DaVinci Resolve used to grade new Ridley Scott film

--

DaVinci Resolve used to grade new Ridley Scott film --

Mon, 19 Jan 2015 09:52

--

DaVinci Resolve, created by Blackmagic Design, was used at Deluxe Creative Services Company 3 by colourist Stephen Nakamura to grade 20th Century Fox s Exodus: Gods and Kings. The film is directed by Ridley Scott and tells the story of Moses (Christian Bale) as he rises up against the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses (Joel Edgerton), setting 400,000 slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues.

The film brings together state of the art visual effects and 3D cinematography by Dariusz Wolski. In mastering the images separately for 2D and 3D display formats, Nakamura had to always keep in mind the different display characteristics of the two formats in terms of the amount of light that bounced off the screen in areas of the brightest highlights. While the standard for 2D projection is 14 foot lambert (fL), most 3D projection is 3.5 fL, producing a significantly dimmer highlight and much less contrast between the brightest and the darkest imagery that can be displayed.

When youre working at 3.5 fL, you need to globally pull everything up to get the midtones and shadows feeling like theyre in the right place to look as much as possible like the 2D version, Nakamura explained. But when you do whats necessary to get the midtones and shadows in the right place you can start to clip the highlights. So then you need to isolate those areas of the frame that clip and pull them back down. This can be a time consuming process where you draw Power Windows and build highlight keys or other tools to isolate the highlights and manipulate them without affecting the midtones and shadows. But using the Highlight and Shadows tool on DaVinci Resolve 11 s Colour Match Pallet, he was able to bring those highlights into the necessary range for 3.5 fL display without having to create the elaborate secondaries he previously needed.

A lot of Exodus was designed to be really desaturated, with a lot of cold tones in the colour that was there. It was something I could apply over the whole image, the colourist said, but there were some portions where colour, especially the red in blood, was very important to the story.

You really want to see the colour of the blood, he noted, but once youve pulled the colour out of the image, you cant just key portions of the frame where theres blood and pull the colour back up, he added, explaining that he used DaVinci Resolves parallel node function to solve the problem. I created the desaturation in one node, then keyed the blood in the next node, and then used the parallel node to bypass all the desaturation and colour shifts toward blue specifically within the keyed portion of the frame, where the red blood was. Then I could dial that correction up or down until I found where it brought out the colour in the blood without looking artificial within the context of the whole shot.

Nakamura also fine-tuned colour for some of the day for night sequences by bringing the whole look down, pulling some of the colour out and making everything a little blue to indicate moonlight. He used highlight keys to bring the sky down, along with a combination of Power Windows and tracking to bring people, especially faces, slightly up.

Related Articles

Blackmagic Cameras used to shoot sugar documentaryThat Sugar Film was shot using the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Production Camera 4K...

Read more...

Blackmagic Design URSA update includes 80 fps 4K recording Blackmagic Design has released a major software update developed in conjunction with high-end cinematographers...

Read more...

Blackmagic Design to demonstrate its 4K workflows At IBC 2014 Blackmagic Design will be demonstrating the latest in Ultra HD 4K workflows and content production for the broadcast and live production markets...

Read more...

Venturing into another worldSanta Monica-based Company 3 used Blackmagic Design s DaVinci Resolve for colour grading for four different versions of 20th Century Fox s 3D movie, Prometheus. Director Ridley Scott chose...

Read more...

Technicolor s first 4k DIThe recently released Hollywood blockbuster Spider-Man 3 is the first film to have gone through Technicolor s 4k Digital Intermediate (DI) process. The Hollywood Reporter s Carolyn Giardina writes that the process was expedited at the company s DI facility on the Sony Studios lot in Culver City.

Read more...



-- --

-- --

-- Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus

LINK:	http://www.screenafrica.com/page/news/post-production-technology/16488...
	See more stories from screenafrica

Most recent headlines