A couple of weeks ago I had posted a comparison on my blog showing the quality differences between Premiere Pro & FCP X when it came to H264 compression. Since writing the article I have had loads of questions about my findings and have done some more testing on my own time, so I am posting the follow up test results here today.

For those of you that were asking about more specific settings that weren’t detailed in my first post, here are a couple of screenshots from Compressor and Media Encoder, showing how I had things set up. I ran the tests (both times) using FCPX/Premiere Pro as well as Compressor/Media Encoder, and used the same settings each time. It’s worth noting that the screenshots below were taken from my most recent test (as I didn’t take screenshots during my initial test), but all of the settings were identical.

Compressor

Media Encoder

Some of the most important settings that were universally used throughout all my tests were:

Data Rate: 20000 kbits/sec

Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Frame Rate: 23.976

Field Order: Progressive

PAR: 1.0

Frame Reordering: On

Encoding: Best Quality / Use Maximum Render Quality

Container: .MOV

The reason that I highlighted which container I used for the file is because on my initial test there was some variance on Media Encoder between H264 .MOV files and H264 .MP4 files (the former of which was more problematic).

On my first test, for some reason Compressor had a cleaner image that had fewer artifacts and less color shifting as you can see here (click to enlarge):

FCP X/Compressor

Premiere Pro/Media Encoder

Once I decided to re-do the test using a more recently updated version of Premiere Pro/Media Encoder however, I got very different results. Here are two screenshots from an H264 encoded video file (one from Premiere Pro and one from FCP X)… It’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between the two now:

FCP X/Compressor

Premiere Pro/Media Encoder

The only variable that had changed between my initial test and the most recent test which gave very different results, was the updated version of Premiere Pro/Media Encoder that I was using. I tested the same settings while rendering out directly from Premiere, as well as directly from Media Encoder and had the same improved results both times. Clearly whatever small issue may have existed with the previous iteration of Adobe’s software has now been rectified, and it’s great to have such confidence in the compression capabilities of the software now.

The main reason that I did this follow up test (outside of all of the requests from my blog readers) was because Adobe had contacted me after seeing my initial post and wanted to know more about this issue themselves. I have to say that I was very impressed by the level of interest that they expressed in this small test, as one of the most important things that I look for when investing my time and money in a piece of software today, is the integrity of the company that has created it. There’s no question to me after speaking with the Adobe team that they are dedicated to continually perfecting their products in a way that will reflect professional customer feedback and real user experiences. No matter what your preference may be with regards to editing or creative software, there is no denying that it’s refreshing to have a company as big as Adobe make such an effort to actually listen to their customers.

This mentality is becoming more and more important every day, not only in the post-world but also with manufacturers of cameras, production gear and many other technologically driven businesses in our industry. At the end of the day, it’s the real users that are seeing first hand (in real world environments) the strengths and weaknesses of any given product and then recommending it to colleagues (or not) based on their own experience with it. I hope that more companies in our industry start to understand the importance of listening more clearly to their user base and allowing genuine feedback to guide future products and updates.

Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter on the right panel of this page to be updated on more articles like this, reviews, tutorials, and inspiration!

I apologize for the last of posts recently, as the last couple of weeks have been very hectic! I just wrapped up production on a couple of commercial/corporate spots, directed three music videos and ran my Digital Cinema Bootcamp this past weekend – amongst other things. I have some really great material that I’m going to be sharing with you guys over the next week or so, and wanted to kick things off today by highlighting a recent no-budget music video that I shot on the Lumix GH4…

Summer Eyes

A couple months back, I was in Toronto for a visit and decided to shoot a music video for some friends in the indie-rock band ‘Midday Swim’. They’ve been putting out some really great music and I was looking for a small project to sink my teeth into while I was in the city, so we teamed up and pulled some resources together to make it happen. Take a look at the video below:

Since there was no budget at all (except for renting a couple of zeiss prime lenses since I didn’t have my full kit with me), we had to craft the idea around our resources to make the most out of the time we had. We hadn’t actually laid out the video idea until a day or two before the shoot, and ultimately decided to keep things simple and focus on two main locations – a small photo studio (with a gray cyc) and a ravine area. The concept of the video was to contrast a dull and drab office setting with a more vibrant exterior environment. Although it was a cloudy fall day when we were shooting the exteriors, we were able to liven it up a bit by bringing in some colored powder during the chorus and having the band throw it at each other in slow motion.

Since the tempo of the song wasn’t extremely fast, we were able to over crank in camera (by shooting at 48fps) and had the song cued up to 200% of the original speed. That way, when the 48fps material was slowed down in post to 50% speed, it sync’d up perfectly with the original song. This is a technique that is often used in music videos to achieve a slow motion effect, while still maintaining sync with the singer/band members. For a lot of music videos, this approach can work really well, but in some cases it just isn’t possible. I shot another music video last week, which was a significantly larger production – but even still we weren’t able to over crank in camera since the song was already very fast and there would have been no way that the singer and dancers would have been able to keep up with the sped up version.

As far as post production went, I cut this in FCP X – but didn’t use a multi-cam timeline. There were so many takes and we had shot lots of bits and pieces that had to be manually placed in the timeline anyways, so it was faster for me to manually sync everything by hand. I went through every last take (that we were actually going to use) and laid out the timeline like this:

By stacking the layers like this, I was able to just razor blade all of my layers at once and delete everything BUT the clip in the stack that I wanted to use. It was a tedious process, but I actually liked working this way as it forced me to make more precise and well thought out decisions as opposed to a multi-cam setup, which may have led to looser and less intentional edit points. When it came time for color, I flattened down my entire timeline onto a single ‘track’ and exported an XML file for DaVinci Resolve. I always recommend flattening down your layers so that you avoid any translation issues with DaVinci, and you are working with the cleanest possible file.

As for the color work itself – I wanted to give the office scenes a more drab, desaturated and flat look, while pushing up the warmth and saturation on the exteriors. Unfortunately the GH4 didn’t perform as well as I would have hoped at 48fps with regards to capturing fine detail in the trees outside (not to mention it was getting noisy, even at 800 ISO). So if I were to go back and re-do those shots, I would consider shooting at a different frame rate to ensure that I wasn’t losing too much detail.

My finishing process involved three steps. First, I added a texture (which was actually just a still image taken of a piece of white paper) to all of the office scenes. I overlayed it on all of the interiors to add to the boring and dry look of that environment. Then, I added some lens flares to start sneaking some color into the interior sequence, while also helping to blend the transition into the exterior shots. And finally I ran the entire project through Film Convert (as one single clip) to help blend everything together a bit better.

To me, this was a perfect example of where the GH4 shines. Small productions that have more specific requirements (whether it be high frame rates, 4K, etc.) can count on the GH4 to deliver results that far exceed what you would expect from a camera that costs under $2K. That said, you always want to be aware of it’s limitations so that you can get the best results possible.

ALSO: I’m going to be releasing a very in-depth and lengthy interview in the next few days, shot with a friend & colleague of mine as we drove around Los Angeles being recorded by a custom 3 camera car rig, so check back soon!

For more on “Midday Swim’ visit www.middayswim.com

With color grading software like DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Speedgrade being readily available to just about anyone with access to the internet, it’s no surprise that more and more filmmakers are attempting to color their own footage. In many cases, I would advise against coloring your own work unless like myself, you also work as a dedicated colorist. That said, if you are set on color grading your own projects, or are simply a colorist starting out, one of the most important things you need to tackle is the order of operations with which you approach your color process.

Like any other part of the filmmaking process, color correction is best approached by following a general set of guidelines that allow you move through the process as effortlessly and efficiently as possible. When writing a feature length script, you need an outline before a first draft of the screenplay. Just like when editing a movie, an assembly cut needs to be created before fine tuning a picture lock. Color correction is no different, yet many filmmakers or amateur colorists who don’t yet have their bearings go about things in the wrong way, and in the end their work suffers.

When I color grade any project, regardless of the style, look, genre, or format – I always adhere to the general strategy outlined below, and in fact just about every professional colorist working today follows a similar flow. I by no means created this approach, just like I didn’t create the notion of a three act structure – but I still find both immensely helpful in guiding my work in the right direction within each respective area of the craft.

For the purpose of this article, I am going to include a few frame grabs from DaVinci Resolve, as it’s the color software I prefer to work in (and arguably the best color grading software in existence today), but these general principles can be applied no matter what software you are using. It’s all about the order in which you perform these adjustments, not necessarily which software you are using to make them.

