How colourist Dylan R Hopkin utilised Davinci Resolve to being the drama to life, including greenscreening the lead characters coat to create the right colour
By Contributor
Published: February 15, 2023
How colourist Dylan R Hopkin utilised Davinci Resolve to being the drama to life, including greenscreening the lead character's coat to create the right colour
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
Kampen om Narvik had its theatrical release in Norway in December 2022 and has just premiered on Netflix (in selected territories), as Narvik. Directed by Erik Skjoldbj rg, the film saw cinematographer John-Erling Holmenes Fredriksen work closely with Dylan R. Hopkin, senior colourist at Nordisk Film ShortCut Oslo, to add realism, light, and deep colour to the look and feel of the period drama.
Davinci Resolve's colour tools were fully exploited to solve numerous challenges around the unique visual look of the film, as well as VFX clean-up tasks, stabilising, adding camera shakes, accentuate the costume, and production design, and even invent a completely virtual colour' for the main character's distinctive clothing.
The film is set in 1940, while the people of the Norwegian port city of Narvik, a strategic gateway for the Swedish iron ore for Hitler's war machine, are threatened by invading German forces. The story centers around the ordeals facing Norwegian army corporal Gunnar Tofte (Carl Martin Eggesb ) and his wife Ingrid (Kristine Hartgen).
The film is about the Battle of Narvik and its part in the larger war, but it's also a very personal story about a small family and the impossible choices they had to make under pressure, says Hopkin.
The film also has personal resonance for the director of photography, John-Erling Holmenes Fredriksen, who grew up in Northern Norway. He wanted to bring this intimate, human story to life with realism and a color palette rarely seen in war movies.
I found photographs from the period in Life magazine that were saturated and vibrant, shot with medium format cameras on the Kodachrome film stock; I wasn't used to seeing the war in this way, says Fredriksen. It became more real to me, something present. It felt like a good starting point for the look of the film.
Using photo references from Fredriksen, Hopkin experimented in post, applying colour transformations on digital ARRI RAW files to achieve densities that could reproduce the hue shifts and depth present in the analogue film stock. The colourist worked in cylindrical colour models such as HSV and HSL to manipulate hue, luminance and saturation separately from each other to produce a show LUT' (look-up table).
The LUT was thoroughly tested before being used in-camera to faithfully monitor the scenes on set during production, applied to all dailies and utilised throughout the final grading.
Playing with light Resolve was also used for rig removal and, in one case, clone out some of the crew moving a crane across a bridge in the background of a wide shot. But it was in adding atmospheric color, focus, and additional lighting that Hopkin truly showed his skills.
One example was to add flickering light to enhance the illumination on the town's buildings, created' by the reflected light of burning ships in the harbor. However, it also had to match the pulse of the on-set lighting created by Fredriksen and gaffer Henning H if dt, a hue described by Hopkin as an inferno palette; a sulfur flare feel, dispersed through clouds, with a touch of magenta and red.
We started by matching the intensity and frequency of the ARRI Skypanel light sources and then used the Flicker Addition ResolveFX filter, as well as Power Windows, manual keyframing and selective keying, he explains.
Hopkin also created the feeling of moving cloud coverage on the buildings by blocking the light with hand-drawn cloud-shaped PowerCurve Windows, placing them in the scene with Resolve's Tracker. When it comes to shaping light, which helps lead the viewer's attention to the most important area of a frame, utilising Resolve's Windows and the fantastic Tracker is indispensable, adds Hopkin.
Green is the colour Another striking example of drawing focus was the colour of the main character Ingrid Tofte's coat. Erik and I were discussing on a conceptual level what was a good colour for her, what fitted her character, says Fredriksen. We wanted something that would stand out as iconic and stay in the audience's mind.
After some discussion, the filmmakers settled on a coat that was an organic, mossy, spring green, but this provoked some hesitation from costume designers Karen Fabritius Gram and Bente Ulvik, as most of the soldiers' uniforms were also in shades of green, and they were afraid the colour wouldn't stand out.
Camera tests with various fabrics led to disappointing results, as the nuanced digital camera couldn't help but subdue the colours. With time running out, an old jumper found in a thrift shop produced the exact look required. However, to find this random fabric and turn it into a coat seemed impossible.
A crazy idea came to me, recalls Fredriksen. I asked Dylan if we could put her in a coat made of green-screen material, shoot it and then isolate it out to apply the [exact] colour we needed. He said yes, in theory, we could.
Then I asked if it was possible to incorporate this into the LUT, he adds. Because then I'd have a live preview of the coat on set instead of shooting a harsh green-screen coat and having to tell everyone we'd fix it in post.
However, encompassing this into the show LUT was not just a case of keying out with a simple colour picker, since keying is not a fully supported operation that can be stored properly within a LUT. Additionally, the fake coat' ha
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
How colourist Dylan R Hopkin utilised Davinci Resolve to being the drama to life, including greenscreening the lead characters coat to create the right colour
