Frank Wylie

That is really difficult to judge from this monitor; I can see some tendency toward warmth within the lighter values but still can pick-out pure whites. If there is an overall warm cast, it can be "pierced" at a certain luma level with pure white. Maybe the highlights have a roll-off of red toward clip on a curves adjustment? Again, not judging from the best monitor possible, so just guessing...

Just my 2 cents... To my eyes, it has a color pallet that is equally-split between Ektachrome 100D/Fujicolor Provia 100 reversal , but with well managed highlights, avoiding clip and retaining detail. Blacks tend toward crushing at the extreme, all colors appear to be destaturated, but reds are desaturated a bit more with a tiny shift to magenta and overall exposure is well below clip. Looks like a lot of very delicate qualification work has been done on faces and specific background details to enforce the look; I don't see a generic LUT being able to encompass the entire ambient representation in a linear fashion from full dark to full bright... Of course, I am looking at the clips on a generic computer monitor in crappy lighting conditions; YMMV.

Great article! I will probably catch a lot of flack on this, but printer lights originated in an era when 99.5% of all color correction happened in-front of the camera; prior to filming. What you can alter and skew is very, very limited to now standard color grading tools. If you have really uneven or mismatched looks on a job, you would probably be advised to make a balancing grade pass BEFORE you try to use printer lights and keep your printer lights node toward the very end of the node tree.

Many thanks again, Sean! I will study this. You have been a great help!

Thank you, Sean. I don't really work with RAW footage, typically only DPX or TIFF files from scans, so I am trying to wrap my head around the wilderness of camera origination formats.

OK, I think I might have a better way to ask the question: Do the Project Settings -> Camera Raw -> Raw Profile profiles reflect the default interpretation values of DaVinci Resolve for all supported RAW file types? If so, I would assume you would then be able to customize each one within a project and save them for any/all listed RAW formats or is only one type active at a time? If you did this upfront, would this take care of automatically applying CTLs to any defined RAW footage?

Thank you, Michael. I will have to study this for a while!

Lee, Thank you for this tutorial! I have a question about using multiple flavors of RAW footage in the same project. In the RAW settings dialog box in Project Settings, is it only capable of defining ONE variety of RAW per project color space, or are all RAW flavors in the pull down menu active and can multiple CTLs be defined within the project using this menu? How would you handle, say, 3 different cameras shooting different brands of RAW? Thank you!

Another way to think of it; in traditional film timing, RGB controls your color/density and your LUT is your film processor and stock characteristics and you only can have ONE LUT for the entire reel...

(Hope this is the right place to post this; I guess a Colormaster is a form of grading "app", albeit a rather large one!) Apologies to Stig and all for being so scarce lately, but I have just spent the last year searching for, procuring and waiting for delivery of a replacement film analyzer. Not east to obtain in this day and age but it finally arrived! For the last 3 hectic days I was assisting Media Migration Technology (formerly RTI) install our new system. It replaces one of our HFC 300D Hazeltine analyzers that was inoperative and allows me to return to electronic grading of negatives instead of grading them by eye over a light table. Being that there's no real analog grading forum, I hope at least this could be a diverting trip down memory lane for anyone who remembers film to film production...

Not as of yet. I know we loan a lot of prints to the BFI and others in the UK and will post an update if I am notified of a screening.