1. Neutralizing & Matching

Before you start coloring your footage, you need to balance your shots to fix any glaring issues with regards to white balance, exposure, contrast or any other technical parameter. The idea is that you want to work from a blank canvas once you actually start doing the creative work, and if you’re working with an image that is completely unbalanced, you are going to have a much harder time achieving the grade that you’re after… Not to mention, you’ll have an even harder time matching shots to each other in the sequence, as you won’t be able to simply apply a look that you have created for one shot to other shots in the scene.

There are two key things to remember here: 1) Do not give your image any unique style or look at this point, just give it a nice neutral baseline. And 2) Make sure to color correct every shot in the scene or sequence you’re working on to match each other before moving on. It will take you a few more minutes up front, but you’ll save loads of time later… Especially if you decide to change the look, as then you can easily blanket apply your changes to everything without having to make individual changes to every shot. When matching shots, I usually recommend picking a wide or medium wide shot as your baseline ‘hero shot’ and then matching the other shots in that environment to it.

If you don’t already know how to read scopes, I would suggest that you take some time to acclimatize yourself to them. Scopes can be immensely helpful in showing you a visual representation of where your image sits – in terms of saturation, color balance, contrast, and more.

2. Exposure Fixes

If you did your job well in step 1, your image should be generally well exposed. That said, in many cases even if your starting image is relatively well balanced, there are bound to be some small exposure issues that you may need to solve as part of step two. For instance, maybe there is a window that is blowing out in the background, or someone’s dark t-shirt is clipping to black. Whatever the case may be, it’s best that you adjust these issues at this stage in the process – not before or after. In the case of the blown out window – imagine you attempted to compensate for this in step 1. You would end up with a window that is properly exposed, but an overall image that is underexposed. The same goes for attempting to lift shadows to compensate for an area that is too dark, and then ending up with an image that is washed out.

In terms of specific ways to fix these issues, there are many different techniques that you can use, but probably the most effective way is by using power windows. A power window allows you to isolate a specific area of your image and adjust anything that you’d like within it’s boundaries.

I’ll point out again that it’s important to remember not to start creating your look at this point – you are simply setting up the image for the grade.

3. Color Fixes

Much like the previous point, this stage is all about fixing issues that couldn’t be fixed in your primary grade (step 1), but that you want to fix before applying any sort of look to the shot. You might have a shot where the talent is wearing a red t-shirt, and that color is popping out far more than it should be… Which by the way is quite common. You should always be aware of vibrant colors when color grading digital footage, as they can often be far more oversaturated than they should be in the source footage.

Another big thing to look out for at this stage are skin tones. Since skin tones can often have red or pink hues to them, it’s quite common to need to reduce saturation and cool off the midtones and highlights in the skin tones to compensate. In other cases, you might have skin tones that are too green – possibly as a result of fluorescent bulbs – and need to push some purple into them… Whatever the issue may be, the solution is going to require that you use a qualifier (in DaVinci Resolve terms), or a selective color tool.

The idea is that you will pull a key on the color within the image that you want to correct, and then just affect that area. In some cases, you might also want to use a power window in conjunction with the color key in order to prevent the key from affecting other areas of the shot.

4. The Look

At this point, your shot should be well balanced, and have any obvious exposure or color issues fixed. Now you are really working from a blank canvas, and any adjustments that you make to your image from here on out will be far more satisfying. Imagine for instance, you were going to apply ‘The Blockbuster Look’ to your footage, which mainly involves cooling off the shadows and warming up the highlights and mids. If you are working from a perfectly balanced image, this look would be easy to achieve. However, if you have any problem areas in the image (let’s say the skin tones are too red, and you haven’t fixed them), then this look will exacerbate the problem. Rather than the skin tones getting shifted to a nice warm color, the red in them will be pushed even further and the talent will look distractingly bad.

In many ways, this stage in the color process is the most fun as you can get really creative. In some cases you might want to hyper-stylize your footage and go for a really unique color palette, while in other instances you might stay with a natural look and simply bring out what is already there. Whatever the look you are going for may be, you will get there way faster now that you’ve done the leg work to prep your footage accordingly. And you will really notice the speed increase when you get to other shots in your sequence, which (assuming they are properly matched and balanced) can generally have the same look applied to them as a blanket effect.

5. Final tweaks & LUTs

When you’re happy with the overall look of your shot, you have the option of making some final color adjustments to help pull everything together. You usually want any adjustments that you do at this stage to be relevant to just about any other shot in your project, as the purpose of this stage is largely to create a subtle feel – or creative motif – that ties everything together. So for example, if you are going for a ‘milky black’ look, you might choose to lift up the shadows at this stage (although you could also justify doing that in stage 4). Additionally, you might want to add a Look Up Table at this stage (for example a film emulation), which can really help to blend all of your color changes together. On a side note, you may also need to add a LUT before you color correct at all if you are coloring log or RAW footage, but in many cases you can use two or more LUT’s at different phases in the process.

The great thing about setting this final look on it’s own node (in Resolve), is that the final node can easily be tacked on to other shots in the project and still work really well. For example, you might be coloring another scene later on that has a totally different look to it, but you can still apply the color adjustments from that final node (on your first shot) to the end of the node tree on the next scene too. Since this node is primarily dedicated to making overarching (and relatively small) stylistic changes, it can be used on scenes that have very different grades, and will help the entire project to have more consistency. The same principle applies even if you aren’t use a node-based color system, but it’s especially easy when using software like Resolve.

Final Thoughts

Like most aspects of filmmaking, color correction is both a creative and technical process – but not necessarily in that order. To achieve the best results creatively, you want to get the technical adjustments out of the way first. This will take a few more minutes up front, but could potentially save you hours of time later on, particularly if you decide to change your creative look at any point. Also, it’s really important to note that just because I’ve listed 5 steps above, doesn’t mean that those adjustments should be made in only 5 nodes or layers. In some cases you might need more… For example in step 3, there may be more than one color that needs to be keyed, so don’t be afraid to add as many adjustments as you need until each step in the process is complete. And conversely, you may have a near perfect shot to work with that doesn’t require step 2 or 3. So always use your discretion, and when you do need to adjust all of the usual parameters, be sure to do so in this exact order.

For more articles like this, be sure to subscribe to the newsletter on the right panel of this page!

Even before I started working as a professional colorist, I had always loved to toy around with color settings within my editing software to enhance the look of my footage. One of the most common looks that I would implement (and still do to this day) is the low contrast look, which can be really helpful is getting digital images to look more filmic.

One of the great things about FCP X is that it allows you to save custom Color Board presets so that you can easily select from a variety of preset looks to apply to your footage. It’s quite a powerful tool as you are also able to share your custom looks with others – which is what I am doing today.

The Low Contrast Look

The three preset files that I am making available for download today are intended to subtly reduce contrast, while either increasing the warmth, increasing the coolness, or keeping the image neutral. Each of the three settings should be able to work well on any footage that is well balanced, so choosing between the three is simply a matter of taste.

One really important thing to note is that you want to balance your image properly before applying these presets (or any preset for that matter) otherwise you won’t get good results. If you haven’t already read this, I suggest you quickly read up on the best order of operations for color grading, so you know exactly when you should applying these looks. In a nutshell though, you want to do it AFTER you have already balanced your image… Imagine you are working with really low contrast footage to begin with (such as log footage from an Arri Alexa or a Blackmagic Cinema Camera set to ‘film’). If you were to apply these looks to those raw files, the image would become even flatter and wouldn’t look good at all. The better option would be to first apply contrast and white balance adjustments to the raw footage to get it looking natural, and then apply these looks to knock the contrast back down.

Here are samples of the three presets that I am making available to download today:

Raw Image

Low Contrast – Cool

Low Contrast – Neutral

Low Contrast – Warm

Always remember that any color correction presets should just be thought of as a starting point. You typically aren’t going to apply any preset or LUT to your footage and just leave it as is, since every shoot will need a bit of extra tweaking to get it looking just right. Also, keep in mind that you don’t want to push things too far with a low contrast look. I wrote an article a while back about how the milky black look is very overused, and there is a fine line between a low contrast image and a milky image (which in some cases can work well), so be careful about pushing things too far when dealing with this type of aesthetic.

Installing The Presets

You can download the .zip file containing all three .cboard preset files by clicking here!

In order to install the files, you are going to need to manually place the .cboard files in your ‘Color Preset’ folder. The easiest way to do this is to go to the finder and click on ‘Go’ in the menu bar and then ‘Go To Folder’. From there, type in this path: /users/johnsmith/library/application support/ProApps/

Please remember to change ‘johnsmith’ to whatever your Mac OS username is.

