How to Duplicate this look?
 

I really like the color in this video of the clips with Bow Wow standing on the infinity pool. I'm very new to the coloring realm and am also learning lighting as well. What tips (lighting, shooting, coloring) can you guys give to duplicate the look of these scenes? I assume shooting with the Neutral picture style with contrast brought down to start. Where to go from here?

Here's the link to the video:
YouTube - Bow Wow - Ain't Thinkin Bout You ft. Chris Brown

Example of the scene I am referring to is attached.

I have MB Looks for FCP to grade with. Hopefully this isn't a frivolous question. Any help would be appreciated.

That's a great looking shot. I'd assume that they used a 10K HMI light or similar on the subject. If you look at the shadows the light is angled slightly upwards.

After that, add a strong s-curve. They kept the lighter tones light (the lit side of the face) and pushed the darker tones dark (the clouds, the shaded side of the face.) After that it's a matter of color balancing. The mids are warm. The darks are ever so slightly blue to balance the warmth.

It's a nice look.

Wow. Thanks alot. I will play around with your suggestions and see what I come up with. Thanks again!!

Dara,

I've been using Colorista II for color correction. It's really sweet. Check out these tutorials. Even if you use different tools, the techniques shown here are priceless...

ProLost - Blog - Colorista IITutorials

Just going from this still, it reminds me of a school of outdoor strobe photography, giving a sort of floodlit look in daylight. I also note that the sky is pretty ochre against a slightly bluish 'lit' model.

Would agree that he's probably lit by an HMI lamp (big expensive 'brute') that's naturally 'daylight' colour balance, and I guess the DoP has gelled it with CTB (the blue gel required to make tungsten lamps match daylight), then did a white-set on the very blue light to get that ochre sky.

Waiting for the golden hour (the hour before sunset) probably helped too!

By the way, if you're shooting onto DSLR, there's a general drift of opinion back towards getting close to your look IN-camera rather than doing lots of colour correction afterwards. The H.264 rushes are rather delicate and don't take lots of CC like, say, EX1 footage can.

Oh yes, and another shout for Colorista. Totally awesome tool, MBL can do great things, but Colorista is where it starts.

Remember that Post Production filters take away, they never add. So the stronger the application of a filter, the less of your original data you end up with. This is absolutely and utterly contrary to filters in your matte box, which enable you to record MORE information. If you see what I mean.

Going from BW to COLOUR continuously drives me crazy i could not study what the colour footage looked like,old fashoned i guess.

sure that was most likely lit with an HMI. 10K ? no. you could easily do that with a 1200PAR. I highly doubt the light was blue boosted with more CTB ( not that I haven't done for effect sometimes ). far more likely the WB was 5600K to match the HMI, and the sky would of naturally went warm at sunset. if you wanted to really get the sky warm, yes you could add 1/4 or 1/2 CTB, and WB to 6400K or so, or 7000K. not much magic in that, just an understanding of color temps and how to manipulate it. I've actually used tungsten lights to get blue moon light effects... I'll let you figure out how to do it, without gelling any lights.

The shot in the frame grab looks like it was shot near dusk, so I agree it could have been a much smaller light than a 10k.

If you're just getting started, shooting outdoors during the day and without the budget needed to rent a big HMI experiment with reflectors. It may sound a little ghetto, but in a pinch it's amazing how much light you can move with a silver space-blanket taped securely to a big piece of foamcore...