color correction

Colorist Juan Melara has provided the below color grading tutorial for achieving what he calls "the summer blockbuster" look, which predominantly features teals and oranges. Melara uses Davinci Resolve Lite and also provides downloads of the footage and LUTs he used so that you can follow along.

Watch below and read more here on his site.

Colorist Aaron Peak (Hot Tub Time Machine, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1) talks to Film Independent about the symbiotic relationship between a filmmaker and colorist.

He says, "Filmmakers can do several things in pre-production and on set to help the colorist and their pictures. Whenever possible, a film production should have a post house and/or colorist signed on and involved in the process as early as they can. Rarely are pre-production services charged for and they will save the film money and time in the long run. This relationship can optimize the camera imaging workflow specifically for the needs of production and post. These are efficiencies that can lead to less work for editorial and conform and also provide a better image on set."

Read the full interview here.

Steve's Blog writes:  FilmLight, the British creators of high-end color grading solutions, announced a line of news products for NAB 2013:  a new Baselight ONE, The Slate, FLUX Store, additional Baselight Editions and an update to their BaseLight flagship system.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

Filmmaker Magazine talks to VFX artist Ryan Bozajian who also took on the role of pre-grading Roman Coppola's latest film, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, using DaVinci Resolve.

Explains Bozajian, "Since I had a background in color grading, I started thinking of different ways I could cut costs using my skill sets. Some of these productions have a really tight budget. They want to have a good DI but the budget is already so tight; what if I could save a chunk of money by doing what I was calling at that time a pre-grade? I just started finding different ways to do that. This was by far the most functional and smooth and painless version of this process that I think any of us have ever done."

American Zoetrope and SPY used DaVinci Resolve Lite and DaVinci Resolve, respectively, for color grading on Roman Coppola’s latest film, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.

Technicolor CineStyle Color Assist enters a market already crowded with color grading and looks applications and plug-ins, but since it is a color application from color technology pioneer Technicolor, it merits a look.

Since its inception, the Sundance Film Festival has been considered the premier platform for independent film, and the 2013 event will be no different with numerous feature length films selected from 4,044 submissions from around the world. While there will be no shortage of diverse topics, styles and themes, four of the films at the 2013 festival will have one thing in common. They were all graded using Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 9 color correction software by award winning colorist Alex Bickel. Alex is co founder of NYC based Color Collective, a new high end color grading facility specializing in commercials, music videos and feature films. Alex is also available on the west coast at Cinelicious.

In this video tutorial, Jesse Borkowski explains how to work with CinemaDNG files (captured with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera or Ikonoskop A-Cam DII) and use ACES color space within DaVinci Resolve 9.0. Watch below.

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 war drama The Hurt Locker swept the Oscars for its powerfully realistic portrayal of an Iraq war bomb squad unit. Bigelow’s follow up this year, the even more ambitious war-themed feature Zero Dark Thirty, is receiving the same kind of accolades. The film, which starts with the 9/11 attack and concludes with the Navy SEAL’s raid of Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound, is told in a very straightforward way; Bigelow embraces a style designed to make viewers feel like they’re observing real life unfold without the traditional trappings that indicate that we’re watching a war movie.

Blackmagic Design has announced that Los Angeles based post production company Encore is using DaVinci Resolve for color grading on CBS’ hit television show Elementary, which features Jonny Lee Miller as detective Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as his faithful sidekick Watson.

Angelo Lorenzo explains LUTs, writing, "A LUT, or look up table, changes color from one value to another based on a list of values. For video and motion graphics, a LUT is useful for matching footage from one source to another (i.e. a 3D render to live action film), for visual effect (i.e. vintage film emulation), or for output preview (i.e. film stock, digital projection, and DVD). While color management for video is still considered the wild west, the use of LUTs has increased as hobbyists and indie filmmakers gain access to once-expensive tools like Adobe Speedgrade (formerly Iridas Speedgrade NX) and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve."

Read his full post here.

The Visual Effects Society has released a 54-page white paper called "Cinematic Color: From Your Monitor to the Big Screen." It contains text and diagrams to address color management-related issues and challenges and is intended for computer graphic artists and software developers.

Download the PDF here. (via 3D CineCast)

Technicolor has released a $99 color correction tool called CineStyle Color Assist. Says Vincent Laforet, "The beauty of this software is that it allows you to do only as much as you want, or need to. You can get quite far in terms of how far you push an image within this software – or you can do some very quick adjustments on set and send those over to your colorists with a sidecar file – if you’re a DP on set for example. CineStyle Color Assist does all of this – but stops short of going into secondary windows and nodes – something that you’ll find in full-featured grading software."

Colorist Alexis Van Hurkman opines on what to consider when choosing a monitor. He writes, "It seems to me that shopping for a color critical display is similar to being an audiophile—you can make yourself crazy searching for the Nth degree of perfection.

Award-winning post houses Company 3 and EFILM joined forces to provide Eon Productions' newest James Bond feature Skyfall - the first digitally-shot film in the franchise - with a complete, integrated workflow, ensuring consistency from dailies through to digital intermediate (DI). Based on this model, the companies have branded their collaborative location service as EC3, which leverages the technology and personnel of both post houses.

Award-winning post house Company 3, a subsidiary of Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc., announced today it recently provided a variety of post production services to its first game project, Call of Duty: Black Ops II and concurrently, announced the opening of a new division dedicated specifically to offering color grading and other high-end post production services that will assist in taking game production to the next level of artistic heights.

Aged 11, colorist Leandro Marini saw Pixar’s Toy Story and decided he wanted to work in the movie business. He learned the art of CG modeling and animation during his teens, before jumping into 2D compositing. Armed with these skills he worked for six years as a freelance digital VFX artist at facilities in Miami on commercials for the likes of Ford, Sara Lee and TV shows on Viacom’s VH1 channel.

Oliver Peters give some color correction tips and tricks for superimposing images on top of one another to achieve certain effects. He writes, "Editors have frequently built a look referred to as 'instant sex,' which is a technique for adding highlight glows by compositing copies of the same clip on two video layers. The process is easiest with NLEs and compositors like Motion or After Effects that offer composite modes."

Read his full post here.

Award-winning post house Company 3 and Deluxe sister company Centro, Hong Kong's leading visual effects production company, utilized sophisticated remote technology to allow Company 3's Stefan Sonnenfeld to grade a thrilling, VFX-filled Halloween-themed spot for the Haunted Halloween attraction at Disneyland, Hong Kong.

Richard Harrington leads this free hour-long tutorial which goes through the basics of color correction using Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro and the Tiffen Dfx version 3 plug-in.

Watch below.

This short Adobe tutorial goes through the necessary steps to add a grading track to your SpeedGrade timeline and use that to add new sets of grades on top of your color corrections. This would allow for creative looks across multiple clips or, even, a whole project.

Read it here.

Company 3’s London office used DaVinci Resolve to color grade Disney’s 3D animated stop-motion feature Frankenweenie from director Tim Burton. After unexpectedly losing his dog, Sparky, young Victor harnesses the power of science to bring his best friend back to life, albeit with a few minor adjustments.

Company 3, Deluxe 142, Deluxe Digital Cinema, Deluxe Laboratories, EFILM, and Method Studios, all part of Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc., have come together for Seven Psychopaths, providing Blueprint Pictures with a comprehensive post workflow.