Meta's The Faceless Lady VR Series Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 11, 2024
0 Comments
Bicoastal post production workflow completed using Blackmagic Cloud.
Blackmagic Design today announced that Supervising Colorist Jeff Sousa of Brooklyn, NY based post studio Dungeon Beach used DaVinci Resolve Studio for color grading The Faceless Lady, Meta's first live action VR television series. With Los Angeles based post house Light Sail VR hosting the project, Sousa relied on Blackmagic Cloud to collaborate with the Light Sail VR team while grading six 22 minute episodes of 8K stereo content.
In the series, available in Meta Horizon Worlds, six contestants converge on an old Irish castle to compete in a series of games, with the winner inheriting the estate. However, they soon find themselves trapped on the grounds by a vengeful ghost, the Faceless Lady, and must unravel a centuries old mystery before they end up becoming the next permanent tenants.
During the grade, I wore a Meta Quest 3 headset and monitored in its native P3-D65 gamma 2.2 color space, often driving live sessions where the director, DP, and producers also watched in their own Quest headsets, explained Sousa. We wanted the show to have a creepy undertone without being too looky.' We added blue/green into the shadows using the primaries but with the node set to HDR mode to take advantage of the extended range for even more tonal separation. The gain was rolled warm, and the gamma pushed until skin tones sat back on the skin tone line. From there, we used the channel mixer luma keyed to the mid tones to skew the skin towards yellow.
Grading in DaVinci Resolve Studio, leveraging Blackmagic Cloud, and being part of a collaborative workflow increased Sousa's bandwidth as a colorist. Instead of wasting clicks reconforming to each new version of VFX shots as they came in, the online editor already had the latest version placed in the timeline for me, he said. I was honestly a bit spoiled. Whenever the VFX department created a luma matte to assist in targeted color correction, such as an alpha for a knife prop or a computer monitor in a moving shot, they would place the matte directly inside my node tree on Resolve's color page. I could easily find which shots had mattes by using the available matte node clip filter and hit any notes they had, such as deepening a blood stain, etc.
According to Sousa, one of biggest challenges when grading for stereo is duplicating Power Windows between eyes. If there is a difference in brightness as you dodge and burn, the result can look blurry and even induce motion sickness. I created a custom node tree on Resolve's color page where any shape I wanted on the left eye was automatically copied to the same position on the right eye. This worked fine for most shots, but depending on the depth, I manually adjusted the disparity at times, and I leveraged the node sizing pan parameter to horizontally offset the right eye's copy of the left's alpha matte, monitoring in headset until I watched the stereo mismatch disappear, he explained.
I took advantage of the compound clip functionality to house this node tree, which had eight preset node clusters to create stereo Power Windows, he added. This compound clip was itself the first node of my master tree. This was helpful because when copying the grade from another shot, I could enable preserve number of nodes: 1' which wouldn't overwrite its shot specific Power Windows. I could relight each shot on its own terms but still achieve shot balancing by copying over similar grades. For the times I wanted to replicate a specific Power Window I made on another shot, I'd open the source's compound clip with display node graph' and drag and drop the specific adjustments onto the target shot's compound clip nodes.
Another challenge when grading in VR is not being able to leverage split screen gallery stills to achieve matching. This is due to the way Nobe Display, a virtual display plugin, pipes out Resolve's signal to your headset, and not being able to see the side by side as you do in traditional grading makes it hard to match skin tones or skies, etc., noted Sousa. To work around this, I leveraged Resolve's multiple playheads. I'd often place one playhead at the hero shot of a scene, another playhead at the shot I was matching to, and another at the shot I was matching from. This allowed me to quickly flash to different shots and make a quick matching move before my eyes had time to adapt. It was also a way for me to navigate the timeline without needing to remove my Quest headset.
Sousa concluded, I've had the honor of serving as Light Sail VR's colorist on close to a dozen projects over the past three years, including its past two collaborations with CryptTV. The Faceless Lady' is exciting because it's the first longform VR narrative with the production value of a prestige television show. Additionally, working in the same Resolve project with other high caliber artists was my favorite part of the project. I've been grading for more than a decade in Resolve, alone. To see other users inside my very same project almost feels like discovering a single player game is actually a multiplayer game.
June 14, 2024Children's Digital Learning Facility REDEE Adopts Blackmagic Design Workflow for StreamingBlackmagic Design announced today that the digital learning facility for children, "REDEE," has
June 13, 2024Documentary Series Haunted Relies on a Camera to Post Workflow from Blackmagic DesignBlackmagic Design today announced that the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K digital film camera is
Enjoying the news? Sign up for the Creative COW Newsletter! Sign up for the Creative COW newsletter and get weekly updates on indu
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
08/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/05/2026
Liberty University on why broadcast technology isn't just a technical invest...
08/05/2026
COW Jobs: UGC, On-Camera Video Content
Brie Clayton May 7, 2026
0 Comments
UGC, On-Camera Video Content
April 17, 2026Documentary Editor - US,......
