Marc Wielage

What hardware (CPU, RAM, GPU, disk i/o)? What OS? What kind of source material (codec, bit-depth)? What timeline resolution?

If you're delivering in Rec709, you could also just decode the clip and adjust the Raw files as needed and do it all manually. Store one correction for one type of camera as a Gallery still, and store another correction for the other type of camera as another Gallery still. Then as they go back and forth, grab whatever you need and go for it.

As an alternative, you could create a temp grade for (say) the Red files, sort them in C-mode so that all those camera files come up at once, and then apply that temp grade to all of them. And then locate all the BMD files, highlight those, and apply the temp grade there. Go back to A-mode (record) sorting, and fine-tune every clip. It's not that hard.

The International Colorist Academy (icolorist.com) provides training in classroom situations, all the way from basic to fairly advanced. Be advised they're not cheap, but their teachers are top-notch and do a very good job. They provide classes all over the world, so it's possible one will take place in the next few months in your area.

Tiffen abandoned their partnership with DFT and allowed DFT to take it over completely. They're the same filters, just without the Tiffen name on them. And the "Light" patterns are part of it.

21 hours ago, Bruno Mansi said:

Isn't this version just for stills? In the 'requirements' tab, it only shows Photoshop, Lightroom etc. No mention of OFX

The Video/Film tab takes you to a different page, which says:

Gobo library for lighting effects includes 751 gobos categorized into Abstract, Doors, Elements, Foliage, Snowflakes, Textures and Windows groups

and:

The DFT video/film plug-in is licensed on a per host basis. You can choose from: Adobe After Effects/Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro X/Motion, Avid Editing Systems, OFX hosts or a Multi-Host license which will run all video/film and OFX hosts on the same machine.

New link for the Tiffen "Light" plug-in, which is now run separately from Tiffen by DFT directly:

http://www.digitalfilmtools.com/light/

Remember that you can color correct the composited grain, and that will affect the intensity... all the way from almost invisible to very harsh. Just a slight gamma adjustment or a custom curve can do it. I tend to use one of the middle Cinegrain selections when I want to do something subtle. 

One interesting tip I heard in LA: I know of a colorist who uses 16mm grain on the outside edge of a circular mask, and 35mm grain on the inside. I think that's a little extreme, but if it works for him, I'm not going to tell him he's wrong. You can make an argument for composited grain with a vignette in some cases.

I do so much with windows, masks, filtration, and keys, that LUTs are not part of what I do for the look 99% of the time. On the rare occasions when people bring in a LUT, I'll make a stag at telling them we'll match it "or their money back." As I said elsewhere in another thread, it's possible to completely duplicate a LUT with the controls you already have in Resolve (or any other good color-correction system). A "filmic image" really boils down to great lighting, great art direction, great exposure, and great lenses, and that happens long before the project arrives to the colorist. 

A lot of it just entails experience, hard work, having an open mind, and being willing to experiment. I stumble over little tricks and techniques all the time, and I've been enmeshed in color and post for almost 40 years now. Try new things, read the manuals, watch the tutorials out there, and find ways to solve the cinematographer's problems. 

You can also see Juan Melara's tutorial on how to duplicate certain film-based LUTs as Resolve PowerGrades here:

http://juanmelara.com.au/blog/rebuilding-the-600-dollar-linny-lut-for-the-alexa-plus-free-download 

Some good reference material here:

"Dolby Vision Color Grading Best Practices Guide 2018"

http://www.digitalvision.tv/w/images/d/de/Dolby_Vision_Color_Grading_Best_Practices_Guide_2018.pdf

I also have collated a few HDR/Rec 2020/Rec 2100 documents relating to post-production which are at this download link:

https://spaces.hightail.com/space/nEaXy

On Baselight, no. It's a powerful system, and I'm sure there's an equivalent of it there.

I have no problem with experimentation, and I have to admit, I've occasionally stumbled on some interesting looks just pounding on the knobs. But I'm much more a fan of digging inside the correction to understand why it's happening, and that's not readily done with a LUT.

Well, you could just avoid the LUT entirely and color correct the image by hand. I never trusted the Kodak LUTs, and I worked for Kodak for 2 years. I think they were vague and specious, and there was a lot of guesswork and trial & error involved. (Same thing with Technicolor, and we went through a whole slew of LUTs there.)

If you're going to use a Color Checker chart, I'd look at the Color Checker video (the big one) and place it where the actors are standing. Be warned that the saturation values are not accurate. The DSC charts are fairly accurate, but they cost a lot more money. In truth, some of this stuff is very subjective, and sometimes the filmmakers' artistic intent overrides accuracy.

Whenever a client asks me this, I always laugh and say, "this is like the 'how much does it cost to build a boat?' conversation." I've done entire features in one day, and I've done features in four months. (Dances with Wolves was 4 months, and each Star Wars film I did took two months, and those were often 12-hour days, probably 250 hours each.) I think Jamie's estimate of a day per 20-minute reel is reasonable.

I generally divide it into shots: if we have 400 shots in a one-reel timeline, and we have to get it done in 8 hours, then we have about 1.5 minutes per shot (maximum) to get it done in about 8 hours. Any time we have to stop and do intricate keys, layers, window tracking, beauty fixes, drastic time-of-day changes, or relighting will throw off the schedule. In episodic TV, you're lucky to get 2 x 10-hour days, and I'd say 2 x 8-hour days is more typical. There are always exceptions: I'm told that Game of Thrones takes 5 days, but that's a very VFX-heavy show with a lot of very challenging work. 

If I can set my own pace, I think 1 day per reel and then another day for a client-supervised pass with fixes is reasonable. If this is a 6-reel film, then that would be 12 days, plus a day at the beginning for the conform and another day at the end for final deliverables. But I also try to build in provisions for overages, changes, redos, fixes, and so on. Legitimate QC fixes I'll do for free provided it's a shot here or there (maybe 6 total).

I'm a fan of using no LUT at all and just doing everything manually. The advantage is that this way, I have complete control of the image pipeline and know how and where everything is going to clip or crush. Once I have a given look (like a Powergrade) for a specific show or a specific scene, I'll use that throughout the scene and then make changes where necessary for style and to make it match.

I don't have a problem with specific color science for Red, like RedWideRGB for color and Log3G10 for gamma (or RedLogFilm for gamma), but after that it's all me. I also have no problem with creating LUTs so that the VFX department can use those while creating composites with log footage, so they know the material will look correct by the time it round-trips back to me. When this is done right, the original correction drops right on and it all looks fantastic. 

But as a look... I think you're better off just experimenting and creating your own Powergrades (or stored looks in other systems) and then try those with new projects. If they don't work, throw them out and come up with something new. To me, that's what a colorist does.

I don't have a problem at all with LUTs thrown on to material on set or as a temporary look for editing, which makes total sense. I also use the temp version as a reference and will routinely match to it with the controls I have, and then use that look as a starting point. The Reference is good to drag along during the session so that you can say, "here's the dailies look -- now here's where we are in the final." They can be identical or as different as you want them to be.

On 5/18/2017 at 7:20 AM, Thomas Singh said:

Is this Steve Jobs in front of a Mini Panel? So that's what he's fiddling with up there.

Naw, Steve had a much larger charisma. I am very close to Steve Jobs' age, though, and I tend to wear only black T-shirts and blue jeans (no reflections in the monitor or bounce to DI screens).

I'm not convinced the film LUTs really do anything than provided one person's idea of what the emulsion was. Bear in mind that what the stock looks like heavily depends on how it's developed and how it's scanned. I've seen specific pieces of film (even from the same project) look as much as 25% different because of developing and scanning problems. Even different batches of the same negative stock can look different. This is a moving target. 

The only way the Mini Panel is usable to me is with macro keypads on the side. I'm currently using an XKeys24 on the right and a G13 Logitech on the left, and that's been working so far. 

I have a longer review of the pros and cons for free over on MixingLight.com:

https://mixinglight.com/color-tutorial/color-correction-gear-head-thoughts-on-the-resolve-mini-control-panel/

You might ask Juan Salvo at The Colour Space/NY:

http://thecolourspace.com/

Log as shot on what camera? Log is different on just about every camera, because each manufacturer kind of has their own idea of what that is. I find it useful to try out the built-in LUTs within programs like Baselight and Resolve, then find a way to reverse-engineer what they do only using curves and primaries. That way, I find you can have more control than just with a LUT. 

The stock Alexa LogC -> Rec709 can be pretty harsh, but Arri has a free service on their website so that if you wanted to, you could make custom adjustments to the toe or shoulder to get different results. Another thing that's useful is to have the DP shoot standardized charts (like the DSC Chroma DuMonde), and see how those react with your own software. Once you can get a predictable result from a chart, the rest is just customizing the look for a DP's particular technique and style. A LUT per se isn't necessary, but I have no problem using a technical LUT for something like dailies, where quick turnaround is necessary. Custom LUTs are also useful in some situations, like turning over a look to the VFX team. 

Highlight control is very valuable in situations like this, and if you use it as part of a tracked window (and/or a key), you can pin point problems like this fairly surgically. 

I'm using an 8-bay G-Speed Studio XL in RAID5, and it's doing almost 800MBps with Thunderbolt 2, which is more than fast enough for 4K. It's rare I get any performance issues from the drive. The Trashcan has its own problems. 

14 hours ago, Orash Rahnema said:

Yeah i know those ones, as i said on the previous post this are extremely expensive. Are there any inexpensive hdr monitors? How do colorist start practicing on grading hdr if there are not entry level monitors?

Short answer: No, there are no inexpensive HDR grading monitors. (Not yet.) As far as I know, Netflix and Amazon are the only companies demanding HDR delivery, and I believe they're asking for Dolby Vision masters. 

It's hard for a consumer set to even hit Rec709 specs, and HDR is literally 10 times harder. You can make a good case that nobody is going to see precisely the same HDR pictures on different consumer displays, but this will get better over time. 

Here's a link to some miscellaneous HDR tech documents if you'd like to read them:

https://spaces.hightail.com/space/nEaXy