Look Development & Workflow in DaVinci Resolve

Jason Bowdach

xap3.149.25.109

 

Welcome to an in-depth course in Look Development and Workflow in DaVinci Resolve.  

This is an intermediate course for colorists that want to gain a solid understanding of look development workflows, color management, and color theory.

You will learn complex saturation workflows, how to evaluate and recreate film emulations, analyze and create film halation, create custom black and white look, film grain methodology, the teal and orange look and much more.

At the end of the course, we challenge you to use what you have learned, to color grade your own version of an award-winning commercial.

The footage used in this course and a free sample of 35mm film grain is available for download so that you can easily follow along.

About the instructor

Jason Bowdach is a colorist and finishing artist based in Los Angeles, California. He's a Blackmagic Design certified instructor specializing in color and finishing, and he has an extensive background in film\tv post-production with large-scale international distribution at studios like Disney and Fox. He is also the founder of PixelTools, a company that creates color grading tools and presets for DaVinci Resolve.

Who is this course designed for?

  • Intermediate colorists
     

COURSE OVERVIEW

 

LESSON 01: HERO SHOTS

Going through methods for evaluating which shots to include as hero shots.

LESSON 02: COLOR MANAGEMENT & BASE GRADE

Preparing the project by setting up the color management and color space aware tools. Looking at how to work with exposure and balance to preserve details while keeping the integrity of the cinematography and the context of the story. Also going through some image-analyzing tools that helps make better decisions in the base grade process.

LESSON 03: LOOK WORKFLOW AND FILM PRINT EMULATION LUTS

In this lesson, we're diving deep into workflow for look development and node organisation with node hierarch. Then, looking at film print emulation characteristics and setting up a workflow to get the best result out of them.

LESSON 04: WORKING WITH FILM PRINT EMULATION LUTS

Using printer lights and film print emulation on a commercial using the established workflow. Also, discussing order of operations, ways to kill off saturation, whether to apply noise reduction before or after the grade and general color theory.

LESSON 05: SILVER HIGLIGHTED LOOK

Demonstrating three different methods to create the Silver Highlighted Look (Bleach Bypass) on a color chart. The methods include midtone detail work to add micro contrast, shaping luma only curves and primary controls.

LESSON 06: LOOK ADJUSTMENT

Now it's time to implement the look into the established workflow, on top of the base grade. Explaining how to adjust for best possible result and consistency. Then, experimenting by mixing silver looks.

LESSON 07: EVALUATING & RECREATING FILM EMULATIONS

Diving into the characteristics and behaviours of film emulations, and recreating the essence with curves.

LESSON 08: CUSTOM BLACK & WHITE LOOKS

The RGB mixer and the Splitter & Combiner node is used to gain better control over black & white images.

LESSON 09: ANALYZING & CREATING HALATION

Analyzing halation on images shot on film, and creating halation that can be used in a variety of looks from scratch. Talking about the benefits of working in linear light and converting between color spaces.

LESSON 10: FILM GRAIN METHOLOGY

Using charts and scopes to evaluate grain, and continue to emulating both negative and positive film grain. Looking at the best ways to integrate grain for most visually pleasing result, and setting up a real film-scan-grain workflow.

LESSON 11: TEAL & ORANGE LOOK

Building the classic teal & warm look with curves on a test image and charts.

LESSON 12: TEAL & ORANGE CONTINUES

Going through two more methods to create the teal & orange look, using both primaries and the color warper.

LESSON 13: COMPLEX SATURATION WORKFLOWS

Going through different saturation tools, and looking at color management to create technical accurate saturation response in non-managed workflows. Then, using the LAB model to adjust saturation and using HSV and HSL to create deep filmic colors.

LESSON 14: COLOR MODELS EXPLAINED

Looking at some color models to better explain what happens with saturation when converting between different color spaces.

LESSON 15: HARDWARE & 3RD PARTY SCOPES

Jason walks you through his hardware recommendations and looks at Nobe Omniscope.

LESSON 16: CHALLENGE

In the last lesson, we're challenging you to re-create the original grade of a commercial using the techniques and strategies from this course.


 

 

 

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Manuel López

As a non-English speaker, my hope in this courses is that the teacher speaks well with good vocalization and a neutral accent, and that you can see well all the actions that are done. So I can follow, more or less, a course in English.
Unfortunately for me, this course is not for me, the teacher has a strange accent, difficult to understand, and as the color panel is used, you can't see which controls are being manipulated.

So, it is impossible to follow it, a pity. I know, it's just my fault, of course.
I hope that one day Lowepost will put English subtitles, because it is always easier to understand written English than spoken English.  And I don't think it will be very expensive. It would be a great help for those of us who are not fluent in English.
Thanks

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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Jackey Lee

Hi, I'm just starting to build my portfolio as a colorist and  found this course very helpful. I have two questions and was wondering if you can provide some clarification.

