Don't feel the need to splurge on the $100.150 dollar versions of these. This card is is really just a good It's just printed on cheap card stock, but has all the proper colors. So, like using that a lot. Ah, and so I Typically, when I get to set, I will do something like this. I'll take a quick video of this so I'm able to get proper colors. And because of that, Adobe has this nice little eyedropper. So you can actually click on the proper white, and it will adjust accordingly. Ah, but before we jump right into that, I want to talk about thes the vector scope here in the history ram here, Um, just let you know what both of these charts me because they're both really important. So this one here is about the chroma and the saturation. And so you see red, magenta blue, so angry and yellow. So it's it's kind of a wheel here of the color and then the further out the the white pieces go, the higher the saturation ad saturation spreads out. When I decrease saturation to black and white, there's nothing there. So, um, one thing to know also, this little circle in the middle is typically seen as like maximum saturation. You don't want anything to get outside of this circle. That's not to say that the pieces need to touch the circle. They just shouldn't go above the circle there Also, one thing that's very important is this line right here. This is this skin tone line, So typically you want your skin tone tow line up against here. And the really interesting thing is, is no matter the ethnicity of the subject. Caucasian, African American, Latino agent, anything like that. It's really supposed to be mostly on the same skin tone line. The saturation and brightness are different, but the actual Hugh itself is very a similar, regardless of the ethnicity of the person, which is really interesting. Now this line here is opposite skin tone, and so what? That's just basically helping you to do. You know, when you think of Hollywood movies, a lot of the the the color palettes air like this orange and teal right And and that's because these are, um, these colors are opposite on the color wheel, their complementary. And so because of that, it's It's really easy to grade an image that has a lot of cool colors as clothes and furniture pieces and things like that. So if you can't help but it's actually really nice to have cool parts of your image leaves , you know, whatever cool partner image Reverse from the skin tone. Even if it's you know, a green or a blue doesn't have to be directly along this line. It's still gonna be a lot easier to color, great and make interesting later on. Once you start adding or in warm colors such as yellow, red or magenta, it's actually pretty difficult to make an image look really interesting. And this actually takes kind of amore expert, uh, color grader to make something interesting there. So a quick and easy cheap fixes at a lot of cool things to your image opposite the skin tone. It's always gonna look pretty nice. And this history and right here is basically a chart of the brightness of the image. So and it's from left to right. So left to right is the same as left of my image to right of my image here, Um, so you can see this right here. Is this wall right here kind of medium exposed? So what this does is you want your brightest parts, your image to be up here if you're seeing sky especially, and you what? Your darkest parts, your image to be down here. So you're saying this only goes up to about 95. This only goes about 2 10 So that is in step with with with with what I was saying about the contrast of the image, Um, not being super high because of the overcast day here. So that's brief overview of these scopes. Now we will be using our eye and looking at the's just depending on what we're adjusting. So with all that being said, we're now ready to jump into color correction, so 8. BONUS LESSONS: Color Correction Workshop: we're gonna start off by the eyedropper for the white balance. And what we will do here is we will click on the white on this card right here. And actually, I'm gonna reset to make sure everything is good. And we're going to do the eyedropper. We're going to do the eyedropper here, and you see it is 0.8 and 3.6. Now, this looks very good. Any time these numbers are less than five or less than the absolute value. Five, they could be negative as well, but less than five. Um, that means you are very close. And that's typically what you want to see. Sometimes they'll be less than 10 and that's okay. But typically these air large numbers. You've either messed something up or it was shot under strange conditions. Like if you'll see if I use the white balance. If I try to tell Adobe that that this this is white, I click on it and now suddenly have added 112 and 30. And so it's all over the place. Right? Um so I just want use eyedropper on the white part right here. Now, like I said, this this