Once you are in the ProApps folder, you should see a folder that says ‘Color Presets’. If you don’t – try creating a folder and labelling it ‘Color Presets’. This is the folder where you need to drop in your .cboard files, so simply copy and paste them in there, boot up FCP X, and you should have your presets ready to go.

When adding any new plugin, effect, or setting to FCP X or any application for that matter, please know that you are doing so at your own risk. I have done this many times and had absolutely no issue at all, but again please proceed with caution as you don’t want to change any other settings that may affect the way that FCP X functions.

That’s about it! Hope you guys enjoy the presets, and feel free to let me know if there are any other looks that you might be interested in seeing in the future. I will also try to create some for Premiere Pro in the future as well.

Please be sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter

Practically every editor and filmmaker I know has had a copy of DaVinci Resolve on their laptop since the free version was made available. Unfortunately though, most Resolve users are only using the software on it’s most basic level and haven’t yet discovered how powerful some of it’s basic features are – including Layer Nodes.

Nodes

Most first time users of DaVinci resolve are confused by Nodes as they work very differently than layers, which are what most editors are used to working with in various editing programs. Nodes are simply a different way of connecting and representing changes that are being made to a clip, and they offer far more flexibility than layers since they can be used in so many different ways. For the purpose of this post I’m not going to do a crash course on nodes, but rather focus on one of the most powerful types of node structures that you can use: The Layer Node.

Most often, when beginner colorists are using DaVinci Resolve they will use nodes in very much the same way that they would use stacked layers in an NLE. In other words, they will make a correction on node 1, and then another correction on node 2, and so on. Their node tree might look something like this:

This is an okay way to work, however in some instances better and faster results can be achieved by stacking nodes so that multiple operations can be consolidated into one single operation. One of the simplest examples of this involves utilizing composite modes (which can be activated when using a Layer Mixer), in order to quickly achieve some unique looks. In this example I will show you how to quickly use a composite mode to achieve the bleach bypass look.

The Bleach Bypass Look

I want to take a quick moment to explain what the bleach bypass look is for those of you not familiar with it. Essentially, it’s a look that is characterized by high contrast, low saturation and sometimes an overall coolness to the image. Think of movies like Saving Private Ryan or other war films which very commonly make use of this technique in order to create a highly stylized world that feels raw, intense and gritty. This look is certainly not going to work well for every project, but for some types of films – specifically action films, intense dramas, thrillers, and horrors, it can be an exceptional choice.

In Resolve, you have the option of achieving this look somewhat manually by adding lots of contrast on one node, desaturating on that same node (or another node), then creating an additional node for final color and contrast adjustments. This will work, however if you are coloring a whole lot of clips it can become fairly time consuming, as your first step (coloring that first node to have a lot of contrast) will require a fair amount of fine tuning each time, and your results throughout your project may not be very consistent right off the bat.

In my opinion, the much more efficient and consistent way to work is by using a Layer Node to achieve this result. And it’s actually quite simple. Rather than starting off by color correcting on node 1, simply add a new layer node which will create a structure that looks like this:

At the end of that node structure is the Layer Mixer. You’re going to right click on that node, click on ‘Composite Mode’ and then select ‘Overlay':

Essentially this will overlay the two stacked layers on top of each other, which will give you a very high contrast image. For those of you that use Photoshop or After Effects, you’re probably quite familiar with composite modes and how they can affect your image, and in DaVinci Resolve it’s no different. You can use any of the composite modes (add, subtract, difference, etc.) to achieve unique looks, however overlay is your best bet when going for the bleach bypass look.

With my composite mode set ‘Overlay’, my resulting image had a very high contrast look to it just as I had wanted. In this case, it was actually just a bit too high contrast for my taste, so I created another serial node at the end of my node tree and reduced the contrast slightly, while also pulling down the saturation just a touch more. Here is the final result:

Before

After

There are practically infinite ways that you can use DaVinci Resolve (and Layer Nodes in particular), and this is just one small example. If you’ve only been working with basic Serial Nodes in Resolve, hopefully this post has given you an idea of what is possible when using some of the other functionality built right into the software. Like Photoshop or any other creative software, you can achieve the same end result many different ways, but knowing the best and most efficient way to get there will always be a tremendous help.

For more on color grading, check out my recent post on the best order of operations for color correction here. 

Be sure to keep posted this week for more tutorials, tips & reviews! And Sign up for the newsletter on the right panel of this page!

The debate about which editing software is best has largely died down over the past year or so. Initially when FCP 7 was replaced by X, it took quite a while for the post-production world to stabilize… Some editors stuck with Avid, may former FCP 7 editors went with Premiere Pro, and a handful of others decided to give FCP X a try – including the post team on Will Smith’s latest feature film, Focus. 

Last year, I posted an article that teased some info about a $100 million Warner Bros. feature that was being cut on FCP X. While it took a while for concrete details to emerge about the film itself, eventually we learned that the film in question was Focus – a very large scale Hollywood production starring Will Smith. After reading up on the production/post on Focus, what was most interesting to me wasn’t simply how they pulled it off, but rather why they chose to use FCP X in the first place. As someone that has been editing with FCP X since day one, I know how stable the software has become and how capable it truly is of cutting a feature of this scale, but I was still very much intrigued as to what led the filmmakers to go down this path.

These days, I think of editing platforms much in the same way that I think about cameras. You should pick the right NLE for your project, just like you pick the right camera for your shoot. For my needs FCP X is the best choice in many cases, however there are definitely projects where I will use Premiere Pro for one reason or another, and seldomly I will even use Avid Media Composer. I think it’s really important to understand different editing platforms as a filmmaker (even if you aren’t primarily an editor) so that you can pick the best software for the task at hand. That’s exactly why FCP X was used on Focus. The production had a unique set of needs that FCP X was able to deliver on, and ultimately the post-production team benefitted immensely by making this choice.

Apple has posted an ‘In Action’ story about FCP X on their website here, and while I won’t re-iterate every last detail that they outlined, I do want to share some of the highlights from my perspective.

Smart Collections

If you don’t know how these work, essentially Smart Collections search for a set of criteria (that you as the editor specify) when ingesting footage, and automatically organize your footage into collections – sort of like bins – based on that criteria. So for instance, you might be working on a multi-cam project that was shot on 5 different cameras, and can use Smart Collections to automatically organize the footage based on the camera names into 5 unique collections.

The Focus team developed a fantastic workflow using Smart Collections that allowed them to organize “everything from scene information to dialogue tags” automatically. You can imagine how much time that must have saved in the edit bay, especially for the assistant editors. While many editors have a seemingly adverse reaction to anything that happens automatically during the editing process, my feeling is quite the opposite. The more time that is left to actually edit and be creative, and the less time that you need to waste organizing the project, the better. Not to mention once the footage is organized so perfectly it becomes very quick and easy to locate shots that might have otherwise been overlooked.

Editing On A MacBook Pro

Although the film was later edited and finished on an 8-core Mac Pro desktop, a lot of the initial editing actually happened on set (or in hotel rooms) on a MacBook Pro laptop. This came as no surprise to me for a couple of reasons, but mainly because: A) I know just how fast MacBook Pro’s are today and what they are capable of, and B) I’ve witnessed first hand the trend of editing on set becoming commonplace. But even still, I can remember a time not that long ago that I would have conversations with editor friends of mine about how one day even Hollywood level films would be cut on laptops because they are getting so fast, and now that day is here. While Focus is obviously not the first film to be cutting on set using a laptop, it is still quite impressive to me that they were able to pull off such a seamless workflow when eventually moving to their main edit bay. Essentially there was no offline/online editing needed. The edit was just transplanted from a laptop to a desktop, and the process continued onwards.

Titles

One of the things I’ve always loved about FCP X is that it has some amazingly powerful titling tools built right in. Unlike most editing platforms that have a separate title tool, FCP X allows you to manually adjust your titles on the viewer (or canvas) so that you are able to make changes much more intuitively and precisely. The post team on Focus made use of this capability throughout their editorial process, and the final titles of the film were actually created in FCP X. That might not seem like a big deal, but when you consider that on a feature of this scale that is practically never done, it is quite impressive. Usually temporary titles would be created within the editing software, and then the final titles are later re-done using different software (titling or motion graphics software), which replace the placeholders. In this case though, the producers were so happy with the temp titles created in FCP X with their built in title tool, that they actually used that for the final product. 

