In this tutorial we are going to create one look from the Joker movie. This is part one of a three-part series. Let’s get into this look!

        Starting off, let’s analyze our reference still. Notice how there is a kicker light coming from the right side of his face. This adds more of a warm look to the side of his face.

The key light is overhead, giving him racoon eyes, but in this instance, it fits with the scene and the character.

The most notable part is the cyan light coming behind and from the front left of him.

One thing to note is that when on set, they are creating this lighting and look; color only accentuates the look

Now that we have the reference still analyzed, let’s analyze our shot. Obviously, the way it is lit, and shot is very different from our reference still. Our shot it is during daylight, using a reflector to bounce light onto our subject (note the eyes). We also don’t have three color temps going on to create this look, which means it will need to be cheated by isolating her skin and creating that cyan look without affecting her skin. Looking at our scopes will provide you with a general sense of where everything lives. If we look at the red channel in the Joker shot, it is almost non-existent. But look how dominant the green is.

There is so much cyan in the entire image.

With both of our shots analyzed we can now start getting to work on the grade. Let’s build out our node tree. Quick thing to note about my node tree structure, is that I label everything so you can understand how I build my grades. With that being said, use this as a building block and then build your own style, and modify your node tree as you go. In this example I am going to set up nodes in rows. The top row is for our noise reduction; the second row is for my primary adjustments. Now the nodes I am going to use for this example are pictured below:

It is now time to start our process. On the second node, we want to start with contrast. Bring up the contrast, and don’t be afraid to push it a bit. Next, we are going to hit our LOG wheels. I am going to start bringing down my low range so that when I bring down the shadow slider, the black points will start to match. Next, bring up that saturation. Saturation helps us when we are pulling keys because it helps separate the colors. The next step is to balance the image. We are going into our printer lights tab to bring down the red. Take the red channel in the offset slider down a little bit. Even after just this step, it is we are starting to see our image take shape. Now we are at a place where we can pull a pretty clean key. Before we do that, let me explain how a layer mixer works:

The way layers work is the opposite of how it works in other NLEs. Any layer takes precedent over the previous node. So, the middle is going to have priority over the top, and the bottom will have priority over all the ones above.

Now that we got that out of the way, go to the middle node (skin node) and we are going to qualify her skin. With qualifying, one hard part is controlling the noise.

When there is a lot of noise in the video, the key won’t be clean. You will have to adjust parameters to clean out the key. You can also use the denoise and blur sliders to help feather out the noise. Don’t ever be shy with that. Just go ham! Now the key is clean, but still needs a bit more. We want to add noise reduction on the first node to the settings below to help clean up the key.

The way to get better at qualifying is to practice. You really must get in there and understand all the parameters. You need to understand how each tool reacts.

Now that we have the key pulled, go into the background node above the skin node and we are going to start dialing everything in using primaries. We will first start bringing down the gamma wheel towards cyan. Watch how the background changes, but her skin stays the same. The key is holding up and the look is taking shape, but there is now too much green in the cyan. To remove that, stay in the background node and go to curves, then hue vs. sat, and click on the green selection. Once that is selected, pull down the saturation of the green about halfway.

Try to match it to the green point of the image we are matching. Once that’s done, go into the hue vs. hue and select the green. Bring it down until the hue starts looking more cyan. Now, our greens are starting to look good.

Because the saturation in our reference is brighter in the cyan, we want to bring up the global saturation of our background. Now that we’ve gotten the cyan matching, we need to blend it into the skin. The best way to do that is to click on the key output tab (pictured below).

On this tab, take the key output slider down to blend the two together. Because there is more magenta in his skin, we need to add some to her skin. Staying in the skin node, select your LOG wheels tab. Raise the midtone and highlight wheels up to magenta. Switch to the primaries wheels now and take the gain a little bit towards magenta just to make that skin pop a bit more. Next, going into our dress node, we want to select the red on her dress. Even though the key did a great job, we need to adjust the parameters a bit more, and blur it out a ton. Now it is looking great. This is looking crazy good. We have come such a far way already. Head into our look adjustment node. Take the offset wheel and just move it around a bit to see if we can help bring that look closer in a more global adjustment way. The look adjustment node is there just to help put you into a ballpark quicker. The next step is to add our vignette. First, analyze the reference. The vignette is very harsh. We can see him, but the sides fade to black almost. Taking that, create a power window oval around her (see picture below), and soften it quite a bit.

Go into the curves, turn on editable splines and bring up the highlights portion just to pop her out a bit.

Next, go to our outside node. Uncheck editable splines. Grab it from the middle and start bringing it down to match our reference.

With this kind of look recreation, if you want it to match 1:1, you have to go all in. You need to exaggerate your grade to match the reference.

Once you are done with that, go into the sharpening node and go to the blur tab (pictured below) and bring down the H/V ration slider to .47.

That is the sauce. That gives it enough sharpness without making it look tacky. Now go into the grain node and add some film grain. Select the 35mm 400T and bring up the grain strength quite a bit. It is just adding enough to give it that film texture that is much appreciated.

The last node, global adjustment, is just there if there are any other changes we need to do. We don’t have to use it, but it’s there as an insurance policy, or if a producer wants to try something. In this instance we are going to bring the saturation down just a bit in this node using a new method. Go into your curves and click on the last tab (sat vs. sat). Pull down on the part where most of the saturation exists (picture below), but also bring down the highlights as well.

Bringing down the saturation makes the look deeper and more filmic, selling the look even more.

One last change to make is bringing the saturation in her skin down a bit. Along with that, we want to add some warmth into her skin.

That’s it. We are done with the look. We just made this shot look like the Joker.

MORE LIKE THIS