sometimes does get it wrong, so you might have to adjust things after use the eyedropper. Um, but worked for me on this one s. Oh, that's great. So now I know it's 00.8 towards orange and 3.6 towards Magenta. And this lines up with what I was saying about the indie filter and the lens sometimes being cool. So now I'm going to go to my actual clip and just real quick start off. This was 0.8, and this was 3.6. So now, in theory, this color is looking really good. And so I like to go just kind of down the line and see what I can do. The exposure right now, Um, there's not anything grossly overexposed or under exposed in the skin tones. I'm gonna leave that be, um, one thing that is important note is I put so much focus on the skin tone. That's really where people should be looking on. 95% of any kind of footage that you take that does have does have people in it. So that being said, if certain things were overexposed or technically improper, as long as these skin tone looks good. That's really what you want to be doing. So not gonna just the exposure. For now, I'm gonna add the contrast and you'll see that thes lines will go up. These lines will go down. And when you add contrast actually ad saturation. So this will spread out a little bit. Um, one thing to know that the conditions that this was shot and because it was overcast, um, I can probably at a lot of contrast without having to add saturation. So that's maximum right there. This is minimum. You don't want that. You typically want to be adding contrast. What I'm looking for right now is I'm looking to make sure that I still have detail in the skin tone because sometimes in the bright areas of the skin, you will lose detail special on sunny days, and I'm making sure that the dark parts of the hair still have some texture in there as well. So it looks like on this image, I'm up to about 50 something. So this looks this looks good. For now, color correction is a little bit of a dance. Sometimes I will have to affect one thing, and then go back or or affect something else. So but for now, this contrast looks good. This went up a little bit. This went down just a little bit. So highlights you typically bring down on an image. And what you're really looking for in highlights most of the time is the brightest part of the face is sometimes over exposed. Now, this was nice and overcast, so I'm still getting a lot of detail here, which is great, but I'm going to drop down the highlights just to about there. So this is really settle. Um, but you can see this looks gross. This now it does look like we may want to bring everything up, but for now, we're not quite there yet, so Yeah, something like there for the highlights is good. Now, with shadows with still photos, actually usually add value to the shadows. But with video, it looks a little better to lower now. So there's all the way we lost a lot of detail here is bringing it up. Looks kind of washed out in milky. So what I'm looking for here is the detail in the beard especially, and some of the hair. So somewhere around here, I'm still getting adding to the contrast, but I'm still being able to see all the dark spots. And again, I'm really just focusing on the subject. I need to be aware of other things in the frame that they don't look awful. Um, but I'm really just look at the subject for all this. Now that I brought this shadows down, I think I can actually brighten things up a little bit. So here's all the way. That's two months, years down. Whatever, Um, I think I can, actually, you know, with this overcast day, it's really nice. I can actually add a lot of exposure overall and still have detail in all the skin tone, which is really nice. That's it doesn't typically happen with with everything that you're doing. So that's nice. Just little point for boost because that I was going to raise the whites up a little bit. Um, but because I've done the exposure probably won't go too high. I really want thes these white points just Onley kiss the 100. If if that so this will be very subtle. I mean something just like three or four. And I look at the image. I'm still getting detail. It's fine. So image still looks good, but for the whites and blacks, I look a lot of thes these graphs here. So the blacks I want to go all the way down and just kiss that bottom there. Something like that looks fine. I look at my image. Have I lost anything in the beard? Maybe a little bit. So I'm gonna play with these shadows again. Yeah, I think I'm gonna bring them shows just a little bit. So something like that looks great. So we still have detail in the dark parts we still detail in the bright parts. That's great. Now let's look at the saturation. I'm gonna lower this down so I can kind of see the spread here of of my image. And, um, I go all the way saturated. That looks bad on here's black and white. Um, so when I go till I think it might