Need feedback on my color correcting/grading

[Wil Prada]

Hey y'all,

I am a relatively new film maker, mostly self taught and I've taken a couple of classes. I am trying to learn more about color correction and grading. I've learned some of the basics from YouTube and thru this forum.

Currently I'm making a reel (30 seconds) for the intro to my website, unfortunately for my previous work I didn't manually white balance, so much of my work isn't color balanced accurately :/

I know I know, learning from my mistakes.

For my reel, I wanted to make all clips look relatively similar so that the reel is cohesive, so i added a couple of the same layers on top, and I need help just getting feedback from more experienced colorists about which y'all think may look best? Haven't been doing this long so my eyes aren't as trained.

Here are 4 versions of it. I color corrected all of them and added the creative look SL Matrix Blue, as well as a vignette, all through Adobe premiere.

1. Just with the creative layer:

2. With the creative look and a static black texture layer only:

This is the black texture I used: http://paper-backgrounds.com/textureimages/2012/10/black-canvas-texture-hd.jpg

3. With creative look, and film grain only:

4. With creative look, film grain and the static black texture layer:

Any feedback is appreciated. The creative layer I used gives all of them that bluish look.

But I did this other one with the warm look with the Big L creative look:

If you think warm look is best please let me know.

Also the website additionally gives it this black layer on top as you can see:

https://earthseedmc.com/

[Anthony Schilling]

It depends a lot on your tools and taste. I use the free version of Resolve and would recommend it. It's good to start with contrast before you make any color changes. The highlights are a bit harsh on their vests in the last image.