3rd Party Plugins

One of the biggest criticisms of FCP X from the get go was that certain tasks required additional plugins to be executed. The big complaint of course was that there was no ‘Export To OMF’ feature built into FCP X, and to get your FCP X timeline into ProTools you needed to use a plugin like X2Pro. For me, this was never a big deal – especially when considering the cost of FCP X. The whole design of FCP X is built around being a modular system. You can use it as is for your basic day to day tasks, but when you need some added functionality you can then buy the plugins that you need to expand the software. This helps keep the cost really low (it’s only $299 to buy), and allows users to customize the experience to their needs.

On Focus, the team made use of X2Pro to send their edit to ProTools, and used Roles to assign tracks to each set of audio clips. They were also able to use Slice X from Coremelt in conjunction with the built in Keyer in Final Cut Pro X to complete some of their green screen work right inside the software. As with any major feature film, I would have to assume that the green screen work was later re-done in proper vfx/compositing software (such as Nuke), but the fact that the editors were able to do a pass that got them really close within FCP X is pretty amazing. I’m sure it was a much better creative experience for the director and producers to be able to watch those scenes with the keys already pulled, and not have to imagine what it would look like without the green screen in the shot.

Here is the official breakdown of their workflow from Apple’s site:

Production

(New Orleans, Buenos Aires, New York City)

The movie was shot anamorphic for the correct widescreen aspect ratio on location at multiple sites using an ARRI ALEXA digital camera at 2K resolution.

Full-resolution ProRes dailies were produced on set using an Outpost mobile post system.

Sync-N-Link X was used to batch sync second-source audio with the ProRes footage.

Metadata was imported from the set and made searchable in Final Cut Pro X.

All editing was done in 2048×1152 ProRes 4444 using the Outpost media in Final Cut Pro X, just hours after shooting.

Post-production

(Los Angeles)

Motion 5 titles built into Final Cut Pro X were used for final opening credits and as placeholders for effects.

The built-in real-time Keyer in Final Cut Pro X was used to quickly and accurately preview green-screen gallery in the timeline before final effects were delivered and added to the edit.

X2Pro Audio Convert from Marquis Broadcast was used to send the Final Cut Pro X project to Pro Tools via AAF; Roles were used to automatically allocate audio to tracks in Pro Tools.

Final Cut Pro X on a MacBook Pro enabled quick editing changes on the fly during screenings on the soundstage.

Change List X from Intelligent Assistance was used to track changes to and from the sound department and the visual-effects teams.

Finish

Final color grading and finishing was done on the Quantel Pablo Rio system.

Conclusion

I would predict that Focus is just the tip of the iceberg for FCP X. Many other major productions, large post houses, networks, etc. have already moved over to FCP X despite the backlash that it got in the early days for being too “different”. Premiere Pro and Avid Media Composer are both excellent software options as well, and it is pretty amazing that as editors and filmmakers we have the ability to choose between three very strong platforms. I can certainly see why many editors that were familiar with FCP 7 weren’t initially comfortable with making the jump to FCP X… But with that said, I think for those that are willing to take the leap and try something new, there is a whole lot to be gained by going with FCP X.

The news of the FCP X 10.2 release this week got pretty drowned out by all the noise at NAB. Naturally, new camera announcements always draw the most attention, and with the internet exploding with new gear reports every two minutes a lot of news got swept under the rug. That said, the new iteration of FCP X is actually quite impressive and worth taking a look at if you missed it the first time around.

FCP X 10.2 is clearly intended to be a major upgrade and Apple have managed to pack in a lot of new features that I certainly didn’t see coming. They also neglected to add some features that I was almost certain would be integrated this time around (more on that later). Even still, the overall responsiveness and stability of it seems to have improved noticeably, and ultimately it feels like a step in the right direction. Before I jump into my thoughts in more detail, here are the official updates from Apple:

Introducing 3D titles

• Beautifully animated and easily customizable 3D text
• Simple templates to get started quickly
• Cinematic templates with built-in backgrounds and animations
• Large collection of text styles to create stunning looks in one click
• Customize your titles with hundreds of combinations of materials, lighting, and edges
• Additional controls let you adjust environments, shadows, and more
• Instantly convert any 2D title to 3D
• Open any title in Motion to add multiple lights, cameras, and tracking

Advanced effects

• Display up to four video scopes simultaneously
• Apply super ellipse Shape mask to any clip
• Apply Draw mask to any clip, with options for linear, bezier, or B-spline smoothing
• New Shape and Color mask controls for every effect
• Instantly display the alpha channel for any effect mask
• Save custom effects as presets for quick access
• Color Board merged into the new Color Correction effect
• Rearrange the processing order of Color Correction effect
• Improved keyframing with better motion smoothing
• Improved optical flow for beautiful slow motion on a wider range of content
• Better performance of FxPlug plug-ins and built-in effects that use multiple frames like Visual Echo and Trails

Camera formats

• Panasonic AVC-Ultra codec family
• Sony XAVC-S
• Import Sony XAVC and XDCAM formats without separate plug-in
• JVC H.264 Long GOP
• GPU-accelerated RED RAW processing with support for dual GPUs
• Support for RED RAW anamorphic formats

Additional features

• Smart Collections can be used at the event and library level
• Import window consolidates all options into single sidebar
• GPU rendering when using Send to Compressor with support for dual GPUs

My Thoughts

As I mentioned above – generally I am impressed. On paper the specs looked solid right off the bat (although surprising in some ways), but after having actually used FCP X 10.2 to edit a project today I can really appreciate what was done. The 3D titles inside of X are extremely well integrated and light years past the titling capabilities of other NLEs. Although they have been implemented in a very simple and intuitive way (even users who don’t know 3D can pick it up quickly), their functionality is actually quite powerful. And while 3D titles weren’t a major request by most FCP X users, they are a welcomed addition to the FCP X eco system.

While you aren’t going to have as much control as you would in a dedicated 3D program, FCP X allows you to adjust all of critical settings that you need for 3D work. The lighting, environment, shadows, materials, and other key settings can be easily adjusted in the inspector as seen in the picture below. The titles also come with preset animations that are actually quite slick and can easily be customized. The ease in/ease out functionality is spot on, and if you are inclined to fully customize/keyframe your animations, that is of course an option too.

For the type of very limited 3D material that I would ever need to generate, FCP X has me covered. I am by no means a 3D artist and I would typically collaborate with others when I need any sort of 3D work done… But from here on out I will be able to generate completely original 3D titles that look gorgeous if I am in a pinch. In a way, that’s really what FCP X is all about. It gives you the tools to get pretty much anything done (from your offline edit to color to titles, and everything in between), all in one package. Yes, there will still be a need for dedicated color, titling, vfx, 3d, and other software – but not every project necessarily needs to go that route. Certain projects could benefit immensely from keeping the finishing work contained inside FCP X.

Just about everything listed in the ‘Advanced Effects’ section above is pretty awesome, and many of those updates address a lot of previous issues or plugin requirements that are no longer necessary. First off, being able to view multiple scopes at once is critical for proper color work. This small but powerful feature opens up the ability to truly use FCP X as a finishing tool effectively, without slowing down your workflow .

Perhaps even more impressive though, is the new ‘Draw Mask’ tool. This essentially allows you to drop a mask effect onto any clip and literally draw a mask with unlimited control points, just as you would in compositing software. What’s even better though, is that you can keyframe the control points too – again just like a proper compositing program. This means that (if you were inclined to do so) you could technically rotoscope in FCP X.

The color correction system works completely differently now too. The actual layout of the color board is the same, and they haven’t reverted back to color wheels – but the way in which it is used is different. Rather than the color settings being built right into the inspector tab on every clip, you need to first add color correction as an effect to your footage and then make your correction. At first when I saw this change, I didn’t quite understand it… I sort of liked having my color settings easily accessible and didn’t want to have to drop an effect on every time I wanted to grade a shot. But after a while of using FCP X this way, I got used to it and really started to prefer the new setup. Especially once I started using the Command + 6 shortcut to add a color correction effect quickly and easily to any clip.

The benefit of this new approach to color is that different corrections can now be reordered inside the inspector. Those of you that understand color correction will know why this is so important, but for those of you that don’t – In a nutshell, being able to reorder your grades gives you more control over your final product and can help you work much more efficiently. Especially when other effects are involved. It’s great that Apple has integrated this concept as it’s something that will help improve the functionality of the color tools immensely.

