Chapter 32 — Exercises

Grading is a doing skill, and it is also a seeing skill — half of getting good at color is training your eye to notice looks and diagnose bad ones. These exercises do both. Many need only free software (DaVinci Resolve is the book's reference; any editor with color tools works) and footage you already shot; several need no software at all, just your attention.

Two habits before you start, both specific to color. First, work on a screen you trust as much as you can, and always spot-check a finished grade on a second screen — your eye and your monitor both lie. Second, take breaks. Your eye adapts to a look within a few minutes and stops seeing it, which is why grades drift too strong; the single best grading tool is fresh eyes, so step away and come back.

Exercises are graded by effort and depth:

• ⭐ Warm-up — a few minutes; locks in a concept.
• ⭐⭐ Core — the real practice; do as many as you can.
• ⭐⭐⭐ Stretch — deeper or more ambitious; where the biggest gains are.

Model solutions and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises are in Answers to Selected Exercises at the back of the book. Try each one before reading its answer — a grade you got wrong teaches more than an answer you only read. For the shooting-and-grading items, the "answer" is a rubric of what a strong response shows; the point is the doing.

A. Seeing color (Eye & Ear Training — no software)

These need only your eyes. They train the perception the rest of the chapter depends on. Add each to your Frame Log.

1. ⭐ Name the look. Watch three things you'd never normally think of as "graded" — an ad, a prestige TV episode, a travel vlog. For each, write the look as a short phrase ("cold and steely," "warm gold," "crushed and gritty"), the mood it builds, and the story reason that mood might serve. Self-review: for which of the three could you not find a story reason — and is that look unmotivated, or did you just miss it? (Answer provided.)

2. ⭐ Spot the teal-orange. For one day, count how many trailers, thumbnails, and posters push warm skin against teal shadows. You'll lose count. Then pick the single best-used example and the single worst, and write one sentence on how you can tell them apart. Self-review: does the "worst" one make skin look plastic, and is every frame the same two colors? (Answer provided.)

3. ⭐⭐ Where does your eye go? Pause five well-graded shots that each contain a person. For each, note the first place your eye lands, then hunt for why: is the subject slightly brighter or more saturated than the surround? Is the background subtly darkened? You are reverse-engineering a power window. Self-review: in how many of the five was your attention clearly directed rather than left to chance?

4. ⭐⭐ Find the light. For one full day, whenever a video shows a person's face, pause and ask one question: does anyone look slightly green, orange, or waxy? When you find a face that's "off," name which way it's pushed. Do this ten times. You are building your own vectorscope, and it's the single most valuable reflex a colorist has. (Answer provided.)

5. ⭐⭐⭐ Correction or grade? Pick a film scene and split what you see into two lists: what was probably correction (it just looks right and matched) and what was grading (a deliberate mood). Then find the hardest single shot to categorize and say why the seam is invisible there. The point is to feel the boundary between the two stages you now know are different. (Model provided.)

B. Reading graded sequences (Read the Sequence)

6. ⭐ Picture the pipeline. Re-read FIGURE 32.3 (the grading pipeline). Without looking, redraw it left to right and label each of the five stages with its one-line job. Then, from memory, say which stage you'd toggle off to check that your correction is still clean underneath the look. (Answer provided.)

7. ⭐⭐ Diagnose the look. Re-read FIGURE 32.2 (the Amélie "Watch This"). Name the three things the LESSON says make a bold look work. Then invent a short video brief where a bold look would fail each of the three — one unmotivated, one inconsistent, one that wrecks skin. (Answer provided.)

8. ⭐⭐ Read the café grade. Study FIGURE 32.1 (café corrected vs. graded). List every specific change the grade makes, and next to each write why it's motivated by "a warm place someone loves." Then name the two elements deliberately protected from the warm push and explain what each protection buys the shot. (Answer provided.)

9. ⭐⭐⭐ Write your own signature-grade Described Shot. Choose a film or series with a strong, recognizable look (not one analyzed in this chapter). Write a full seven-field Described Shot of one representative frame, with THE LIGHT and THE EFFECT focused on the grade, and attribute it [after <title>, <year>]. End with a LESSON naming why the look serves the story. Self-review: could a reader picture and roughly re-create the look from your description alone? (Model provided.)

10. ⭐⭐ Read Case Study 1's consistency. In O Brother (Case Study 1), FIGURE CS1.4 shows the look holding after dark. In two sentences, explain why holding a look through night scenes is harder than through day scenes, and what a "lazy" grade does instead. (Answer provided.)

C. Building looks (Grade This)

The heart of the chapter. Grade real footage.

