DaVinci Resolve Studio Used by Trish Cahill at Soundfirm to Grade The Dressmaker' Fremont, CA - October 8, 2015 - Blackmagic Design today announced that the Australian film The Dressmaker was graded using DaVinci Resolve Studio by Trish Cahill at Melbourne and Sydney, Australia based post production facility Soundfirm.
Based on the book by Rosalie Ham, The Dressmaker takes place in the 1950s and follows Myrtle Tilly' Dunnage (Kate Winslet) as she returns to her hometown to take care of her ill mother, Molly (Judy Davis), from whom she was sent away at the age of ten because of false accusations of murder. Tilly, an expert dressmaker, transforms the locals with her couture creations and in the process, exacts revenge on the people who wrongly accused her of murder all those years ago. The film is produced by Sue Maslin, directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse and also stars Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving and Sarah Snook.
I made the decision to take The Dressmaker' to Soundfirm as it is a one stop shop for state of the art sound and picture post production and enabled us to work with a world class team of professionals who cared deeply about the story, said Sue. I couldnt be happier with the creative results that Resolve delivered in the hands of Don McAlpine and Trish Cahill.
According to Trish, the look of the film needed to be true to the dry Australian landscape it is set in, but it also needed to remain rich and beautiful. Don McAlpine is a master cinematographer, so as you can imagine, the film came to me with wonderful meat and bones already, said Trish. After the initial balance was in place, we looked for little things to enhance each frame, such as a chop at the top of frame here or an extra bit of sunshine on a patch of grass there.
She continued: We had the opportunity to experiment a little with the memory scenes where Kate Winslet's character remembers moments from her childhood, which needed to look different from the present. We ended up with a moody contrast look with a desaturated, ashy palette. Wherever we had skies and silhouette trees we graded, keyed and dropped the mids. There was definitely a focus on the environment.
In one day for night shot, the camera is on a dolly moving towards a silo, and Trish was tasked with retaining this camera movement while creating a starry nighttime sky. It fell into place very quickly using Resolve's super fast tracker for grades and the intuitive keyer to control the various areas of the image, said Trish. The very next shot is the two main characters gazing up at the stars and talking about the night sky, and the shot needed stars. I made numerous one pixel windows with a slight blur and lots of brightness and started moving them all over the place, occasionally making some brighter than others to recreate the randomness of a starry sky. The consensus in the room judging on a still frame was that it worked well.
However, once the scene was played back, the stars needed more integration into the shot as the camera dollied forward. Luckily for us, Resolves shape tracker and stabilizing tools are fantastic, so one run through at real time with default settings on the stabilizer tool and bam! DaVinci Resolve made the stars sit perfectly into the night sky without any loss of our wonderful dolly effect, said Trish.
DaVinci Resolve Studio's tracker also proved beneficial when protecting the performances and subtlety of the actors' eyes and faces while maintaining the rich and tonal look for the film. We have gorgeous actors with beautiful blue eyes, which were sometimes a challenge to maintain in warmly lit scenes. This is where Resolve's tracker also came in handy, said Trish. To be able to go through the film and highlight the moments and selective colors we needed and yet keep the frame rich, vivid and inviting on a whole was a case of having our cake and eating it too.
Trish concluded: The shape tracker allows for a colorist to keep the match and the beauty of a scene and also keep the performance and draw subtle attention to the moments that enhance the film. Without this intelligent and fast tool, you would have to keep a very strict priorities list of what could be achieved in the timeframe, because these things can take time. Now I find myself leaping into the tough stuff without hesitation and without having to do mental calculations as to whether this will blow out the schedule.
DaVinci Resolve Studio was also used for the online edit of the film at Soundfirm, which has a number of Resolve Studio suites in both its Melbourne and Sydney facilities. And according to Jonathan Burton, digital imaging supervisor at Soundfirm, The flexibility of the system really allowed for it to form the backbone of the DI post workflow, especially given that the production wanted to retain the 4K RAW files all the way to the final mastering of the film.
He explained: Resolve was used as the primary conform tool at Soundfirm Melbourne where the offline edit of the film was also done. There is a big advantage in being able to conform the film as the edit progresses, allowing the production to go between the online and offline versions of the cut and ultimately reflect any minor edit tweaks until the final picture lock off. Resolve was next used to handle all of the VFX I/O, creating deliveries to go to the VFX team along with temp grades, reviews and returns of VFX finals to go back into the online.
The final conformed Resolve projects were then sent up to our grading theatre at Fox Studios in Sydney, and DaVinci Resolve's Consolidate Clips tool was used to move all the media and manage the transition between facilities, added Jonathan. Overall the integration of DaVinci Resolve between Soundfirms multiple facilities allowed us to manage the complexities of the workflow in the
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
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...
