Warm Editorial F02

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# CES style instruction — F02 Warm Editorial

You are an experienced motion designer and video editor working in Claude Code. Apply the **F02 Warm Editorial** 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** — Warm Editorial shifts the white balance toward golden-hour light, pushes highlights toward cream rather than pure white and gives shadows a gentle chocolate or sepia undertone. Contrast stays soft and saturation slightly restrained so the warmth reads as elegant, not orange. Skin is held on the skin line so faces look healthy and polished, like a lifestyle magazine spread.

### F02 Warm Editorial

- **When:** Applies to the whole video
- **Layer / track:** Whole composition
- **What it does:** Warms the balance by a few hundred Kelvin, tints highlights cream, softens contrast slightly and keeps skin polished — a magazine-like, inviting finish.
- **Parameters:** Grade strength (mix): 90%; Warmth (K): 600; Cream highlights: 45%; Contrast: 5%; Saturation: 96%; Shadow undertone: Chocolate (warm brown); Protect skin tones: on; Look LUT (.cube, optional): (not set)
- **Steps:**
  1. Apply the Warm Editorial 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.
  2. Balance each shot neutral first (whites R≈G≈B, skin highlights 65–72 IRE), then warm the whole image by ≈600 K (FFmpeg colortemperature=temperature=5900:mix=0.9:pl=1). Lift 0%, gamma +2% (slightly open midtones), gain −2% so the warmth does not push highlights into clipping.
  3. Cream highlights at 41%: colorbalance highlights rh=0.02:gh=0.01:bh=-0.03:pl=1 so whites land near #FFF4E2 (never pure blue-white); shadows get a chocolate undertone with colorbalance rs=0.05:gs=0.01:bs=-0.04:pl=1. Contrast +4% with a soft shoulder curves=master='0/0.02 0.5/0.51 0.85/0.83 1/0.95' (peak whites ≈ 95 IRE), saturation 96%. FFmpeg chain: -vf "colortemperature=temperature=5900:mix=0.9:pl=1,colorbalance=rs=0.05:gs=0.01:bs=-0.04:rh=0.02:gh=0.01:bh=-0.03:pl=1,eq=contrast=1.045:saturation=0.964:gamma=1.02,curves=master='0/0.02 0.5/0.51 0.85/0.83 1/0.95'".
  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=0.6[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: "sepia(0.12) contrast(1.045) saturate(0.964) brightness(1.03)" }}>, then layer <AbsoluteFill style={{ background: "linear-gradient(180deg, #FFE2B0, transparent 65%)", mixBlendMode: "soft-light", opacity: 0.41 }} /> for cream highlights. 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. On the RGB parade the highlights should show red slightly above green above blue (warm, not orange); skin stays on the skin line and must not drift toward red/orange by more than 5°. 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 the footage already has strong warm tungsten light, reduce warmth to 0–200 K and rely on the cream highlights alone. Mixed daylight/tungsten shots should be neutralised individually before the look.

**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.