11. ⭐ Correct, then look. Take one clip. First correct it to neutral (Chapter 31): black point, white point, neutralize the cast, skin honest. Then, on a new node or layer, build one simple look (warm or cool). Toggle the look off and on. Self-review: can you feel the difference between "right" and "feels like something" — and did the look land cleanly, or did it expose a correction you hadn't finished? (Guidance provided.)

12. ⭐⭐ One clip, three moods. Take a single corrected clip and grade it three ways on three separate node trees: (a) warm/inviting, (b) cool/tense, (c) desaturated/bleak. Same footage, three feelings. Self-review: which best suits what the clip is actually about, and could you defend that choice in one sentence? (Answer discusses the trade-offs.)

13. ⭐⭐ Build the warm café look. Using the café footage (or any warm interior with a person and a window), reproduce the grade from this chapter, following Case Study 2: warm the image, richen the lamp/practical tones, lift shadows to warm brown, and hold the window and the skin. Constraint: no downloaded LUT — build it by hand so you know what every move does. Self-review: is the room warm and is the face still on the flesh line? (Model walkthrough provided.)

14. ⭐⭐ Name it in a sentence first. Before grading a new clip, write the one-sentence look you're going for, motivated by the content ("premium and trustworthy," "nostalgic and faded"). Grade to it. Then show it to someone and ask only "what did this make you feel?" Self-review: did their felt-word match your sentence? If not, was the look unmotivated or overdone? (Guidance provided.)

15. ⭐⭐⭐ Grade a whole scene for consistency. Take three or more shots from one scene. Correct each individually, then apply one shared look node across all of them. Watch the scene straight through at speed and fix any shot that jumps — on that shot's correction, not by re-doing the look. This is the real job: a look is a piece, not a shot. Self-review: does the scene now play as one continuous world? (Model provided.)

16. ⭐⭐ Amplify, don't impose. Read your clip's scopes first (Chapter 31): which way does the image already lean? Now build a look that amplifies the existing lean rather than fighting it (warm a room that's already warm; cool a scene that's already cool). Self-review: does the grade feel like it "belongs" to the footage more than an imposed color would? (Guidance provided.)

D. Secondaries and skin (Grade This)

17. ⭐ Draw a vignette. On one shot with a subject, add a soft power window (oval/mask) over the subject, brighten inside it a hair, darken outside a hair, and feather the edge wide. Toggle it. Self-review: does it guide your eye to the subject without your being able to see a dark oval? If you can see the oval, feather wider and reduce it. (Guidance provided.)

18. ⭐⭐ Qualify the sky (or a wall). Use a color qualifier to select one region by color — a sky, a green wall, a red object — and adjust only it, feathering until the seam disappears. Then deliberately over-do it until you can see the tell-tale halo. Self-review: what does "too far" look like, exactly, and how soft did the edge need to be to hide it? (Answer provided.)

19. ⭐⭐ Put skin on the scope. Open the vectorscope on a shot of a face and confirm the skin trace points up the flesh-tone line (~11 o'clock). If it leans red or yellow-green, correct it. Then do the same for a second person of a different complexion. Self-review: do both cluster on the same line at different lengths — same angle, different distance? (Model provided.)

20. ⭐⭐ Protect skin under a look. Build a warm look on a shot with a face — strong enough that skin gets dragged toward orange, off the flesh line. Now add a qualifier node that holds the skin on the line while the room stays warm. Toggle it. Self-review: does the shot flip between "a person in a warm room" and "a warm object"? This one move is the chapter. (Model provided.)

21. ⭐⭐⭐ Relight in post. Take a shot with a distracting bright window or a face fallen into shadow. Use a tracked power window to darken the hot area or lift the face, and motivate it in one sentence. Self-review: does the effect stay glued to its target as the subject or frame moves, and can you justify it as "finishing the room's light" rather than fixing a mistake? (Answer provided.)

22. ⭐⭐⭐ The three-secondary discipline. Do the 🎬 On Set assignment from §32.4: on one shot with a person, add exactly three motivated secondaries — an eye-guiding vignette, a skin qualifier, and one relight/fix — and no more, each subtle enough a viewer can't point to it. Toggle all three. Self-review: does the shot get clearer and more focused, or just more obviously colored? If the latter, pull everything back. (Model provided.)

E. Fix the grade (Fix the Shot)

23. ⭐ Fix the one-click LUT. A described clip: someone dropped a "cinematic film-look LUT" straight onto ungraded phone footage; shadows are crushed to black, skin looks orange and plastic. Write the steps to fix it, in order. Self-review: does your first step address the correction the LUT was applied blind over? (Answer provided.)

24. ⭐⭐ Fix the sick skin. A described shot: a warm restaurant grade has left every diner's face pushed toward orange, and on the vectorscope the skin cluster leans off the flesh line toward red. Name the cause and the exact fix that keeps the warm look but saves the skin. Self-review: does your fix protect skin selectively, or does it weaken the whole look? (Answer provided.)