Apple has also added some much needed codec support to FCP X (as listed above) which will be a relief for many shooter/editors working with those formats. Today, I was editing some native RED RAW footage and noticed a massive speed improvement over the previous iteration of X. I didn’t test the render times or playback performance in detail, but I did notice an obvious improvement when working with the RAW media.

What We Still Need

All of the features listed above are truly excellent, but not everyone necessarily needs them… This is especially true of 3D text and custom masks. Personally I do like the new tools that Apple has included in FCP X and will absolutely be using them in the future, but I also want to see some other much needed functionality added in future updates. I’ve narrowed down 3 basic feature requests that I believe would make FCP X that much better for any type of power user.

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Audio Mixer Based On Roles

I am all for the no track system, and it has definitely made me a faster editor. However, when it comes to audio things can sometimes get a bit messy. I’ve never had any major issues working with audio in FCP X, but that is the biggest area for improvement in my opinion. There needs to be a proper audio mixer integrated to take advantage of some of the amazingly powerful Logic plugins, and it should be based on roles. In other words since there are no tracks, having the ability to mix down your audio based on roles (dialogue, music, effects, etc.) would really make things simple. Many users such as myself have been wanting this for a while, and I was hoping to see it in 10.2.

2. Key Frames For Color Correction 

As a colorist, it has always annoyed me that FCP X doesn’t give me the ability to key frame my color correction settings. I primarily use DaVinci Resolve to color, and even though there are undoubtedly hundreds of color features that Resolve has and FCP X doesn’t, key framing is one of the only ones that matters to me within the constraints of FCP X. Many of my projects are going to need to be sent to Resolve regardless, but some projects could easily be colored in FCP X… And in those cases I am often forced to send them to Resolve simply because I need the ability to key frame. This doesn’t seem like it would be a huge challenge to implement, so I really hope to see this in a future update.

3. Scrolling Timeline

This is a very simple request, but one that could vastly improve the user experience on FCP X. Again, I know I am not alone in wanting the timeline to scroll while being played so that the playhead remains on the screen at all times. There are many instances where I need to keep a close watch on the playhead while reviewing footage, and right now my solution is typically to zoom all the way out and then back in once I have stopped the playhead. This isn’t ideal, as even that extra small step or two can add a decent amount of time to an edit session. There are also times when you might not want a scrolling timeline, so having the ability to toggle timeline scrolling on and off would be a lifesaver.

In Summary

I am generally quite happy with FCP 10.2, even though the feature update was much different than I would have expected. I would have guessed that at least one of the requests I listed above would be present in 10.2, but am still hopeful they will be implemented at some point in the future. Regardless, the added functionality of the new 3D titling system, masking, codec support, and performance improvements are excellent and will make my day to day FCP X experience far better. I am also happy that this update (like all of their updates so far) is free. The $299 that I spent 4 years ago has gone a long way.

No NLE is perfect, but for the type of work that I do – FCP X usually comes the closest. It has come a very, very long way since it was first released and still feels more intuitive than any other editing platform I have used. Is there room for improvement? Tons. But the same could be said about any piece of software. Whether you like FCP X or not, there is no question that Apple has a very clear direction for the software in mind – it may just not line up with what you’re looking for from an NLE.

As most of you know, Adobe recently announced some exciting new features coming to Premiere Pro too, and I will be sure to post my two cents on that shortly as well.

For more articles like this plus reviews, tips, tutorials and more – sign up for the newsletter on the right panel of this page!

Skin tones are arguably the most important element of your image to get right when color grading, yet most editors and amateur colorists approach skin tones completely the wrong way. Throughout this post, I’ll outline my favorite technique for grading and matching skin tones within DaVinci Resolve in just 4 simple steps…

It goes without saying that skin tones are what give life to your image. Unless you’re grading a montage of landscape shots, chances are the focal point of every shot that you grade is going to be your talent. If their skin tones don’t look natural, or don’t match the environment and other shots they are integrated with, you are in trouble!

Typically when inexperienced colorists attempt to grade skin tones, they make one of two mistakes:

1. They base their entire grade around the skin tones, and neglect everything else.

In other words, before actually balancing their image, adjusting contrast, fixing white balance issues, etc. they start to focus on skin tones, which inevitably throws the rest of the image off balance.

Imagine you are working with an image that is shot in a mixed lighting environment, where window light is spilling on your talent’s face, but there is a lot of tungsten light in the background. If you were to grade that image based around the skin tones (and obviously you would need to warm the skin up since it would be blue in comparison to the tungsten light), then the warm light sources in the background would become far too warm, and the image would look really strange.

2. They start giving their footage a “look” before they have fixed any skintone/matching problems.

Rather than following the correct order of operations (as outlined in this blog post), they will jump straight into giving their footage a creative look and then will have major issues trying to adjust skintones later on, because the look that they have created is so extreme. There are ways to fix this without having to rebuild the entire grade, but it’s a lot better to just get it right the first time.

How To Approach Skintones

We’ve touched on a couple of fundamental issues you want to avoid when it comes to skin tones, so what actually is the best way to approach them?

Well, as I already alluded to above, a lot of it comes down to your order of operations. Like any other proper color grade, you need to start your process by balancing and matching your shots to each other as closely as possible using one or two nodes that are simply dedicated to fixing technical issues. You want to ensure that your white balance/contrast is consistent with other shots in your sequence, and ideally each shot is at a neutral starting point. From there you can start to isolate elements in your image (skintones being the one we are focusing on here of course), and then eventually you will add an overall creative look to your footage.

For the purpose of this article, we are focusing mainly on that middle stage – isolating the skin tones and grading/matching them to the rest of the footage. Here are the four steps I recommend following:

Step 1

Assuming you have already balanced all of the shots in your sequence, there are still going to be some differences from shot to shot. Lenses all have different characteristics, lighting can change, and all sorts of other variables can come into play that affect the consistency of skintones from shot to shot. So don’t worry if you feel like no matter what you do your images don’t match perfectly yet… That’s what this step is for.

The first thing you want to do is open up your qualifier tab in DaVinci Resolve, and use the eyedropper tool to select the skintone of your talent.

You are going to wind up with something that looks like this:

By the way, you’ll want to hit SHIFT + H to toggle between this view, and a regular view of the footage without the skin selected.

As you can already tell from the image above though, we have selected a lot more than just skintones here. This is very common. There are always other elements in your shot that will have a similar hue/luminance value to the skintones you are trying to grade, so you need to do a bit more work to really isolate them.

Step 2

This step is pretty simple. You are essentially going to fine tune your qualifier settings to isolate as much of the skin tone as possible, while minimizing other colors/areas of the frame. Depending on the specific piece of footage you are working with, any and all of the parameters in the qualifier window may need to be adjusted. I usually start by adjusting the width of my color key, then the high/low points, and then the softness. I will sometimes also use the ‘negative’ eyedropper tool to select the colors in the selection that I want to remove, but I don’t rely on it as I find that tool to be hit or miss.

Step 3

Even once you’ve fully fine tuned your settings, you may still have areas of your frame that are being selected along with the skintones. For instance, in my example the bushes in the background are a pretty similar hue to the actor’s face, so they are being keyed as well – even after all of the fine tuning.

This is obviously a problem as you don’t want whatever adjustments you make to your talent’s skin tones to appear on other elements in the frame. The best way to deal with a situation like this is with a power window.

Many of you have probably used power windows to create vignette effects on your footage, but they are just as useful for masking parts of your frame to isolate selections even further. In this example I am using a circular power window (you can use a custom or square window too), which isolates the selection even further. I also made sure to adjust the softness of the mask so that my grade would transition seamlessly.

Always remember to use the tracker to track your power window to your actors face, otherwise they may drift out of it’s effective area.

Step 4

This is the fun and relatively easy part. Now that you have fully isolated the skin tones you can finally start to grade them and match them to different shots in the sequence. I normally like to start with a closeup shot to set the look, since the skin is most clear and apparent in a closeup.

The most common initial adjustments that I’ll make are to the midtones and saturation… Usually I’ll push the midtones either warmer or cooler to fix any glaring color issues, and then will reduce or increase saturation to help the skin blend in more effectively with the rest of the frame. It’s worth noting that sometimes I will also adjust the highlights and/or shadows (depending on the color of the actor’s face), and sometimes I’ll even pull two separate keys on skin tones – one for shadows/midtones, and one for highlights.

Once you have accomplished your look on your close up (or hero shot), you need to go ahead and match your other shots to it. Simply follow the same steps above (1 to 3) on each one of your shots, and then bring up a still frame of your graded shot to compare with each of the new shots you are coloring.