07/05/2026
Journalists reporting on Sudan are working in one of the most complex and fast-m...
07/05/2026
Multi-year partnership positions Victory+ as a free home for Dallas Cowboys orig...
07/05/2026
From sideline reporting to directing and producing, the talented sophomore is building a well-rounded foundation for a career in live sports production
In the ...
07/05/2026
Cobalt Digital has received two Future Best of Show awards at NAB Show 2026. The COBALT blueCORE platform was recognized by TV Tech, and the COBALT PACIFIC ULL-...
07/05/2026
ESPN analyst Mina Kimes will host the televised semifinals and finals of the 202...
07/05/2026
Bitmovin has announced that MUBI, the global film streaming platform, has selected Bitmovin as its cloud VOD encoding partner. Bitmovin's encoding infrastru...
07/05/2026
NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises and the U.S. Soccer Federation have announced...
07/05/2026
Angel City Football Club (ACFC) and Victory have announced a regional broadcast partnership bringing live match coverage to fans across the greater Los Angeles...
07/05/2026
Spiideo has announced the launch of AI Highlights inside Spiideo Play, its automated sports production platform. AI Highlights combines video, event data, audio...
07/05/2026
Leostream Corporation has announced a unified remote access ecosystem for high-p...
07/05/2026
The Atlanta Dream has partnered with Victory to stream all locally broadcast Dream games for free, expanding the team's digital distribution strategy and g...
07/05/2026
Riedel Communications has announced the appointment of Marc Engroff as Chief Fin...
07/05/2026
SES and ARD, Germany's largest public broadcasting network, have announced a long-term extension of their satellite distribution partnership through 2039. U...
07/05/2026
UpLight Technologies delivers a flexible video and lighting system for a new televised sportLaunching the Pro Cheer League required more than creating a compell...
07/05/2026
Full Day Productions and GSE Worldwide have announced Spikes Under the Lights, a...
07/05/2026
Seit dem Start im Jahr 2023 hat DJ (Beta) das personalisierte H rerlebnis von 94...
07/05/2026
Da quando stata presentata nel 2023, DJ (beta) ha aiutato a definire un'esperienza d'ascolto pi personalizzata per 94 milioni di utenti Spotify Premi...
07/05/2026
Since launching in 2023, DJ (beta) has helped shape a more personalized listenin...
07/05/2026
Desde o lan amento em 2023, o DJ (beta) j ajudou a deixar a experi ncia de ouvi...
07/05/2026
From our earliest days, Spotify has been built on a simple principle: Great audio should be easy to reach. It's what's driven us to expand from music to...
07/05/2026
Asian and Pacific Islander artists continue to shape the global soundscape, pushing creative boundaries and connecting with fans worldwide. This Asian & Pacific...
07/05/2026
Company announce long-requested choir instrument
In the latest expansion of their Symphonic Elements series, UJAM have introduced an all-new vocal instrumen...
07/05/2026
Modular-inspired sound generation with digital control
Buchla have introduced Ziggy, a new compact synthesizer built around the company's complex oscill...
07/05/2026
Combines analogue voices with digital synthesis and sequencing
Polyend have announced Drums, a new hybrid analogue and digital drum machine that combines sy...
07/05/2026
Control surface now officially supports four DAWs
When Nektar launched the Panorama CS12 control surface, it worked exclusively with Apple's Logic Pro, ...
07/05/2026
In the first quarter 2026, SGL Carbon generated consolidated sales of 184.5 million, which was 49.8 million, or 21.3%, lower than in the prior year (Q1 2025: ...
07/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz and Greenerwave achieve precise and fast ESA antenna characteriz...
07/05/2026
Two multi-role L3Harris products - the Red Wolf launched effects vehicle and SK...
07/05/2026
L3Harris will be developing key features of a secure and resilient digital infra...
07/05/2026
Alysa Liu and Shohei Ohtani Help Drive Viewership as 91 of the Top 100 Broadcast...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
Cobalt Digital Wins Two Future Best of Show Awards at 2026 NAB Show
Manufacturer Recognized by TV Tech and TVBEurope for Innovation in signal processing
Cobal...
07/05/2026
Software and hardware platforms, AI power and user-friendliness on show...
07/05/2026
Intinor will demonstrate its latest technical enhancements for the Direkt series at BroadcastAsia 2026. With a continued focus on reliable contribution and remo...
07/05/2026
Bitmovin has announced that MUBI has chosen Bitmovin as its cloud VOD encoding partner, replacing MUBI's legacy on premises encoding setup to improve scalab...
07/05/2026
Meet Graduates from Berklees Class of 2026 Members of this years graduating class reflect on their proudest moments at Berklee and look ahead to whats next.
...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
At BroadcastAsia 2026, Interra Systems will demonstrate its latest innovations in automated quality control (QC), real-time monitoring, and captioning. The comp...
07/05/2026
At this year's Broadcast Asia, PlayBox Neo is set to unveil recent innovations across its PlayBox Neo Suite and integrated range of broadcast media solution...
Meta's The Faceless Lady VR Series Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio 
