We’re excited to announce that the Mastering Color course by instructor Ollie Kenchington is joining the MZed Pro library for unlimited access to members.
Since it was released a year ago, Mastering Color has been a premium purchase only, or bundled together with an MZed Pro Premium membership. It’s also been available for a discount to MZed Pro members. But starting this month, the course is now available in its entirety for all members.
For individuals who would still like to purchase the course, so they can own it for life and be able to download and watch the lessons offline, Mastering Color will still be available for purchase seperate from the MZed Pro membership.
Learning to color grade
Why learn to color grade? Isn’t that a niche job for editors who want to pursue a career as a colorist? That may have been true in the past, but today it’s more widely expected that video producers understand how to work with color.
Most consumer to professional cameras now shoot in LOG picture profiles, and RAW recording is rapidly gaining use as Apple’s ProRes Raw, Blackmagic RAW, and Canon’s Cinema RAW Light are all bringing advanced coloring workflows into everyday video production.
And it’s not only editors who need to understand the essentials of color in filmmaking. Camera operators, event videographers, and even Youtubers are utilizing varying camera setups, requiring them to match color values both during production and in post.
On the one hand, we live in an exciting era where we can mix and match camera bodies and lenses more widely than ever, thanks to the ability to shoot with very flat picture profiles and gamma curves. On the other hand, it’s now expected that everyone in the filmmaking world understands LUTs - or Look Up Tables - gammuts, bitrates, parades, vectorscopes, waveforms, HDR, RAW, and the list goes on.
Mastering Color fills the gap
The lack of advanced color instruction out there is what inspired Ollie Kenchington to produce Mastering Color, on the heels of his first course for MZed, Directing Color.
Although most of us may understand the basics of color in our regular video productions, it’s safe to say that there aren’t many filmmakers who truly understand where all these industry standards come from, why we use the tools we use, and what accuracy is when we talk about color accurate displays.
Lately we’ve also had a lot of misinformation about HDR and RAW, as a result of the industry releasing so many new tools and so quickly, without there being much education to bring along the average consumers.
For these reasons, Mastering Color has been a popular course for filmmakers from a wide background. One reviewer says, “Excellent lessons. Learned more from watching this collection of tutorials than I did in the last two years.”
In their review, Cinema5D also write, “with regards to other offerings on the market right now, this course is incredibly well put together. Ollie Kenchington gets it right, offering just the right level of theory and background knowledge to be effective.”
Color Grading is a mix of accuracy and emotion
Although it can get very sophisticated, color correction and grading is so much more than technical wizardry. In fact, a big part of color grading is pairing color balance and accuracy with intentional feeling that you want expressed from the image. We’re making movies after all, not scientific charts.
Ollie is an established filmmaker who produces a wide range of projects, from commercials, documentaries, to short films and branded content. He knows how different projects demand entirely different workflows, visual looks, and most importantly, intended results. In this course, Ollie is able to define the science of professional color grading, but he can also demonstrate the art of it.
We believe every filmmaker should have an opportunity to watch this course, which is why we offer the first lesson - Grading Suite Setup - completely free for anyone. And now, MZed Pro members can watch the entirety of Mastering Color as part of their annual membership.
If you have any comments or questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Thanks!