be in a good place, there's a nice rule of a lot of creative design. Things just called the rule of haves. So when I add something that starts to look okay, I just want to cut it in half, and that's the better, more subtle version. So this was at 100 and I put it 100 40. That that right now, my I thinks maybe it's OK seeing this. This grayscale is really nice, because this this realizes how, you know, maybe overexposed part of this are over saturated part. This is I'm just gonna put it almost in half. Not quite half, but maybe here when 27 or so. That's actually looking pretty nice. Um, we have detail in all parts of the face. This part is a little over exposed. But you know what? It doesn't matter cause it's not the main part of the subjects is not distracting. Um, and so that's looking pretty good. Um, this was just color correction. This wasn't any sort of creative, um, filter, anything like that. But if I want to see what we've actually done, you know, it may not look like we've done a ton because we did it step by step. But if we toggle on the effect, here's the effect on. And this is what we started with. That's a whole lot of difference. Yeah, that's day and night. That's really nice. So we've just kind of corrected the image into something that's that's nice and standard, and we haven't really added any kind of color style or anything like that to our image. So that's for a later, um, later tutorial, but that's that's color correction. In a nutshell. Um, Premier has this this creative tab also where you can add some nice lutz. It has you can add vignette and what's nice about Premier? It actually has a A. When you go up, it brightens Devyn yet, So if you have a lens that has a built in bad vignette, you can you can actually counteracted here, which is really nice. Ah, this secondary. You can isolate certain colors color wheel. You can start playing with color relations and things like that. So there's a whole whole deep world here, man. I love the Cursed have is really nice. You can you can. All this is kind of in in depth stuff, but you can play with specific color saturation. You can change specific colors to look different and brighten him up in dark in, um, so this tab, I like a whole lot, but there's a ton here. It's definitely worth looking into. One thing that's fun about, um any any color correction is you can add Lutz, which are look up tables is the term, But really just think of them as instagram filters and things like that. So you could do some subtle ones. Um, let's see what I have pulled up right here. Uh, vintage urban fashion. So that will give it a nice Okay, Now, suddenly were We've given it a very distinct look, and you can actually add the intensity so I could do something like that. That actually looks pretty nice. That with some of the saturation, maybe. Um, so now I've given it kind of a look and style feels a little bit more vintage e Ah. And so you could do a whole lot with this creative tab and adding those lutz, which is great. Ah, but that is co creation in a nutshell. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Stay tuned for the next lesson and talk to you, then 9. BONUS LESSONS: Color Grading LUT Workflow: - All right, So this is a lesson on let's and how to use lots in Adobe Premiere. Ah, Lut L u t stands for look up table, which doesn't really mean a whole lot this day and age, but basically think of it as, like an instagram filter or a way to achieve a Hollywood movie. Look, eso, um, when we watch movies, it's interesting to see that's even though we think the image looks fairly natural if we are to take a screenshot taken. A few screenshots of this is of skyfall. We look at screen shots and we can actually tell while this image there's a whole lot of blue until it's really cold. Um, and we look at scenes like maybe, ah, see this scene right here. While this is like an intimate dinner scene, uh, clandestine meeting kind of thing because you can see the whole images really orange really yellow, really read really warm, whereas these other scenes seem natural. But ah, as you can see, we're only really seeing, uh, some some tans, some science here. So everything that is done in movies you can see we don't see any red, any purple, anything like that. A lot of it is in production design, Yes, but after the fact, actually go in and change the color as well. So this image, we might think, is natural when we're watching the movie in the theater. But as you can see, we see skin tone and pretty much everything else is green, even when this car's probably black in real life. So as you can see, um, color grading does a whole lot for your story, and different genres will have different types of color that go along with them. This is images from assassination of Jesse James. You can see everything is kind of we're seeing a lot of Tan's. Even this. We're really only seeing a