DaVinci Resolve
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Post Workflow Gets Blurred and (Sometimes) Free with Updates From Avid, Blackmagic, Adobe, Apple
While most of the attention paid to Blackmagic’s releases at NAB went to their slew of new and updated cameras, they also released DaVinci Resolve 12, which they say has made a bigger improvement in the last year than their last five years of updates. When they introduced 11 last year, they announced new editing tools within the app. They’ve further expanded Resolve as a feasible NLE with multicam features, tons of trim mode options, and a brand new audio engine for audio editing. I played around with Resolve at the booth. The timeline definitely felt familiar and the ease of making […]
by Joey Daoud on Apr 16, 2015 -
Checkmate Director Timothy Woodward Jr. on Shooting with the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K
Director Timothy Woodward Jr. is currently in post-production on Checkmate, an action thriller with supernatural undertones shot using the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K. The movie is expected to be completed by October, and is one of the first features shot with this camera. We spoke to Woodward about shooting with the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K, as well as about shooting action sequences and why you shouldn’t “fix it in post.” This is part one of the interview. Filmmaker: Where did the story come from? Woodward: We found the story on a service called InkTip.com. It was very clever. It was well […]
by Michael Murie on Aug 28, 2014 -
How To Survive Your First Color Grade
For any film, color grading is an essential part of the process. For some it’s simply a way to get the shots within a scene to match cohesively, despite adjusted lights or a change of sun position. For others it can help tell the story. Either way, If you’ve never sat in on a coloring session before, the whole thing can seem quite daunting. Jalal Jemison has colored five features and has an extensive background in VFX and compositing. He has been a VFX supervisor, a director, a lead compositor and has had his own small VFX studio. For the […]
by Michael Medaglia and Jalal Jemison on Aug 6, 2014 -
A Round-Up of the Last Non-Linear Editor Updates
June proved to be a rich month for non-linear editor users. Adobe released their latest Creative Cloud update, Apple updated Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and Compressor, the public beta of DaVinci Resolve 11 was released, and the Mac beta of Lightworks finally appeared. Adobe Creative Cloud On June 17 Adobe released the second major update to Creative Cloud. For Premiere Pro this release adds a new masking feature for effects. You can now easily add an effect mask either using an Oval or a four-point polygon tool. A built-in tracking tool makes it possible to track a shape […]
by Michael Murie on Jul 10, 2014 -
DaVinci Resolve 11 – New Editor on the Block?
Besides the new URSA and Studio camera announcements, Blackmagic announced some new updates to their popular coloring software DaVinci Resolve. While the newest version boasts over 100 new features, the vast majority of them are improvements to the editing capabilities. In previous versions the editing area of Resolve was more for making tweaks to an ingested timeline to correct any errors or drop in footage that didn’t import properly. Now it’s aiming to be a full fledged editor. The latest version adds a bunch of features you’d find in most NLEs – lots of timeline trimming options and keyboard controls, […]
by Joey Daoud on Apr 10, 2014 -
DaVinci Resolve 10 Adds Editing to its Toolset
DaVinci Resolve began life as a high-end grading tool found in expensive color suites. Its purchase by Blackmagic hasn’t lessened its sophistication – they’ve continued to expand its tool set – but it has seen the software’s price lowered substantially, a free “lite” version released, and a redesign of its UI that has made it a lot friendlier to new users. Resolve is still a complicated and sophisticated tool, and color grading is a skill that can take a lot of study to master, but if you’re doing any image manipulation to your footage you shouldn’t ignore the functionality Resolve […]
by Michael Murie on Nov 25, 2013 -
The Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera: A Review
The Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera is pretty much the perfect post-DSLR camera. I spent a month with it, shooting a short film around the New York Film Festival, running around guerrilla-style, putting it through its paces, and I had a lot of fun. I liked the size and the touch screen functionality. And I liked the DaVinci Resolve 10 workflow. The BMDCC is a camera that introduces itself from a distance. Everywhere I went with it, people either knew what it was and wanted to ask me about it, or they didn’t know what it was and wanted to ask […]
by Jamie Stuart on Oct 23, 2013 -
Color Grading The Kings of Summer
Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ coming of age comedy The Kings of Summer premiered successfully at Sundance this year, but it took a hectic few weeks of work to grade and produce the final deliverables in time to make the Sundance submission deadline. The Kings of Summer was graded by Narbeh Tatoussian, senior DI colorist at Blacklist Digital. Tatoussian has worked in the industry for over 16 years. He started in the shipping vault, then moved up through post-production and the QC department before becoming a tape room supervisor, assistant colorist and finally a colorist. During that time he says that’s he’s […]
by Michael Murie on Sep 6, 2013 -
Color Grading A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Part 2: Chris Martin on the Art of the Post-Grade
In this second part on the color grading of the movie A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Chris Martin of SPY describes his work to complete the final grade, the workflow, and the color look of the picture. Chris is a senior colorist at SPY, a post house in San Francisco that does both commercial and narrative feature work. SPY is a visual effects house, but they also have their own DI theater. SPY has been owned by FotoKem since 2009. The first half of the grading process is described in: Color Grading A Glimpse Inside the […]
by Michael Murie on Mar 27, 2013 -
Color Grading A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Part 1: Ryan Bozajian on the Art of the Pre-Grade
Like most motion pictures, Roman Coppola’s latest film, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III was color graded in a DI theater at a post house. Unlike many films, this final grading only took two days; extensive “pre-grading” was done using Resolve Lite at American Zoetrope’s own facilities, while the final grade was performed at SPY using the full version of Resolve. With color grading taking place in two facilities and by two people, the facilities had to work together to calibrate equipment and create a consistent workflow. In part 1 of this series, VFX artist Ryan Bozajian […]
by Michael Murie on Mar 26, 2013