I rarely get a chance to "blow my own horn", but here are a few show dates around the World for B&W 35mm prints I have timed. Please understand that these are prints timed from either the camera original negative or the best available archival film element. These are NOT digitally restored films, but are straightforward prints from film elements that can be 30 to 90 years old so they are not perfect, but are a pure film experience. Of course, our entire lab staff is to be credited for the work, not just myself, so keep that in mind if you have an kind words for our work! NOTICE: This list will be updated as new screening dates are announced. July 25th, 2018 "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), 35mm B&W at the UW-Madison Cinematheque http://cinema.wisc.e...er/35mm-forever (No Play Dates determined) (1940) D. Garson Kanin MY FAVORITE WIFE in Locarno Switzerland (Festival in Locarno starts 8/1),Cine Francaise (September), possibly Kino Rex in Berne (October), August: Heights Theater Columbia Heights, Minnesota http://www.heightstheater.com/ 8/2/18 "Gold Diggers of 1933" (1933) D. Busby Berkeley and Mervyn LeRoy Film Forum NYC, NY https://filmforum.org/ 9/27/18 "M" (1951 remake) D. Joseph Losey September: Arsenal; Berlin, Germany https://www.arsenal-...in.de/home.html 9/17/ 18 "Craig's Wife" (1936) D. Dorthy Arzner 9/22/18 "M" (1951 remake) D. Joseph Losey October: Melbourne Cinematheque Melbourne, Australia http://www.melbourne...no-trailblazer/ 10/10/18 "The Hitch-Hiker" (1953) D. Ida Lupino Film Forum NYC, NY https://filmforum.org/ 10/1/18 "Hotel Imperial" (1927) D. Mauritz Stiller Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia, October 20-28, 2018 Morelia, Mexico https://moreliafilmfest.com/en/ (TBD) "In Caliente" (1935) D. Edward Chodorov Filmpodium Nüschelerstrasse 11, 8001 Zürich, Kinokasse https://www.filmpodium.ch/ (TBD) "M" (1951 remake) D. Joseph Losey November: Kansallienen Audiovisuaalinen Instituutti Helsinki, Finland https://kavi.fi/ (TBD) “The Road Back” (1937, Restored Long Version) D. James Whale

Ah, that's a hard one... Might key it and pull a matte, reverse it and erode the magenta out, but that will typically leave a smooth, defined edge that looks artificial. If you could find a way to inject some noise along the matte edge, it might composite successfully over a replacement sky, but you'd probably have to grain/noise that up too in order for it to blend. Hard to speculate without seeing the image...

Why isn't sky replacement an alternative when there is no detail to enhance? In the distant past, cinematographers used to carry around large diapositive glass plates with images of clouds on them to cover bald skies. They would put them on a C-stand, position them in the frame to fill the sky and shoot. https://books.google.com/books?id=Dgd6AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=cloud+plates+cinematography&source=bl&ots=8g_HsoDjFS&sig=1ZAy7dA4BBB1k0ABYM7O0Ldpv5U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwim5o3p__vaAhVvc98KHcZwCnoQ6AEIOTAC#v=onepage&q=cloud plates cinematography&f=false

I'm sitting here listening to the live NAB feed from Blackmagic while eye-ball timing a finegrain from the silent era... The irony is palpable...

The .dpx format is strictly a wrapper; the "essence" (image and metadata) can be just about any color space, resolution, encoding methodology, etc... Have a peek at the file headers to see if there are clues there, or, ask the file owner just what they are!

"Film print emulation" is what I have always heard, but I assume they all mean the same thing...

In any event, would assume the LUTs came from the film stock manufacturer, but I could be wrong...

I'd urge you to stick to the industry adopted standards. This is nothing new under the sun; the same problems existed in motion picture film distribution. Theatrical venues varied widely from theater to theater in color temp and screen brightness (among other things) and even film labs didn't totally conform to agreed SMPTE standards, but at least everyone had a common nodal point around which to cluster in regards to what constituted an acceptable quality image. If we start independently chasing the latest whim of TV manufacturers, there will be quite a mess.

I'll dodge your question directly and send you to Mr. Art Adams! https://www.provideocoalition.com/the_not_so_technical_guide_to_s_log_and_log_gamma_curves/

