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Welcome to Masters of Color! In this podcast we've invited a star gallery of renowned colorists to talk about the art and science of high-end color grading. Cullen Kelly is the host, and our guests are Peter Doyle, Ian Vertovec, Aurora Gordon, Damien Var Der Cruyssen, Toby Tomkins, Eric Weidt, Steve Yedlin and Stephen Nakamura. This is your chance to stay on top of the color game and learn from the real masters of color. A new episode will be added every Sunday, and you can subscribe to the show on any major podcast platform, including Spotify and Apple Podcast. On Lowepost, all episodes are available instantly and contains video. Episode 1 In the first episode Cullen talks with director David Fincher’s favorite colorist Eric Weidt about the art and craft of color grading. Eric has an incredible list of credits that includes Mank, Mindhunter and House of Cards. His works on these projects extends far beyond traditional tasks of color grading, incorporating complex look modeling and incredible detailed adjustments on virtually every frame. The techniques and insights he shares in this episode are unique, and includes topics such as how to sculpt the viewers experience with textural and spatial tools, the lens treatment techniques used on Mindhunter, the process behind and the swan curve used on the day-for-night shots on Mank, advanced grain work and so much more.

In the early days, a professional color grading suite with high performance and real-time playback was extremely expensive. Today, it’s easier than ever to build a color grading suite for a reasonable cost and get all the performance you need. In a full-service post facility you may need enormous displays, server systems, perfect lighting and unlimited performance, but here are the basic requirements to build an affordable color grading suite that let’s you work fast and precisely in your home office. Mac M1 With the massive speed increase on new Apple Mac M1 models, DaVinci Resolve users can play back, edit and grade 4K projects faster and cheaper than every before. The new system is very efficient with their integrated RAM and 16GB is enough for most large projects and demanding tasks. The key to the performance will be the speed of your storage. A Mac Mini have all the necessary ports to connect screens, monitor, a capture/playback solutions as the BlackMagic Ultrastudio 4K Mini, streaming solution, and even a control surface (at least with a USB Hub) Monitor For affordable professional monitoring, we recommend the DM240 from Flanders Scientific as it delivers extremely precise color accuracy and comes with all the features you need for a good price. It also comes pre-calibrated from the factory and is equipped with an internal auto-calibration solution that let you perform a fast and accurate calibration yourself with the cheap 1D3 OEM probe. Recently, FSI introduced a more affordable version of the DM240, called the DM241 that shares all of the DM240’s advanced capabilities, but uses a more affordable 1100:1 contrast instead of 1500:1 contrast panel. If you bring directors or clients in for the session and need a screen on the wall, the LG CX 55" is a popular model. Read our professional guide to color grading monitors to read more about this monitor and other alternatives in the professional range. Capture/Playback Solution All you need to connect the monitor and playback video from DaVinci Resolve is the affordable UltraStudio Monitor 3G device. For HD playback you will need the Ultrastudio HD Mini, and the UltraStudio 4K Mini for 4K and capturing options. GUI For GUI monitor, the Dell UltraSharps and HP Dreamcolor series are popular affordable alternatives worth considering. Audio Monitoring For clean accurate sound many facilities use these audio monitors from JBL and these from Yamaha, but there are countless alternatives from brands like Genelec, Rokit, Adam, Mackie, M-Audio and others. Control Surface Your color grading suite will feel incomplete without a color control surface as that’s the fastest and most efficient way to color grade. While BlackMagic Design offer their Mini and Micro panels for an affordable price, we recommend Elements from Tangent Elements. It’s a cost effective modular design which lets you choose only the components you need and it works with a variety of applications. Read our full guide to color grading surfaces, which also includes some ultra-affordable alternatives. Remote solution When working from home you will need a remote solution. Pixelview is a very popular all-in-one solution for colorists that enables easy collaboration with remote clients. It has a built in video-chat and you can make changes in real-time while everyone is watching the same high quality image. Lowepost This post might include affiliate agreements, for full information click here.

This course is for those who have already seen the Fairlight Fundamentals course and want to learn more about audio mixing and advanced audio editing features. You'll learn everything you need to know to edit, mix, and deliver your video to meet the technical specifications for digital broadcasters and TV. All within DaVinci Resolve Fairlight. The project files include both a mixed and an unmixed version of a commercial with voice over, dialogue, sound effects and music so that you can practice. Some of the topics discussed in the course are Elastic Wave Retiming, Zero Crossing, Audio Transients, LFE channels, and working with Flexbus. You will also get a deeper understanding of 5.1 surround mixing and a look at immersive mixing. The footage and assets used in this course are available for download. Download project files About the instructor Kevin P McAuliffe is an award winning editor and visual effects creator with over 20 years of teaching and training experience. Over the past years Kevin has delivered world-class work for clients such as Warner Bros, Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Elevation Pictures. Who is this course designed for? Film editors Sound engineers with background from ProTools, Logic etc Audio hobbyists Lessons overview 01: Introduction 02: Getting the Commercial Ready for Mixing 03: Elastic Wave Retiming 04: Audio Transients 05: Zero Crossing 06: Evening out the audio 07: 5.1 Output Track Setup 08: 5.1 Hardware Monitoring Setup 09: Surround Sound Analyzer 10: Surround Audio Pan Window 11: Surround Audio Vs Immersive Audio Pan 12: Surround Automation 13: Creating an LFE Channel 14: Working With Flexbus 15: Loudness Basics 16: Analyze Audio (Loudness) Levels 17: Working With Loudness Visually 18: Delivering the Mix 19: Delivering Split Elements

