Grading NMC Sports Therapy in Hyde Park

A mobility session for NMC Sports Therapy, filmed in Hyde Park under bright hazy sun. Four minutes, cut and graded. The correction stayed small, and it stayed small because almost nothing in the frame was supposed to be neutral in the first place.

Project Details

• Client: NMC Sports Therapy
• Location: Hyde Park, London
• Camera: Sony A6700, S-Cinetone, 25fps at 1/50
• Role: Shot, cut and graded
• Cut: 4:01, 4K
• Master: H.264, 3840x2160, ~100 Mbps

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Reading it before touching it

Grass and trees push green hard, the sky is a blue-grey that is genuinely blue, and the skin sits low in the waveform. All three are the subject rather than a cast.

So the standard move is the wrong one here. Level the RGB parade to match channel tops and you drain the green out of the park and flatten the skin, and you will have done it while watching a scope that says you improved things. The only reliable neutrals in frame are the distant house, the concrete path and white clothing on the blurred walkers.

Skin is the thing you protect, not the thing you neutralise.

Correction, per clip

• Blue floor pulled down in the blue channel until the darks matched red and green. That took the ash off the skin.
• Master curve lifted at the three-quarter point to cut the haze. Tops land at 92 with nothing clipping.
• Reference clip copied to the rest with Paste Attributes.
• One clip’s grass fixed on Hue vs Saturation rather than Temperature or Tint. The grass was the problem, so the grass is what gets selected — a global control would have taken the skin with it.
• One clip’s sky brought down with Highlights, trousers checked at 88 first.

Definition

• A second Lumetri stacked per clip, carrying a gentle S with the quarter point down. That puts shadow contrast on him without crushing the grass and the tree line.
• Sheen left alone. It is what reads as definition.

Look

• One adjustment layer across the timeline, Vibrance +20. The same single move that finished Kapıkırı — once the clips agree, a heavy preset only undoes the work.
• No grain.

Titles

• Front card: NMC SPORTS THERAPY
• End card, second line: NMC SPORTS THERAPY · HYDE PARK 2026

The master export

There is no ProRes archive here. The master is an H.264 file that exists to be a clean input to the HLS ladder, so it is graded for bitrate rather than for editing.

Setting	Value
Format	H.264, MP4
Resolution	3840x2160
Frame rate	25, progressive
Profile / Level	High / 5.2
Bitrate	VBR, 2 pass, target 100, max 120
Audio	AAC, 48 kHz, stereo, 320 kbps
Render at Maximum Depth	On
Use Maximum Render Quality	On

Encode from the timeline, not from the delivery file. A master re-encoded from a finished upload carries that upload’s compression into every rung of the ladder, and no bitrate afterwards takes it back out.

Check the profile on the finished file. This master shipped as Main at Level 5.1 rather than the High and 5.2 set in the dialog — the dropdown did not take. At 100 Mbps feeding a transcode it costs nothing, which is precisely why it goes unnoticed.

Working with me

Movement, mobility and training work, filmed on location and delivered as a film you can put your name to.

Get in touch if you want something filmed.