Jim, Thanks for that concise article on film timing! I've had a while to ponder the difference between traditional film timing and digital color grading and would like to add a few observations myself. Traditional film timing depended upon a lot of up-front experimentation and decision making prior to shooting, more modern productions tend to put the emphasis on post production shaping of the image with an eye toward maintaining maximum flexibility to shape the look in post. For good or bad, you are locked into a gamma/stock response when traditional film production began and it is the duty of post production technicians to make that vision happen with the guidance of the cinematographer. Yes you can vary the initial gamma development of the negative but you are locked into a fairly rigid set of constraints that have very definite limits of variation in post. Most of the determination of image quality occurred at the time of shooting, through the skill of the cinematographer to shape the image within a proscribed and per-determined set of filmstock, developing and release stock parameters. Unlike most modern digital productions, the gamma of the negative image could only be varied slightly, the density range of the print only manipulated withing a certain range and the release print certainly proscribed its own limitations without resorting to highly unusual processes, fraught with peril and potential disaster. So, sounding like an old man here, I say that "filmic looks" are difficult for modern filmmakers to emulate digitally because every parameter is potentially variable in a way that doesn't necessarily contribute to a unified gamma response of the presentation media. If you can vary the lift, gamma, gain, and independently vary the relationships between primary and secondary colors, in the post production period, it will not resemble a medium that constrains you to work within those limited parameters and could appear less cohesive. If anyone would like a rough idea of what it is like to time film, Try this: import a series of log-based files into Resolve with one being a test chart or representative shot of the whole project. Next, on the timeline, edit the sequence as desired. Then, switch to the color tab and using only the luma curve and the sole representative shot within the timeline mode, create a 21 point curve on a parallel node to normalize the dynamic range of the footage; When satisfied, switch to clip based mode to continue. Next, switch to the Primary Bars grading interface and USING ONLY the Primary Bars offset controls, time each shot by varying the RGB component of each clip to color balance and adjust the density ONLY using the ganged-wheel of the Primary Bars Offset to adjust for density. You will quickly realize why on-set filtration, lighting and contrast manipulation are so terribly important to shooting film the traditional way.

Jim, Thanks for that concise article on film timing! I've had a while to ponder the difference between traditional film timing and digital color grading and would like to add a few observations myself. Traditional film timing depended upon a lot of up-front experimentation and decision making prior to shooting, more modern productions tend to put the emphasis on post production shaping of the image with an eye toward maintaining maximum flexibility to shape the look in post. For good or bad, you are locked into a gamma/stock response when traditional film production began and it is the duty of post production technicians to make that vision happen with the guidance of the cinematographer. Yes you can vary the initial gamma development of the negative but you are locked into a fairly rigid set of constraints that have very definite limits of variation in post. Most of the determination of image quality occurred at the time of shooting, through the skill of the cinematographer to shape the image within a proscribed and per-determined set of filmstock, developing and release stock parameters. Unlike most modern digital productions, the gamma of the negative image could only be varied slightly, the density range of the print only manipulated withing a certain range and the release print certainly proscribed its own limitations without resorting to highly unusual processes, fraught with peril and potential disaster. So, sounding like an old man here, I say that "filmic looks" are difficult for modern filmmakers to emulate digitally because every parameter is potentially variable in a way that doesn't necessarily contribute to a unified gamma response of the presentation media. If you can vary the lift, gamma, gain, and independently vary the relationships between primary and secondary colors, in the post production period, it will not resemble a medium that constrains you to work within those limited parameters and could appear less cohesive. If anyone would like a rough idea of what it is like to time film, Try this: import a series of log-based files into Resolve with one being a test chart or representative shot of the whole project. Next, on the timeline, edit the sequence as desired. Then, switch to the color tab and using only the luma curve and the sole representative shot within the timeline mode, create a 21 point curve on a parallel node to normalize the dynamic range of the footage; When satisfied, switch to clip based mode to continue. Next, switch to the Primary Bars grading interface and USING ONLY the Primary Bars offset controls, time each shot by varying the RGB component of each clip to color balance and adjust the density ONLY using the ganged-wheel of the Primary Bars Offset to adjust for density. You will quickly realize why on-set filtration, lighting and contrast manipulation are so terribly important to shooting film the traditional way.

There is news of a new iMac Pro Workstation, but after looking at the specs and the price, I'd have to say it's too little, too late... https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/12/apple-imac-pro-launches-december-14th/

I don't know of an unsharp mask plugin (like in Photoshop) for Resolve; too bad. Short of that, you might try splitting out the luma from the chroma and manipulating those independently, but truly out of focus material is really hard to recover. Josh Petok shared a tip from Mike Seymore's Red302 class at FXPHD: