I found the 360 video part of this class to be the most in line with my skills and interests, so throughout this class I have pushed myself to take these videos to the next level visually. When we learned how to use Auto Pano Video for our class projects, I noticed the auto color feature does a decent job at correcting any uneven colors throughout all six videos, but the tools were limited. As a TRF major, I use Adobe Premiere Pro for my video editing and have wanted to learn more about the video effect tools that come with the software. Even though Auto Pano is able to fix the blending of color as well as a few general features such as exposure, I wanted to go beyond this and bring out a certain tone and style in my work. I felt the best way to do this would to bring all six GoPro videos into Adobe Premiere and color correct and grade them to my liking before stitching them in Auto Pano. For my independent learning assignment, I wanted to learn more about the tools in Adobe Premiere Pro to improve the color quality of my 360 videos. I was able to find a color correcting course on Lynda.com that was tailored towards Adobe software.

The first thing I learned about was which effect tools are available in the software, and what each one should be used for. The course recommended starting with the "Three-Way Color Corrector" tool. This allowed me to manipulate a variety of factors such as the hue, saturation, and exposure of the videos. Since the GoPro cameras were pointing in different directions, the lighting affected how each video appeared, and without a monitor to check all six cameras at once, it was impossible to ensure the cameras looked consistent throughout the shoot. Even if all of the settings were correct, I found it difficult to keep every camera the same.

The Lynda.com course taught me to fix the output and input levels first, which manipulate the exposure of the videos. I had to do this for each of the six videos separately, but I was able to check the levels to make sure each video had similar levels using the lumetri scopes. These scopes include scales such as the vectorscope which measures saturation and hue, and waveform which measures exposure and RGB color. I was able to level all six videos using these tools, and gave me videos an other-worldly look that matched the setting of my project: an alien planet.

I saw vast improvements in my videos once I learned how to properly color correct and grade through Adobe Premiere, and now have more creative control over the look of my videos.