1. All of my projects currently are outputting to SDR. Is there a benefit of working using HDR tools? If HDR tools behaves more naturally because it is color space aware, is it more "better" than primaries? Would you still use primaries to adjust the exposure/ contrast on a clip level.

2.  I really enjoyed lesson 5 and 7 about creating the silver bleach bypass and the film emulation look. As a novice, I've been told to always keep blacks within the legal range 0 and looking at the scope is a good way to do that. I can't help but noticed that altough you've lifted the blacks when creating the look using the Arri test image, there are still some signals that are sitting below 0. Is that a problem? 

Cheers,

Jackey

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Jason Bowdach
On 2/4/2024 at 8:34 PM, Jackey Lee said:

1. All of my projects currently are outputting to SDR. Is there a benefit of working using HDR tools? If HDR tools behaves more naturally because it is color space aware, is it more "better" than primaries? Would you still use primaries to adjust the exposure/ contrast on a clip level.

HDR panel is not the best name - I feel a more accurate name is "Wide Gamut \ High Dynamic Range Panel" but thats clearly a mouthful. You can use them for both SDR and HDR grading. Some may say they're "technically" more correct but I would not venture to say "better". Personally, I adjust exposure using a DCTL (or HDR Panel) and creative adjustments using primary panel. Can't help but fall back on printer points frequently though......

On 2/4/2024 at 8:34 PM, Jackey Lee said:

2.  I really enjoyed lesson 5 and 7 about creating the silver bleach bypass and the film emulation look. As a novice, I've been told to always keep blacks within the legal range 0 and looking at the scope is a good way to do that. I can't help but noticed that altough you've lifted the blacks when creating the look using the Arri test image, there are still some signals that are sitting below 0. Is that a problem? 

Nope - not unless I get a QC note. If it looks good on my calibrated reference, it is good. Happy to apply soft clipping to a clip \ scene if needed 🤷‍♂️

Also, most finishing I use have some type of auto-limiter which you can set up in your template project as a "safety blanket". 

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Adrián Aragonés
16 hours ago, Konstantinos Drakatos said:

Hello, 

What color space would you use for the tiff images? They are rec709 gamma 2.4 right? So you would just remove color space transform?

Actually tiff is just a type of file, as .mov .mxf .r3d... it is not what defines the colour space of the info within. And as tiffs can be in 8 or 16bits it means that its 16bits version can have info arranged according to almost every colorspace there is, since cameras do not collect data over 16bits...

Even 8 bits could be log footage, and any colourspace, the problem is the amount of colours it could reproduce with in that colourspace.

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Emily Leishman

Hello Jason,

I've done a lot of study on Film Looks most recently and this is the first video I have seen someone use Grouped clips to apply these transforms, grain etc.... great idea! However can you still  group clips and select only one clip for the 'colourspace transform' to be applied?  and not the whole group? ( say if there there was a section) within the whole show/TVC etc? or would you need to apply seperate from the group and just group others without the old film looks? 

In other words,  can you still manipulate each shot within a group separately? or, when looking at the node graphs; you see some grouped clips ( with all the same adjustments) and a number of single clips  with differences... like a film transform, a window, a custom fusion effect? 

Sorry if you go through this down the track .... i'm just starting on your film look video. 

Thanks.

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Jason Bowdach
On 9/23/2024 at 9:49 PM, Emily Leishman said:

this is the first video I have seen someone use Grouped clips to apply these transforms, grain etc.... great idea! However can you still  group clips and select only one clip for the 'colourspace transform' to be applied?  and not the whole group? ( say if there there was a section) within the whole show/TVC etc? or would you need to apply seperate from the group and just group others without the old film looks? 

In other words,  can you still manipulate each shot within a group separately? or, when looking at the node graphs; you see some grouped clips ( with all the same adjustments) and a number of single clips  with differences... like a film transform, a window, a custom fusion effect? 

When using this method for organization, I recommend placing the IDT camera transform at the pre-clip group level, so it would stay consistent for the entire group. We're only moving from camera space to working color space (DWG or ACES usually) so we actually want it to be identical for every clip of the same camera type.

Next, within the clip node tree, we can adjust each clip on an individual bases as needed in terms of exposure, contrast, saturation, etc. 

For other creative elements, you can use the post-clip, timeline node levels, or even adjustment layers for your scene level adjustments. 

Hope that helps! 

 

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Jatin Soni

I like the course, but it seems you are using a mini or advanced panel, so it is hard to follow along with you. Most of the time, you do not switch wheels or explicitly mention which wheel you are modifying. Also, when you use the panel, the mouse is not visible, and so I cannot target the area you are working on.

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