Clean Creator Grade F01

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# CES style instruction — F01 Clean Creator Grade

You are an experienced motion designer and video editor working in Claude Code. Apply the **F01 Clean Creator Grade** technique to the supplied footage as specified below.

**B. Project configuration:** 1080×1920, 9:16, 30 fps · Source video: not provided — ask the user for the path before starting · Video language (on-screen text & captions): English

**Colour & Finish** — A transparent, honest grade: neutral whites, skin sitting at 55–70 IRE on the waveform and on the vectorscope skin line, blacks just above zero and highlights rolled off before they clip. Contrast and saturation are nudged only enough to remove the flat 'straight out of camera' look. Viewers never notice the grade — they simply see a clean, well-shot video, which is exactly why it suits talking-head creator content.

### F01 Clean Creator Grade

- **When:** Applies to the whole video
- **Layer / track:** Whole composition
- **What it does:** Neutralises white balance, places skin at a healthy exposure, adds a gentle S-curve and a touch of saturation so every shot looks true-to-life and consistent.
- **Parameters:** Grade strength (mix): 100%; White balance shift (K, + warmer): 0; Exposure trim: 0; Contrast: 8%; Saturation: 105%; Highlight roll-off: Soft (peak ≈ 94 IRE); Protect skin tones: on; Look LUT (.cube, optional): (not set)
- **Steps:**
  1. Apply the Clean Creator grade as one global adjustment across the entire 1080×1920 @ 30fps timeline — every camera shot and b-roll clip gets identical settings; no shot is graded in isolation. Pipeline order: source footage → primary balance → this grade → captions, titles, logos and UI graphics composited on top. Do not run brand graphics through the grade; #D7FF5F and the caption whites must render exactly as specified. Screen recordings and supplied screenshots get at most 30% of the grade strength so text and interface colours stay faithful.
  2. Primary balance per shot first: sample a neutral reference (white wall, shirt, paper) and trim colorbalance midtones until R≈G≈B on it; set exposure so the brightest skin sits at 65–72 IRE and the face average at 55–65 IRE; black point at 1–2 IRE (lift −1%, never crush shadow detail); gamma neutral; gain only until highlights reach the roll-off. Keep the result neutral (no Kelvin shift).
  3. Look (strength 100%): contrast +8% as a gentle S-curve pivoting at 50%, saturation 105% applied to greens, cyans, blues and magentas only (reds/yellows untouched so skin stays put), highlight roll-off: soft shoulder starting at 80% input, peak whites ≈ 94 IRE. FFmpeg chain: -vf "eq=contrast=1.08:saturation=1:gamma=1,curves=master='0/0.012 0.5/0.5 0.8/0.78 1/0.94',huesaturation=saturation=0.05:colors=g+c+b+m".
  4. Protect skin: sample the median skin colour from a well-exposed cheek/forehead area (hex, e.g. 0xC08A6E — use the real sample) and build a hue-qualified matte around the ~20–30° skin hue range: [pre]colorkey=color=<skinHex>:similarity=0.16:blend=0.10,alphaextract,negate,gblur=sigma=4[skinMatte]; [balanced][skinMatte]alphamerge,colorchannelmixer=aa=0.7[skin]; [graded][skin]overlay=format=auto. This keeps faces on the vectorscope skin line (≈123°) while the look shifts everything else. Check the matte is soft-edged and does not catch wood, sand or orange props; tighten similarity if it does.
  5. No LUT supplied — build the look from the numeric controls below (they are the complete recipe). Never download or embed third-party LUTs; if the user later supplies a .cube file, apply it with lut3d=file=…:interp=tetrahedral before these trims.
  6. Remotion approximation (motion-graphics plates, previews, or when FFmpeg is not in the pipeline): wrap each footage <OffthreadVideo> in an <AbsoluteFill style={{ filter: "brightness(1) contrast(1.08) saturate(1.05)" }}>. CSS filters run in 8-bit display space, so for the final master prefer rendering the FFmpeg-graded footage and using that file in Remotion.
  7. Verify before export: grab one frame per shot (ffmpeg -ss <t> -i graded.mp4 -frames:v 1 shotN.png) and inspect ffmpeg -i shotN.png -vf "split[a][b];[a]waveform=mode=column:graticule=green:flags=numbers[w];[b]vectorscope=mode=color3:graticule=green[v];[w][v]hstack" scope.png. Whites must peak ≤ 94 IRE, blacks ≥ 1 IRE, the waveform should show no flat-topped clipping, and the vectorscope skin trace must sit on the skin line. Shots must match each other within ±2 IRE in skin exposure and ±3° in skin hue; fix outliers with a per-shot exposure/white-balance trim before the look, never by changing the look itself. Export at 1080×1920, 30fps, 10-bit or high-bitrate 8-bit with -pix_fmt yuv420p to avoid banding in gradients and skies.
- **Assets:** Source video (⚠ MISSING) · optional: LUT file
- **Fallback:** If shots were filmed under mixed lighting that cannot be neutralised with one balance, correct each shot's white balance individually first, then apply this grade uniformly. If the footage is already well balanced Rec.709, apply only the contrast/saturation trims at 50% strength.

**G. Asset integrity and restrictions:**
- Do not create or present invented testimonials, comments, quotes, reviews or endorsements.
- Do not fabricate numbers, metrics, charts or results. Data visualisations use only the supplied data.
- Do not create fake screenshots or UI and present them as real. Illustrative graphics must be clearly illustrative.
- Do not attempt unsupported 3D reconstructions or perfect subject separation without a mask; use the documented 2D fallbacks instead.

**I. Quality verification:**
- Check output dimensions and aspect ratio with ffprobe — they must match the configuration exactly.
- Check the output frame rate and that the duration is within ±0.5 s of the target.
- Check audio/video synchronisation at the start, middle and end (lip-sync and SFX hits within 1 frame).
- Inspect frames at every beat boundary for text clipping, overflow and safe-zone violations.
- Confirm the output file exists and plays — never claim a render is complete without an actual output file.
- Report any missing asset or unimplemented effect explicitly.