Remember to always use the same baseline shot to match each new shot to, in order to maintain a consistent look throughout the scene.

If you’re really new to DaVinci – You can bring up a still reference frame like this by right clicking on your graded image and selecting grab still, and then double clicking that image in your stills gallery.

That just about sums it up. There is no exact science to color grading, and much like creating looks in Adobe Photoshop there are 10 different ways to get the same result… But for me (and for many other colorists), the steps outlined above prove to be the most effective.

Check back soon as I have some great articles coming up in the next little while, including a comprehensive video review of the Blackmagic URSA.

Also – be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more updates!

Like many other GH4 shooters out there, I’ve been back and forth about which picture profiles and settings are best to use when shooting with this camera. When I first got the GH4 I was messing around with my settings a lot (master ped, shadow/highlight, etc.), but eventually realized that I would get much better results by not straining the camera too much. As such, I have mainly been using slightly modified Cine-D and Cine-V picture profiles, as outlined in this blog post from the fall.

I would say that I use Cine-D about 50% of the time, and Cine-V the other 50%. Both picture profiles can create beautiful images, but Cine-D has slightly more dynamic range so I do try to use it whenever possible. That said, Cine-V has nearly as much DR (I would guess there’s probably only a 1/2 stop difference between them), and it’s an excellent alternative to Cine-D when you need to nail the look in camera.

When grading my Cine-V footage, I never use any type of LUT in my pipeline since that picture profile already has somewhat of a finished look to it. With Cine-D however, I do always start my grading sessions with a custom LUT that I built around my preferred Cine-D settings. I have included a download link to the LUT below, but read on to ensure that your settings are consistent with mine so that the LUT will work properly.

On a side note, for any of you that aren’t familiar with LUTs (or Look Up Tables), they are essentially color translation files that you can use in many different post-production applications to apply a new look to your footage. They are used for many different reasons, but commonly to add contrast and saturation to flat images. For example if you were to shoot on an Arri Alexa in Log-C, you would want to use a LUT to give your Log-C footage a more contrasty Rec. 709 look. Here is an example of some Arri Amira footage I shot recently, with and without the Rec. 709 LUT applied:

It’s worth noting that you don’t always need to use a LUT to grade flat footage, but it definitely can help to speed up your process and maintain consistency across your sequence. That’s exactly why I’ve been using my custom Cine-D LUT in Resolve, and it’s saved me a ton of time over the last few months when grading my footage.

As mentioned above, the LUT is based off of my custom Cine-D settings:

Cine-D

Contrast: 0

Sharpness: -5

Noise Reduction: -5

Saturation: -5

Hue: 0

This LUT will still work with a number of different Cine-D settings, however it is optimized for the settings listed above.

Here are before and after shots showing what the LUT will do:

Ungraded Cine-D

Cine-D With Noam Kroll LUT

The LUT isn’t intended to be a final grade, but rather to create an optimal starting point for color correcting the image. The order of operations in which you perform your color grade is just as important as the look you are trying to achieve, so always be sure to apply this LUT before you do any further grading.

My goal with this LUT was to get my Cine-D image looking as close to Cine-V as possible while still retaining the extra 1/2 stop or so of dynamic range. As you can tell from this Cine-V shot, it isn’t all that different from Cine-D with my LUT:

It may appear that there is marginally more DR in the Cine-V example, but that’s just because it hasn’t been graded at all yet. In reality there is still a small amount of extra detail that can be pulled from the shadows and highlights in the Cine-D image.

So for those of you that would like to download the .cube LUT file, you can do so by clicking here.

If you’re never installed a LUT on your system before, it’s actually quite simple. Just download the .cube file above and copy it into the LUT folder for DaVinci Resolve (or whatever platform you are using). For Resolve, these are the file paths that you can follow:

MAC

/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/LUT/

PC

ProgramData\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\LUT

Please be sure to unzip the .cube file if your system doesn’t do it automatically.

Thoughts On The Supertone Settings

Recently some GH4 users have been playing around with a new “Supertone” setting, which was developed my Michael Medgyesi. The setting is based on the Portrait picture profile and is intended to give you a graded look straight out of the camera, with an emphasis on the mid tones.

Here are the exact settings:

Portrait

Contrast: + 3

Sharpness: +1

Noise Reduction: 0

Saturation: -5

Hue: -2

Highlight/Shadow: -5/0

I decided to test out the settings in the exact same setup that I used for my Cine-D and Cine-V tests above. As I expected, straight out of the camera I got a very high contrast image that almost had a bleach bypass look to it:

Understandably, this picture profile was intended to be corrected by pushing up the saturation and presumably lifting the shadows a bit. But even still, I wasn’t thrilled with the results once I started to color grade the footage.

In all fairness if I was actually using this setting I would have lit the scene differently, but even when graded to compensate for the crushed shadows I wasn’t crazy about the look:

I think there is a time and a place to use settings like Supertone, but for the type of shooting that I like to do – it just won’t do the trick. Supertone gives you a very specific look straight out of the camera that you are somewhat married to in post, which isn’t something I am comfortable with seeing as I grade nearly all of my footage. Not to mention, creatively it is very distinct and would only be applicable to certain types of projects in my opinion.

I like to see people pushing the boundaries of what the GH4 is capable of, and very much respect Michael Medgyesi’s approach to the GH4, but personally I am going to stick with Cine-D (and my LUT for now, or Cine-V in some cases.

For more articles like this, be sure to sign up to the newsletter using the form on the right panel of this page.

Also – be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more updates!

I’ve been using DaVinci Resolve extensively as a color grading tool for the past few years, but with version 12 just around the corner I am very tempted to use it to cut my next feature. Those of you that read this blog frequently know that I use all of the major NLE’s, and often lean towards FCP X for my personal work. That said, some of the benefits of editing on Resolve 12 are going to be hard to pass up, especially for the unique needs of my upcoming film.

Much like cameras, I think of editing platforms as individual tools that should be chosen based on the job they’re being used for. I may have my favorites (FCP X certainly being one of them), but am not married to any one platform and never have been, just as I am not set on using the same camera for everything that I shoot. Every platform has it’s strengths and weaknesses, and you really should always “pick the right tool for the job”, no matter how cliche that may sound.

Up until this point I have been using FCP X for the majority of my editing work and Premiere Pro for certain jobs where I feel it’s a better fit. To this day I’m still not a big fan of Avid, although I will occasionally use Media Composer on specific jobs as needed – usually based on the other editors involved on those projects.

With all that in mind, DaVinci Resolve 12 is the new kid on the block and it may just become the most powerful and useful editing system out there.

The current version of Resolve (11) already has some incredible editing functionality built right in, and I’ve even used it to edit a couple of short form commercial projects from end to end. But even though version 11 is undeniably a powerful editing system in it’s own right (in addition to being a world class color grading platform), I have never really been tempted to edit any long form material in it, as it isn’t quite at the level of FCP X or Premiere Pro in some ways. With the added functionality coming to Resolve 12 though, that all may change…

There have been countless new editing-centric features integrated into Resolve 12 that will truly take it to the next level and make it a viable candidate for long form editing. Below are just a handful of reasons why I am considering using it for my feature length narrative film:

New User Interface

I am very comfortable working in Resolve 11, and have no real complaints about the interface. That said, it does still feel like a color grading system with an editor built in, whereas Resolve 12 feels like a true hybrid platform. By consolidating some of the ‘pages’ within the UI, Resolve now feels like an editorial finishing system with integrated color tools, instead of the other way around.

The UI certainly wouldn’t be the only reason I would choose one NLE over another, but in this case it’s a very important factor. Working quickly and efficiently in any editing platform partly hinges on the design of the software itself, and it’s comforting to know the Blackmagic has really designed Resolve 12 with the editor in mind. It no longer feels like you are using a workaround to edit in Resolve, but rather than the software was truly intended for that purpose – and your user experience is heightened as a result.

Using LUTs & Color

I will likely be shooting my feature on either the Arri Alexa or the Blackmagic URSA, both of which shoot to a very flat log setting. This will of course mean that I’ll need to use 3D LUTs within Resolve to give the footage a Rec. 709 look, and get away from the overly flat log footage on the RAW files. Just about any editing system now can use 3D LUTs (either natively or via a 3rd party plugin) to give your RAW footage a presentable look as you work on the offline edit, but Resolve takes things a few steps further.

