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My standard workflow is to work with uncorrected footage as much as possible, use an adjustment layer on top with very simple color correction to double-check the composites and effects for accuracy, then turn it off and render to a visually lossless format to send to the edit so color correction inside the NLE is consistent. Inside the NLE I do 90% of my color correction with an adjustment layer above all of the video tracks that sets the basic look, then additional adjustment layers or color c
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That's a perfect example. Temp CC adjustment layer on top of everything + color correction on the added material to make it match the original. If I am visualizing the transition and the changes to Still Plate 1 that are required I think you are animating the color correction of that plage so that it matches both incoming and outgoing frames. When you turn off the temp CC adjustment layer the transition should still look like it matches when you look at the log footage.
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My standard workflow is to work with uncorrected footage as much as possible, use an adjustment layer on top with very simple color correction to double-check the composites and effects for accuracy, then turn it off and render to a visually lossless format to send to the edit so color correction inside the NLE is consistent. Inside the NLE I do 90% of my color correction with an adjustment layer above all of the video tracks that sets the basic look, then additional adjustment layers or color corrections are applied to each shot for the final grade. The choice of color correction that you use to check shots in AE is completely up to you but you must make sure that you are NOT adding any baked-in color correction to the original footage in the shots. This doesn't mean that you don't color correct the other layers in the shot.
For some types of VFX shots, I'll set the original footage layer as a guide layer and render a DI with transparency so that the composite can be done by just dropping the composite above the original shot in the NLE and fine-tuning the color grade there. I recently did a bunch of TV screen replacement shots for a film and I sent the replacement screen to them so they could perform separate color corrections on the screen and the original footage. The comp looked like this:
But this is what the render looked like, just the replacement TV screen. That gave the colorist the ability to fine-tune both the original shot and the replacement screen. If I had rendered the entire composite and they wanted to remove saturation and add blue to the TV screen the final color grade would have been a lot more difficult.
It is almost always a really bad idea to color correct an After Effects project, then render the shot and add it to a project that is going to need additional color correction.
When you do the final render for delivery to the editor it is important that you either turn of color management completely or perfectly match the color workflow for everyone else in the team. More than 90% of the time, I have CM turned completely off.
I hope this helps. When I get to my desktop I might be able to post a couple more screenshots to give you a little better idea about the workflow.
My standard workflow is to put an adjustment layer on top of all of the footage in the Premiere Pro timeline and apply the basic correction there. That is where I establish the basic look of the film. I usually have to pick a specific shot in the sequence and get that color nailed down as close as I can.
Then each shot is graded to match with another instance of Lumetri applied.
Here's another hint. Create a new sequence for each shot in the movie. I recently cut a 3-minute industrial video shot in 4 locations. I made 4 separate sequences, one for each location, then combined them in the final sequence. All of the sequences had the same adjustment layer with the same settings, but each sequence was individually corrected to change the tone of the story. I may work that way because I started editing on a Moviola when reels could only be 10 minutes long, but I still think that is the most effective and efficient way to edit anything longer than a few minutes. You'll really appreciate the "each scene is a separate sequence" method when you start doing the final polish.
Here is a screenshot of one of the final color tests that I made on a recent film. I did not take the time to hook up the drive with the footage but here is what the one of the last color grading passes looked like on a 40-minute film:
Every one of the cuts you see is a separate color graded sequence. Every one of those sequences had several shots that were individually color graded and a master color correction adjustment layer as the top layer. To finalize the grading of the entire film I added another adjustment layer on top of the entire movie to finalize the color grading. There are no keyframes on that adjustment layer. You can see my final tweaks on the Highlight and Shadow tint. Curves, HSL secondary, and Vignette are also adjusted for the final color pass. This gave me a very easy way to finalize the look of the project and when the director wanted things a little warmer one small adjustment in the Highlight tint fixed the entire movie.
I hope this helps.
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