Ms Marvel uses Blackmagic for finishing

The shows finishing supervisor and colourist discuss the technology behind Ms Marvels colourful debut

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Published: October 3, 2022 Updated: October 4, 2022

The show's finishing supervisor and colourist discuss the technology behind Ms Marvel's colourful debut

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The production team behind Disney Plus' Ms Marvel employed Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve for editing, colour grading, visual effects (VFX) and audio post production.

The creative team for Ms Marvel really wanted to lean into the use of saturated vibrant colour, said Marvel creative finishing supervisor Evan Jacobs. We really pushed the look of the show to be very unique within the MCU, and we're so proud of the final result.

Using DaVinci Resolve Studio, colourist Matt Watson engaged with VFX early on. Here at Marvel, we spend a lot of time with the VFX teams, starting as early as possible during post production, said Watson. As soon as VFX has early ideas that they want to play with, we bring them into DI to see how they will work and how we can help the plate photography and VFX work well together.

Watson and Jacobs worked with visual effects supervisor Sandra Balej to design a workflow that would allow for tight integration between the vendors supplying the graphics and DI. We needed to preserve the ability to control the underlying plate colour without adversely affecting the graphics, explained Jacobs. We used Resolve to do many of the comps in the live grade to allow this. We really leaned on Resolve's compositing capabilities for this project.

We built as much as possible in Resolve, added Watson. All the split screens and graphic overlays were comped in Resolve for full flexibility. The graphic montage in episode one was 14 layers of comp tracks and graphics overlays, and while it required careful navigation while grading all the layers, it really paid off having the flexibility in the final stages of DI.

An early scene set at AvengerCon combined massive VFX with colorful art direction. The first time Khan shows her powers was critical to balance correctly. The look of Kamala's energy was something we played with a lot, both in VFX and in DI, continued Jacobs. It was dubbed hard light' in the show, and it was easy for it to drift into looking like ice or crystal.

Watson focused on ensuring that the imagery stood out without becoming muddled or confusing. We spent a lot of time with Sandra and her team on AvengerCon, making sure that the two colourful worlds were still separate enough to show off the power of the hard light.' We used a lot of mattes to create subtle separations between the two, he said.

The Marvel post production team were able to further integrate DaVinci Resolve Studio into their pipeline by using the DaVinci Resolve developer application programming interface (API) to create custom tools to aid their workflow. We've built a robust set of proprietary tools, called JARVIS, to automate a lot of our processes on the front end, said Jacobs. For example, we can leverage Take Selector to carry all the VFX versions, as well as the base VFX plates, for every shot in the timeline without any effort on the part of our conform editors. We can compare old versions or even switch VFX versions live in the room without needing to go back to conform, which can really save time when you're working against a deadline.

Watson also appreciated some of DaVinci Resolve Studio's built-in features. Magic mask has been a game changer. It opens up so many more options for grading. Resolve also works really well with Sapphire, which we use a lot. We also really utilised multi-user collaboration mode, with multiple users all working in the same project. VFX shots could be updated in the background or color notes could be addressed while I continued to work through the episode. This makes client-facing sessions very smooth and efficient.

Jacobs and Watson leaned on all DaVinci Resolve Studio's tools and features, from conform to final delivery. We've really tried to get creative and use the Resolve toolset in interesting ways to extend the capabilities of what we can do in the room. This means building really efficient workflows and adding automation, so we spend more time creatively grading and less time waiting for support tasks to be completed, concluded Jacobs.

Capturing the sound of Ms Marvel

LINK:	https://www.tvbeurope.com/production-post/ms-marvel-uses-blackmagic-fo...
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