monochromatic image here. So different movies have different looks and styles, and so that being said, I'm going to go over some Let's that I've been working on in the past few weeks that I think turned out pretty well, So I divided them up into basically into different locations indoors and outdoors, city nature, but also different styles as well. So that's kind of how how I did a lot of people approach there. Let's just from a trying to make a cool image. But I wanted to approach it from a very practical standpoint. Basically saying, OK, I know this was shot in the desert. This will look cool. I know this was Shot and snow. I know this was shot in an urban city environment indoors, etcetera. So I approached it from a very practical standpoint, which allows you to get kind of the most out of it. So I divided up here on my premier timeline Hollywood moods, but also outdoors indoors. So just kind of want to go through these and show you guys how to, um, put Lutz on an image. Now, one thing that's important to note is that all of these clips are from stock photos or stock video sites. And so because of that, they've already done the basic correction. And I try to find clips that were basically on. Lee used basic correction and didn't add any additional style or look or anything like this . So most of these air pretty true to the colors that were on set. So that being said, let's jump in. So I selected these. I think these would be good style a Hollywood style. The Hollywood is heavily saturated. You see a lot of skin tones, and then everything else is a very cool color. One thing to note when when you're doing your lutz, any image that has the least amount of colors is going to give you. Ah typically give you the best results for using Lutz. So as you can see in this image, we're seeing blue. We're seeing skin tone. I guess there's a little bit of pink in this shirt, but it's heavily saturated, So really, we're not seeing a ton of colors. Same with this image. We're seeing black and white skin tone. Um, here we're seeing blue and skin tone. That's pretty much it. So anything that has, the less colors, the better. For Lutz, anything that has is vibrant like this. I typically like to dio with some of my fashion Lunts, which looked really good with a lot of different colors going on. But any kind of Hollywood stuff, you want to try to keep it, and this is important for you to note while you're on set, try to keep it the the least amount of colors as you possibly can while filming. All that being said, Let's jump into the lutz. So if this were a clip that we had filmed ourself, we would use the basic correction to make the image correct. And then the creative tab here on Premier is where we style eyes it. So I go to look, um, have a bunch of let's preloaded, but the ones that I created that I really like, I'm going to find here and lots. And so this is a Hollywood style, so we can either go with style were also outdoors. I believe City has some interesting stuff as well, but let's start with, um, this style in the Hollywood orange teal and I like. I used the look that dot look in Premier certain software. She'll use the DOT Cube Premier works best with the dot look. So when I open it up, we see that this is a pretty heavily added image, which again, if we're watching this in a movie theater, we're not thinking twice about how realistic this is. However, if we want, we can adjust the intensity here and with with let's I typically balance the intensity, and the saturation is typically what I'm doing, so maybe you want to go a little less. Let's see. This is nothing. This is twice which is too much. Let's say I want to go a little lasts maybe around 86 or so. And what if I boost the saturation just well, that image If I'm watching that, I'm really not thinking that this is a heavily graded style, even though it definitely is. Um, so some of these looks for more subtle than others. This looks really nice to me. We can toggle this. This is on and this is off. This is on. That's really nice. I'll see what else we got. Um, Cinematic subtle won't see if that does anything for us, it's a very different look. I would even say this is a little bit more of a fashion. Look, with this, I think braiding bringing the fated film bottom might be kind of nice. So this is a nice look as well. And as you can see, these luds minutes really just kind of drag and drop. Let's try some of those outdoor urban. Let's see, urban grand. You should. We'll see if that does anything interesting. Okay, so now we're getting into a different style of movie, right? This, um, maybe a little bit. Maybe there's some kind of horror element. Maybe there's some kind of suspense thriller, that kind of thing. Let's see if we add the intensity it's take away. That's faded. Film. Look, get some saturation. Now that's pretty cool. That's definitely a nice, you know, scary