If you’ve ever wondered how to get a genuinely cinematic, film-inspired grade without building a massive node tree, this walkthrough will show you a clean, simple approach. We’re going to build the entire look using just three nodes. It’s minimal, efficient, and extremely effective — and it's the same foundational approach behind the filmic character inside my Vision 3 Powergrade.
Let’s jump in.

1. Start With a Color Space Transform (RED Log → Rec.709)
​The first node sets the technical foundation.
If you're working with RED Log (as I am in this example), drop in a Color Space Transform and convert the footage straight to Rec.709. This gets your image into a standard viewing space, which makes every creative decision more predictable and more accurate.
A good grade always starts with a clean baseline, and a CST is the fastest route to that.

3. Add Filmic Color Separation With a YUV Node + RGB Mixer
​Now we start shaping the filmic character.
Add a new serial node and change its Color Space to YUV. This one small change makes the color respond more like film — more separation, more nuance, more cinematic depth.

4. Shape the Contrast + Add Split Toning Using Curves
​The last node is where everything comes together.
Start With a Soft Contrast CurveOn the Y (luminance) Curve, add a gentle S-curve:

• Lower the shadows a touch
• Lift the highlights just slightly

This gives you punch without crushing anything important.
Cinematic Split Toning in the Blue CurveHere’s where we add that filmic shadow/highlight interplay:

1. Place a midpoint where the skin tones sit — this becomes your anchor.
2. Pull the left side of the blue curve down slightly (cooling the shadows).
3. Pull the right side down just a bit (warming the highlights).

Instantly, you get the classic cool shadows / warm highlights look that defines so many modern film grades.
Finish with a quick return to the luminance curve for final exposure or contrast tweaks.

Final Thoughts
​That’s the whole grade — three nodes, nothing fancy, but incredibly effective. This minimalist workflow forces you to be intentional, and the results speak for themselves.
These are the same principles I use inside my Vision 3 Powergrade, which takes this foundation and pushes it into authentic Kodak territory with far more nuance baked in. But as a practice exercise — and even as a real working grade — this three-node setup is a fantastic way to build a cinematic base.
If you want to see this workflow in action across multiple shots, check out the full tutorial.
And if you’re a fan of the Vision 3 look, stay tuned — there’s plenty more coming.

Link to the Vision 3 Powergrade - ​https://www.rocketrooster.ninja

Working with Log footage is really easy in Lumetri, trust me, it really is! In this quick tutorial, I'm going to teach you how to quickly get your flat ugly log footage corrected with out the use of any LUTs and I'm also going to give you some reasons for when and why you might want to use a LUT to correct your footage.

Log footage comes with many benefits, for one; it compresses as much information as possible to give you a wider dynamic range and a lot of times colour tonality giving you more room to play in post. On the flip side, this often means you would need more time in post-production, valuable time that you may not want to have to spend, but more on that later.   

Starting with our log image we can see that all the values have been compressed into the middle of our waveform which means we need to expand the image so that we can get more contrast into the shot. ​

Pro Tip: You want to keep your primary corrections in the basic correction tab. 

As you can see from the image below, simply cranking up the contrast slider doesn't seem to have the desired effect. ​

What we need to do is combine all the tools at our disposal to get the job done. In the image below, you can see that I've managed to get a better looking image by combining the contrast slider and the other available luminance tools (Highlights and Shadows, Whites and Blacks) to expand the waveform so that the image appears to have a more balanced look.  ​

Pro Tip: You will notice I still used some of the controls in Lumetri to tweak the image despite using the LUT. You must take control of your image, use LUTs to get you 70% of the way you want to go and do the rest yourself. ​

What is a LUT?
Put simply, a LUT is a mathematical formula for adjusting the colors of an image.

LUTs are made up of three main parts: The first part is the base layer, which contains information about how colors should be mixed together to create other colors. The second part is the lookup table, which contains information on what colors should be applied to each pixel when it’s being converted from one color space into another; and lastly, there’s a third layer called the opacity map, which is an overlay that tells the system how to mix together colors on a pixel-by-pixel basis. 
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Here's what LUTs can do for you, in just one click!