25. ⭐⭐ Fix the inconsistent scene. A described scene: shot 1 is warm and bright, shot 2 is cool and dark, shot 3 is warm and slightly green — a "look" was applied but the shots were never matched first. Name the skipped step and write the correct order of operations to fix it. (Answer provided.)

26. ⭐⭐⭐ Fix the over-graded piece. A described branded video: maxed saturation, shadows slammed to cyan, contrast crushed, a heavy look on every shot. The client says it looks "too much" and "like everyone else." Diagnose it against the chapter's four disciplines — motivation, restraint, consistency, skin — and prescribe one fix for each. (Answer provided.)

F. Settings & pipeline (Settings Drill)

27. ⭐ Order the node tree. Given these steps in scrambled order — look, balance, output to Rec.709, LUT/convert, secondaries/skin, contrast — write them in the correct pipeline order and say in a phrase why each sits where it does. (Answer provided.)

28. ⭐⭐ Write the grade plan. For each scenario, write a short grade plan — the look sentence, the node order, and which skin/secondary protection you'd add: (a) a cozy café brand video; (b) a tense true-crime interview; (c) a bright, clean product video; (d) a nostalgic wedding film. Self-review: is each look a stateable sentence, not "make it cinematic"? (Model answers provided.)

29. ⭐⭐ LUT, honestly. You're handed a creative LUT for a project. Write the correct workflow to use it — where it goes in the tree, how you control its strength, what you check afterward — and name one situation where you'd not use it at all. (Answer provided.)

30. ⭐⭐⭐ Spec the deliverable. Your grade looks perfect on your laptop. List everything you'd check before calling it done so it survives on a viewer's phone and TV — color space, a second screen, skin, a consistency pass, clipping. Connect each check to why it matters. (Answer provided.)

G. Recreate & Five Ways

31. ⭐⭐ Recreate a famous look. Pick one recognizable film or series look and reproduce it on your own footage by hand (not with a downloaded LUT): analyze its palette, contrast, and skin treatment, then build it in nodes and compare side by side. Self-review: what's close, what's missing — and is the missing part usually the color, or the skin discipline and consistency? (Guidance provided.)

32. ⭐⭐⭐ Five Ways: one face, five looks. Take one corrected clip of a person and grade it five ways — neutral, warm, cool, high-contrast/gritty, soft/low-contrast — holding skin on the flesh line in all five. Watch back to back. Self-review: how far could you push the world while keeping the face believable, and where would each of the five looks belong? (Model provided.)

H. Interleaved & synthesis

33. ⭐⭐ Grade meets capture (Ch.3). Grade the same subject from two sources: a flat Log/high-bit-depth clip and a heavily compressed, standard-profile clip. Push both hard. Self-review: where does the compressed one break first — banding in the sky, blocky shadows, skin falling apart — and what would you capture differently next time? (Answer provided.)

34. ⭐⭐ Grade meets light (Chs.11–13). For a shot lit with a warm practical and a cool window, plan a grade that amplifies the existing motivated light rather than fighting it. Say which source you lean into, which you protect as an honest anchor, and why. (Answer provided.)

35. ⭐⭐⭐ The finishing chain (Chs.30–33). Take one locked scene and describe (or do) the full finish in order: lock → correct → grade → (preview) mix. For each stage, name the one decision that most shapes the mood. Self-review: why does grading a locked cut save you work you'd otherwise repeat? (Guidance provided.)

36. ⭐⭐⭐ Teach it back. In about 200 words, explain to a beginner the difference between correction and grading, why skin is protected above everything, and why the teal-orange look is both useful and a trap. Use one concrete example. Teaching it is the strongest test that you own it. (Model provided.)

37. ⭐⭐⭐ The self-audit. Grade your Project 3 to its look, then leave it overnight and watch it fresh the next morning. Grade it honestly 1–5 on the four disciplines — motivation, consistency, restraint, skin. Which scored lowest? Fix that one thing. Keep this note; it lets you measure real progress by the time you cut your reel in Chapter 39.

38. ⭐⭐⭐ The Frame-Log color habit. For one week, add one color observation a day to your Frame Log: a look you noticed, a face that was off, an eye deliberately guided by a vignette, a teal-orange overdone. At week's end, read them back. You'll find you can no longer watch video without seeing its grade — which is exactly the eye a colorist needs.

When you've done these — especially the grading ones — you'll have crossed from "I can make a shot look right" to "I can make a piece feel like something," on purpose and under control. That is the whole job of the color page. Next, in Chapter 33, we give the piece the other half of its mood: its sound.