movie. Dramatic kind of thing again. All these air Real Dragon dropped really nice. And like I said, the less amount of colors you have in an image, the more versatile that image is probably gonna be. So let's just go to something else again. This has very few colors, so I'm going to assume that let's see, Hollywood action hero. Does that do anything for us? So here his skin tone is not super Ah, saturated. So this doesn't do as much as I would like. It still does. Still does center it, though, but I do think this might might be a little bit better on that, um, Hollywood orange teal cinematic subtle, Probably Also, yes, this that's a little extreme. Let's see if I bring it down, something like that might look nice. So again, this may seem extreme just by itself, because we know what it was. But if we were in a theater watching this, we wouldn't think twice about it. You know, we can look at some comparison. So correo man, he's a really nice images. Um, I'll see if I get one, try to find one that's very saturated. Something like this. Pretty saturated orange. You know, we're seeing a lot of warm towns here. Um, again, this one because there's not as many colors. This is gonna look nice for sure. Hollywood tea oranges might be boom, and that's a right Hollywood epic Transformers. And again, you know, we can obviously play with the intensity. So that's kind of how the Hollywood ones look heavy contrast. Oh, this might actually be nice. A lot of gray green. I think I'm gonna try that grunge on this one. Let's city urban grunge. Yeah, that looks great. That looks great. So So here's one that is in the Hollywood. Um, but ah, when I did this one earlier, I found a really moody, dramatic one. So, uh, let's see what urban crunch does. Yeah, that's that's not gonna work for us, probably because the prevalence of the greens. But if we release the saturation of the greens, the one that I liked here outdoors nature there was a moody forest one, She's in the forest. Let's do dot Look, she's in the forests were doing moody Forest and Boom. There's something pretty scary and off putting about this. We d saturated, darkened all the leaves, and that looks really creepy and nice. So this would be a great Hollywood horror movie now, Like I said, um, with the fashion one's anyone's that have a lot of colors. I typically like to do these fashion filters. Um, so let's throw on one and see what we get, Um, and the fashion one's air. But the style is mostly Hollywood, so the fashion ones are actually gonna be outdoor city Hollywood action hero. Warm fashion memories, Vintage urban, frustrated vintage urban fashion. See, we get as an interesting look. Yeah, that's really nice. So again, lots of colors in the city. Finnish, German. That looks really nice. Let's try with this warm fashion memories, and this is definitely a heavy filter, something, you know, some kind of instagram something. This is definitely stylized, but this looks really nice as well. So again, very colorful lot going on. Let's try one of these. I was trying vintage urban. See how that goes And that is not going to do it for us. Yeah, that blue really does not work for us. And warm fashion memories. Oh, see, now, that's interesting. Nice, warm. And again, this one, you're definitely going for a look. If you want to make it real subtle, you probably could. But I think this one actually benefits from being pretty extreme and leaning into it that way and see warm fashion memories. Yeah, that's nice. So these air really again, These lets air just drag and drop. Really cool. Um, like this one a lot with the warm fashion memories. Yeah, it's really nice. So it brings up the blacks. Let's see, we'll put on the scopes. We're way up here, but it's really nice. Stylized in the urban fashion. Really like that. So that's the fashion ones and this mood intimate. So this is we go back to any kind of cops here. Um, let's see. We have a Blade Runner. Blade Runner is gonna be crazy of it. So this seems pretty normal again. This is green and skin tone. The least amount of colors the better. But look at these. Look, I warm. These colors are I mean, this is a dystopian thing, but if we were to g o back Teoh any kind of intimate dinner scene and pretty much any movie we're getting this right. It's variations of skin tone. We saw that in the sky. Fall is well, I believe Yeah. So this so I mean, this is really heavy. Just one color, right? So if we're trying to imitate anything like that, um, we have a really nice one on indoors. Moody Room is Yeah. So something like that immediately feels a little bit more like that movie. There was another I did a candle lit one at works on some doesn't work on others here, Um, the colors not quite. Or the brightness is not quite right for it. So, um, anything like this intimate. I mean, these air out of the camera. But if we go to that moody room boom, we're looking