Often times, technical issues in your footage (especially in shots that are slightly over or under exposed) will be amplified by a 3D LUT, and ultimately that can be very distracting while editing. Resolve’s seamless integration between the edit and color pages gives you the ability to fine tune looks as you go, and correct any issues that may be exacerbated by the LUT. For me, this huge… That’s not to say that I am going to color each clip as I go through the offline edit (that would be crazy), but it’s great to know that if I’m unsure about whether or not I can use a specific shot based on color, I can make some adjustments on the fly and give myself peace of mind as I am editing. Not to mention, if I need to do a cast/crew screening or show the producers a cut before the color work as been done, it will be really easy to get my rough cuts looking really polished without having to grade everything prematurely.

No Roundtripping

I am so used to roundtripping my projects (sending them from my NLE to Resolve, and then back again), that it’s just become ingrained in my day to day workflow. That said, it will be pretty incredible to have the ability to edit, color, and finish all within DaVinci Resolve.

No matter how great your workflow is, and how organized your project may be – there are always potential translation issues that can and will occur when you port your project from one software to another. One of the reasons why I love FCP X right now is because of it’s near perfect integration with Resolve (especially when compared to Premiere Pro which I always seem to have issues with). But editing directly in Resolve takes things to a whole other level of simplicity… Now my offline and on-line edits can happen in the exact same place and there is no need to use translation files (such as an XML file) to send things back and forth, effectively eliminating potential issues and speeding up my process substantially.

Brilliant Features

Blackmagic didn’t just integrate more basic editing functionality into Resolve, they have gone above and beyond and created some highly original and powerful features. In many ways, they have taken some of my favorite elements from the major NLEs and integrated the best of them into Resolve 12. This is something that I’ve felt Adobe has tried to do with Premiere (as it has many FCP X inspired features, and many Avid style features too), but they haven’t been able to quite nail down. Resolve on the other hand seems to have found the sweet spot by combining only the best proven features from various applications into their system.

One highlight for me is the ‘Smart Bin’, which essentially works like ‘Smart Collections’ in FCP X. This tool allows you to organize your footage automatically based on certain parameters that you set, which can save a lot of time in the early stages of your edit.

I am also really impressed by the timeline and editing tools in Resolve 12. Much like any other editor, you can use ripple editing, slip/slide, etc. within Resolve, but the integration of these tools is second to none. For instance, rather than manual switching your tool settings to change your editing mode (ripple to slide, let’s say), you can simply position your mouse over a different part of the clip on your timeline, and Resolve will automatically know which tool you want to use. Little details like this can save a load of time when editing a feature.

There are all sorts of other little gems hidden in Resolve 12 too – like the ability to set different in and out points for your video/audio on any given clip, or the ability to select multiple clips in the timeline and apply the same edit to all of the clips at once.

Not to mention, the extremely detailed control that you have over keyframes or transitions by using their curves editor is really impressive.

Change Is Good

Creatively speaking, I am a firm believer that you need to embrace change and find new ways of approaching your work if you want to grow as an artist. I will often challenge myself to use a camera that I am not as familiar with or an editing system that I don’t have as much experience with just to shake things up creatively. When you step out of your comfort zone and force yourself to think and work differently, great things can happen and new ideas are inevitable.

On top of all of the technical and logistical benefits of using Resolve 12 for my feature, I really do like the idea that it will be a new experience. Much like how the office or studio you work in may inspire the work that you do in it, the software that you use will play a part in your creativity as well, whether you realize it or not. Resolve will offer a new experience and a new way to look at my story that I am certain will result in an enjoyable creative process.

Final Thoughts

Resolve 12, much like FCP X feels like the future of editing to me. Hardware and software are converging at a rate that’s faster than we have ever seen before in the film industry, and Blackmagic seems to be at the forefront of that movement. Cameras are essentially computers now, so it’s no big surprise that Blackmagic is focused on creating an end to end pipeline (from cameras to finishing software), that will serve today’s filmmakers throughout the entirety of their production/post pipeline.

It goes without saying that I will still use FCP X and Premiere Pro extensively as they will still be the best options for many projects. My ability to work quickly in FCP X is still unmatched by any other NLE and I doubt that will change in the near future. Even still, for my upcoming feature film where I won’t need to blow through hours of footage every day and the color integration will be paramount, Resolve 12 may just be the best tool for the job.

I haven’t fully committed to using Resolve 12 for the feature at this point, simply because I haven’t used it yet. Once it’s officially released and I can test it out with some longer form content I will make my final decision, but right now it’s looking like Resolve may be the way to go.

If you missed it last time, here is a quick no-budget mood film that I shot for this feature (titled ‘Ivy’) as part of the development process:

For more articles like this, be sure to sign up to the newsletter on the right panel, and bookmark this page.

To read more about Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve be sure to check out www.blackmagicdesign.com

Also – be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more updates!

Low-light cameras like the Sony A7S and Canon C300 have been opening up incredible possibilities for shooting night exterior scenes without any lights at all. But there are still some huge advantages to shooting day for night which can make it an ideal choice for many filmmakers. So for those of you that are looking to go down that path, this article will detail exactly how to do it right.

Shooting day for night (for those of you that don’t know) is quite literally the practice of shooting during the day with the intention of making your footage look like it was shot at night. There is no exact science to this process, and there are several different approaches that can be employed in order to achieve a day for night effect. The technique is constantly used on films of all shapes and sizes, and has been one of Hollywood’s favorite tricks of the trade for years. Films like Castaway, Lawrence of Arabia, Mad Max: Fury Road and countless others have been able to nail down a realistic day for night effect without the audience ever second guessing it.

Before the advent of digital color grading platforms and compositing tools, many day for night sequences were captured in camera. A combination of filters (usually an ND, Polarizer, and a Day For Night filter) would be used to underexpose the image, while also giving it a slight color cast to help sell the effect. More specifically, the ND filter would simply knock down the exposure, while the Polarizer would help to manage hot spots in the sky, reflections, and other surfaces that could be giveaways. Day For Night filters would often be used as a means to cut out certain colors (red in particular) so that the footage would shift to a cooler color palette, which is more consistent with moon light.

Today, the cameras we shoot on and the software we have at our disposal make it easier than ever to capture day for night scenes. Certain fundamentals haven’t changed at all (such as backlighting your subjects, and other techniques that we’ll get into below), but the methods in which we employ those techniques have shifted in some ways.

Below is a quick example of a day for night shot that I recently captured on a small music video shoot. The grade on the bottom shot isn’t final, but it should still give you a rough idea of what’s possible with just some quick tweaks in the editing room:

So without further ado, here are my top 5 tips for day for night cinematography:

1. Backlight your subjects

Now that we’re able to accomplish so much in post, our lives on set are a little easier with regards to day for night footage. Even still, the lighting of your subjects is still the number one variable to be aware of on set, and can easily make or break your shot.

If you’re shooting in the middle of the day with the sun overhead, your subjects are likely going to have really hard shadows on their faces. This is always a dead giveaway of a day for night shot, as moonlight wouldn’t typically cast those types of shadows. This doesn’t mean you can’t shoot during the day, but it does mean you need to position your talent with their backs to the sun so that you avoid those nasty shadows. By backlighting them, you are effectively creating a nice rim light on the talent that can easily be cheated to look to like moon light once the shot is color graded.

2. Shoot during golden hour

While you can always choose to backlight your subjects when shooting in the middle of the day, an even better option would be to shoot at golden hour or blue hour (the hour before sunset and the half hour after sunset). At this time of day the quality of light is nearly perfect for day for night shots, and the light quality is very soft and flattering. Not to mention, you don’t need to worry about fighting those harsh shadows on your talent.

Another benefit to shooting at golden hour is that practical light sources (such as headlights, streetlights, etc.) will pick up well on camera. This means that even once you darken the footage in post, those practical lights will still stand out and help to add realism to the overall look.

Color grading golden hour shots to look like night footage is typically much simpler than doing so with full daylight footage, but it does come with a couple of caveats. First off, since the sun will be so low on the horizon, you will still need to work around it when framing your shots so that you don’t accidentally catch the sun in your frame. Secondly, the low sunlight will cast long shadows on the ground around your talent, which you may or may not like… This is actually not an issue in my books (as moonlight can cast long shadows as well), however some people aren’t as fond of that look as others. If you fall in the latter camp, always be cognizant of how you frame up your shots in order to avoid those long shadows on the ground.