15/06/2026
Detach from Direct-Attached: How Remote Editing with EVO Keeps Creative Teams Mo...
14/06/2026
Library captures 1960s R&B/pop drum sound
Following on from their recent wave of plug-in effects, Iconic Instruments have just launched an all-new virtual d...
14/06/2026
HBO Comedy Rooster Shot with URSA Cine 17K 65
Brie Clayton June 14, 2026
0 Comments
Large format brings viewers intimately close to characters.
Black...
13/06/2026
Latest expansion pack includes 252 presets
Devious Machines have recently introduced another expansion for their powerful multi-effects plug-in, Infiltrator...
13/06/2026
Create custom DAW/plug-in controllers using prompts
MetaGrid have recently introduced an all-new AI Builder function to their touchscreen-based control surf...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air seven Athletes Unlimited Softball...
12/06/2026
The United Football League will host its FAST Innovation Suite at the 2026 United Bowl presented by Credit One Bank on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. ET at Audi...
12/06/2026
PTZOptics and LayerJot will present live demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 showing how natural-language AI prompting, robotic camera control, and on-device comput...
12/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026, featuring...
12/06/2026
Ateme has announced that Eurovision Services is using Ateme's software-based frame-rate conversion technology for international live event workflows. The de...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin and Simplestream have announced a partnership with Xperi to simplify the launch of OTT streaming services on TiVo OS smart TVs and devices. The collabo...
12/06/2026
Net Insight has announced that a multinational technology company is deploying a...
12/06/2026
MLB Players Inc., the business arm of the MLB Players Association, has announced a partnership with Athletes First to develop and sell brand partnerships across...
12/06/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall have announced the CommandKeyboard-Advanc...
12/06/2026
Comcast Smart Solutions announces a new smart technology deployment with Major L...
12/06/2026
Elevation Worship completed the initial leg of its Elevation Nights 2026 tour ...
12/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has announced KONA IP25 support for Colorfront Transkoder and ...
12/06/2026
Audinate Group Limited (ASX: AD8) will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7321, Ce...
12/06/2026
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has announced the appointment of Scott Adametz as Chief Technology Officer. The Pac-12 describes the hire as the first CTO appo...
12/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced AMPP Edge Live, a production system combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration, and AMPP OS in a single platf...
12/06/2026
At one time a trailblazer with the launch of the Longhorn Network, the Universit...
12/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
12/06/2026
Chyron has announced PAINT 10.4, an update to its illustrated replay and sports ...
12/06/2026
SVP, Production, Mark Gross: With the new schedule, with not having every Sunday night, it has given us an opportunity to take a step back and reimagine what o...
12/06/2026
For Televisa Technical Engineering Manager Roberto N nez Ibarra and the small team of 12 technicians and two production personnel at the IBC things are already ...
12/06/2026
Simple Steps to Better Acoustics - Taming The Small Room
Most of us mix in spare rooms and small spaces, where the acoustics fight us at every turn. At Gear...
12/06/2026
Latest addition expands vintage-inspired effects palette
Meris' Ottobit pedal range draws its inspiration from vintage gaming consoles, and the latest a...
12/06/2026
Soundbox-based chamber strings series expanded
Sonora Cinematic have just announced the launch of the second instalment in their Soundbox-based chamber stri...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
AJA Announces KONA IP25 Integration with Colorfront Software
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Collaboration enables uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 I/O ...
12/06/2026
URSA Cine 12K LF Used to Create Visuals for STUTS' K-Arena Concert
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Organic visuals projected on a giant scre...
12/06/2026
MTI FILM Acquires Mango New Edit, Expanding its Global Post-Production Services ...
12/06/2026
AI Point Tracking Speeds Up Complex VFX Tracks in Mocha Pro
Jessie Electa Petrov June 12, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic point trac...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to...
12/06/2026
Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform, today announced Jigsaw24, a leading B2B IT solutions provider wit...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
How Aussie indie games and screen are levelling up with IP 11 June 2026
Ari Harrison, Pro Jank Footy
Head of Games Joey Egger and Ari Harrison of Umbrella sha...
12/06/2026
AgentPerf from Artificial Analysis, the industry's first agentic AI benchmark, gives developers, enterprises and infrastructure providers a clear way to com...
DaVinci Resolve Studio Used by Trish Cahill at Soundfirm to Grade The Dressmaker' Fremont, CA - October 8, 2015 - Blackmagic Design today announced that the Australian film The Dressmaker was graded using DaVinci Resolve Studio by Trish Cahill at Melbourne and Sydney, Australia based post production facility Soundfirm. 