The director, Sean Thompson, wanted a warm sensual look for the spot, with a sense of gold permeating throughout. The colour reference that Sean had in mind for this was the desert fight scene from Kingdom of Heaven, directed by Ridley Scott. The challenge was to get all of the footage looking as though it was during the ‘magic hour’, when for example the opening of the commercial was shot at midday. Also, even though we went for a heavy golden look, I had to make sure it looked clean and sleek at the same time. LUTs The spot was shot on Alexa with anamorphic lenses, and graded on DaVinci Resolve. I sometimes use LUTs in my grade because that gives the picture more depth and make it look more cinematic, less digital. If utilising LUTs, I like to blend them through, so that I’m left with maybe only 5 or 10 percent of the intensity of the LUT. READ: Mitch Bogdanowicz about LUTs I find that with all the digital cameras nowadays everything is very flat, especially the skin tones, so I'm using certain LUTs that help the skin tone (giving it more colour and volume). Set your levels right One of the first rules when you train as a colourist is to set your levels right. When I first started grading, about 14 years ago when obviously we were working predominantly on film, the first step in a grade was 'Neg matching'. Meaning you would bring your neg's RGB levels to a correct point in the whites and blacks (with no crushing and no clipping). That would allow you to start with a balanced picture. An exception being when certain coloured filters or lights were used. The same still applies today, only that when working with a digital picture rather than film, it can be trickier because sometimes the footage that we get is not straight from the camera and it might have been already compressed into a QT prores, therefore not having all the range to work with. This is why it is always important to provide your colourist with RAW files, allowing the maximum range within which to work. When working on the RED or RAW files, etc, I sometimes use the camera settings option in Resolve to change the exposure or get more info in the blacks or highlights. Then, I use the primary colour corrector to set the levels right. And yes, it's very important to start the grade with a good balanced picture because it is the only way you can get the most out of the picture (and know what your limitations are as well). The golden look After I set my picture balance right, I start working on the look that the director and the DOP aim for. With this particular film ‘Legacy’, it was all about the golden sunset look. I like to work on the overall picture, and I find that this way the look is more natural, not so 'Instagram'. Having said that, on the Legacy film I selected the highlights and added a touch of warmth in them, as I was trying to recreate the warm late afternoon summer sun. I also used few subtle vignettes throughout, to make the picture look a bit more cosy and ad more depth. I kept a good healthy contrast that complements the lovely anamorphic flares from the camera. To help enhance the cinematic look I also added a touch of grain in the picture. I find that it's always great to add some texture into the clean digital images. In general, I use the vectors and qualifiers a lot, also lots of windows, the contrast and the amazing midtone detail both in the DaVinci Resolve primaries. Skin tones I like to start working towards a look in small steps, as I find it very important to keep good skin tones in my grades. With a golden look this can be a bit tricky, as in order to create it you need to find a fine balance of yellows and reds. I find that with a lot of digital cameras, skin can often look really grey and flat, so I like to add colour and some depth into the skin. I think that one of the most important things is to always having good skin tones and ensuring that they work with the rest of the picture. Basically if the picture is lit with a blue light, I think its fine to have cool skin tones, it looks natural. The briefs are different for different brands and types of films, from the translucid skins of high fashion models to the nice peachy skins of pampers babies. One colour that always creeps into the skin tones is green and I find that it is a very delicate balance of removing that and not making it look too magenta. Colour influences perception, sometimes in an obvious manner and sometimes in far subtler and unexpected ways. Fundamentally, what we’re always contending with are levels of hue, saturation, lift, gamma and gain. The balance of these and their effect can on a subjective level be quite finite but there are some accepted and proven conventions to the psychology of colour, that as individuals all of us generally adhere to, in so much as eliciting similar emotional responses; bright & warm equals happy, cold equals sad. Colour can be used to associate a positive or negative tone, make us hungry, encourage feelings of calmness or energy, etc. Clever advertising and marketing executives are of course aware of this. When you’re an established colourist and working at a certain level, it’s all about the fine details. Nowadays with a plethora of apps and software available it’s not too tricky to add a funky look to a picture but in my opinion if a grade looks as though it was done on an app, there’s not much value to it. I always try to stay true to what the cinematographer had in mind when he shot the film, and go from there. I would also say that it is very important to be interested in cinematography and photography in general. To continue to learn and be inspired. The technical side is a large part of the craft, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the pipeline, which will give you confidence in handling any job. Social and communication skills are also very important. Simona Cristea All images and clips copyright © 2016 Cake Group / Dark Energy

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. Download project files 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 hierarchy. 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.