at just yellow. That's kind of nice. Now, this will be nice, and it'll warm up the street lights here, in which will be really good. Many Ram, though. Yeah, so that again, we think this is totally natural, but it's very yellow. All the moody filters work best when you have a subject in a very dark background. So what I noticed in this clip is the background is not dark enough. If we were to put that moody room or the candle it, Ah, one on it, I believe everything is gonna be yellow in a kind of bizarre way too romantic candle dinner . This actually this is passable. This is not I don't love it because of how bright the background is. Um, there was one that's really good for intimate stuff with a brighter background. And that's just settle skin push. This is again, it's called. It's called subtle, but you are just trying to make the skin tones pop here is with it on. Here's with it off. As you can tell, the use of it definitely makes you focus on the skin a little bit more. That one's very subtle. Um, what? This should go with something big, and so those are the intimate ones. And then with outdoors outdoors, cool. I'm basically talking about anything with blues or greens in the images. And so something like this. Let's say we wanted to make this match that horror movie that we had talked about earlier. So this is the outdoors nature, and we're gonna go the forced the moody Forest. And while look at that, that's cool. So this is definitely a spooky, scary thing. And what's nice about these lessons, just how easily they are to drag and drop? We're really not having to mess of the intensity or saturation of most of them. One thing that's really nice about, uh, these is some of the travel ones are actually really good. Um, so I like this when you see aerial view of the ocean of the beach here and if we go to this is outdoors nature, we're going to go to Ocean Beach travel and suddenly boom, that that ocean pops a lot more, looks a lot better. We can actually even improve. The intensity of it may be of the saturation, and suddenly this water looks so nice. So this is really good for some travel stuff. We could do the same here with this family. Ocean Beach travel boom seems a lot more tropical doesn't, doesn't it? That's great. So 11 of these filters that I really like is this autumn Push some of these green. Some of these leaves are yellow, but a lot is green If we go to this autumn Autumn boost. Sorry. Autumn boost, filter, Boom. Now everything. Now this is the middle of autumn. All these leaves, even though it's snowing, it looks like all these leaves are now or engine yellow, which is really cool. Yeah. So I bet we could do that with this clip. It might be hard, but we'll see what autumn boost does with this one. So this one Interesting. Yeah. It kills the grass, makes all the leaves. Wow, this is really nice. So this puts anything in the season of autumn. Wow, that's incredible. The difference there. So this is I mean, this is night and day that autumn one is really cool. Um, this is another beach. One outdoors. Yellow. Now look at this one right here. There's actually not a ton of Is there some blue? But it's fairly monochromatic. I think this one would actually do well with one of those fashion filters that we saw. Um, so that was outdoor city Vintage urban fashion. Uh, not that one. Let's see her brand warm fashion memories. That's kind of cool. Yeah, that's a heavy color caste, but it looks really nice. Yeah, that's really cool. Um, again, when there's less colors on the frame ah, you can typically get away with with, um, putting basically any kind of filter on it. Let's weaken tried desert Dusty. Does that do anything for us all puts it together into some nice, more kind of khaki feel, so that's really nice and outdoors. Yellow. We could do a lot here. Um, there's some good like desert ones. Outdoor snow. There's a lot of really good snow. One. Um, I did three different snow. I think snow landscape was the best one there, and suddenly it feels a lot colder there, doesn't it? So we preserve the pops of yellow and red, which is nice. Ah, but but it really cools everything off. Makes you really embrace that snow a little bit more, which is really nice. As you can see, there are a ton of different options, a lot of good work ones as well. But there's a ton of good options here. And these lets Air really designed, so you can kind of really drag and drop almost any of them into an image. So that is, is how you do lots. It's really easy. You definitely want to keep it in the creative tab. Ah, it's real Dragon drop and adjust the intensity and saturation, but that's pretty much it. So for you guys, these let's are on sale. So if you wanna give him a download, feel free to do that. Ah, having broken down into different packages or if you want to get a discount, you can get him all at once. Um, so that's lots in a nutshell.