3. Use a polarizer

Although you no longer really need a Day For Night filter (or even an ND for that matter) to capture day for night shots, I would always still recommend using a Polarizer. As I mentioned earlier, whenever you catch a glimpse of the sky, a reflection off of water or numerous other surfaces, you will want to be using a Polarizer to cut out the reflective glare and give you a more authentic night-time looking scene.

Simply pop a Polarizer on your lens and leave it on for the duration of your shoot. It’s never going to hurt your footage, and will only help to eliminate unwanted glare that could give away your day for night effect. It will also help to knock down your exposure just a touch which can’t hurt either. Typically, I don’t recommend underexposing too heavily in camera (since you can pull your levels way down in post), but it’s still good practice to very slightly underexpose your shots to prevent any highlight clipping on your talent. which again could give away the effect.

4. Understand when you can show the sky

In the past, many filmmakers would highly advise against ever showing the sky when shooting day for night, but personally I don’t think you always have to hide it. There are some obvious situations where it will be a dead giveaway (for instance when the sun is literally in the shot, or when the sky is completely blown out), but in many cases you can actually get away with showing a bit of sky.

The key is knowing when and where you can get away with it, and having some solid abilities in the color suite (more on that below). Typically, during blue hour you are pretty safe as the color and luminance of the sky is already getting pretty close to night time. The same goes for heavily overcast days, as your talent may not be too far off exposure-wise from your background. The real issue occurs when the luminance of the sky is drastically brighter than your talent, which makes it obvious that you are shooting day for night. In those extreme cases, simply frame out the sky or opt to shoot at a slightly earlier or later time of day, and you’ll be just fine.

5. Be prepared for a heavy color grade

So much of achieving a realistic day for night look relies on the post-processing/color grading of your footage. Really, this last bullet point could be an entire article itself, but for the purpose of this post I’ll just touch on the basics.

There are four main steps that I always take when color grading day for night footage:

1. I always start by adjusting my exposure levels and bringing down my highlights as much as possible, before doing any other color work. Typically I will bring the highlights down to the point where the skintones are just visible enough that you don’t need to strain your eyes to see the talent. From there, I might raise up the midtones to bring back some of the shadow detail that would inevitably get lost after reducing the highlights. That will get my exposure most of the way there, but will sometimes leave me with an image that is a bit too flat for my liking. If that’s the case, I’ll crush the shadows back down just a touch to bring back some contrast.

2. My next step is adjusting the color and saturation. The specifics of this step will vary from shot to shot, but 90% of the time it will involve pushing blue/magenta into the highlights and the shadows and then desaturating the entire image. This will now leave me with an image that is nice and cool, but not too saturated that it looks overly vibrant. The cool tones tend to work really well with the underexposed footage, and after this step the image starts to really come together and look semi-realistic.

3. At this stage I’ll use multiple power windows to help re-light my shot in post. If there is any bit of sky showing, I’ll create a gradient/power window that will knock down the exposure of the sky significantly. The same goes for the background in general, even if the sky isn’t showing. It’s quite common for one power window to leave an undesired effect on another part of the image (for instance the power window on the sky might bleed over to the talent), so in that case I will use another power window to combat that issue. As you can see in the screenshot below, I am using a power window to bring back some detail on the talent since the power window on the background was so strong.

4. Once all of the windows are in place and the levels/color have been dialled in, I’ll move on to the final step – film emulation. Much like compositing in After Effects, I feel that adding an “adjustment layer” or in this case some film emulation, helps immensely in tying everything together. Any discrepancies in color, exposure, windows, etc. are quickly mitigated once film emulation is used to blend everything together. Personally, I love using Film Convert as it is one of the simplest and most powerful tools I have ever used for achieving beautiful and realistic film emulation.

While I would normally color an intricate day for night shot in DaVinci Resolve, I sometimes will use FCP X or Premiere and color directly in the software out of necessity (usually due to lack of time). In the example shot at the top of this article, I used FCP X. Here is a screenshot of what my inspector looked like with all the grades/Film Convert on it:

Final Thoughts

Day for night is still an extremely relevant option when it comes to crafting night scenes. While it may be tempting to simply grab an A7S and shoot in actual moonlight, doing so isn’t always ideal. For starters, there’s something to be said about shooting during the day and keeping your cast/crew happy. But even on a technical level, you can often achieve superior results by shooting proper day for night footage, as opposed to bumping up your ISO to ridiculous levels… In my opinion at least. With day for night you don’t need to worry about excess noise/grain in your footage, your colors won’t look overly synthetic, and you may have access to locations that would otherwise be inaccessible at night.

There’s a time and a place to shoot day for night, just as there’s a time and place to use a high sensitivity camera at night. Neither option is a substitute for actually shooting at night with proper lighting setups, but when you’re in a pinch it’s always best to know your options.

For more articles like this, be sure to subscribe to the newsletter on the right panel of this page.

And be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more updates!

Blackmagic has been working long and hard to make their flagship color grading software (Resolve) a full fledged NLE and finishing system. While previous iterations of the software offered solid editorial functionality, it wasn’t until version 12 that everything changed. Personally speaking, I’ve had such an amazing experience editing projects on Resolve 12 that it’s quickly becoming my go-to editing platform.

As I’ve mentioned on this site many times before, I’m pretty much software agnostic. I’ll use whatever tool suits the task best, regardless of brand. I run FCP X, Premiere Pro, and Avid (in addition to Resolve of course), and understand that they each have their place.

Up until recently, I would run the majority of my projects through FCP X as it was by far and away the fastest system for me to work on – especially given the type of projects that I’m often tackling. That said, I would still often choose Premiere Pro for certain jobs or even Avid (very rarely) for others. But now, more and more of my projects have been running through Resolve, and I don’t doubt that trend will continue.

Resolve no longer feels like a dedicated color grading app. It now feels like a full blown finishing system that has the best color tools available, built right in… With that in mind, I’ve listed 5 of the main reasons why I believe DaVinci Resolve is the becoming the best editing platform out there.

It’s worth noting that this post isn’t intended to outline a comprehensive list of Resolve’s features. The point is really to focus on the experiential elements of using Resolve as your editing system, so you can understand the true benefit of running your projects through it:

Speed

For me, speed is king when it comes to editing software, and there’s no question that Resolve’s unique toolset and structure allows you to work extremely quickly.

A huge amount of the new tools that Resolve offers (such as Optimizing Media for instance), are designed to enhance your editing sessions, simplify your workflow, and most importantly – speed up your process, and they definitely deliver on all accounts. Above and beyond the tools themselves, the fundamental structure of Resolve is designed in a way that will get you to the finish line more efficiently than ever. From ingest, to editing, to color, to delivery, your entire pipeline can be contained within the Resolve eco-system.

The render speeds on Resolve in particular are hard to beat.

For the purpose of this article, I ran a quick test in which I converted an MXF file using Apple Compressor, and then outputted the same file via Resolve. Needless to say, Resolve was able to convert it to ProRes 422 file in under 10 seconds while Compressor took 55:

Resolve

Compressor

This definitely wasn’t a scientific test, but it was an accurate representation of speed under pretty normal working circumstances.

Best Of Both Worlds

Blackmagic seems to offer many of the best elements from several different NLE’s, all housed in one package. For instance, FCP X-style features like Compound Clips, Optimized Media, .fcpxml support, Optical Flow and many more are all present. Yet at the same time, more traditional Premiere/Avid trim tools, timeline functions, and UI elements help to round out the overall experience.

In many ways, I feel like Resolve 12 is the NLE that FCP 7 users had been waiting for all of these years. It offers the same track based system that many editors are most comfortable with, but also provides truly innovative tools that feel very forward thinking. The bottom is line is this is a very easy software to transition to. It may look daunting at first – especially once you hit the color page, but I assure you that the editorial tools are highly intuitive and within a few minutes of using the app you’ll feel right at home.

Versatility

One my favorite aspects of DaVinci Resolve has always been it’s versatility… And this is something I appreciated just as much even when strictly using Resolve as a color grading app. Now that my editorial workflow is largely moving into Resolve as well, the versatility of the software is even more obvious.

When I say “versatility”, really what I’m saying is that Resolve plays well with others. It can accept just about any file format or translation file you want to throw at it, and can output those same formats just as easily. When in a pinch, I’ll often use Resolve as an intermediate step in my editorial workflow for that reason. For instance, I’ve had situations where I needed to bring a Premiere project into FCP X (or vice-versa) and used Resolve to import and export the XML files, allowing me to port the project back and forth.

I know without a doubt that I’ll make very good use of this ability now that I’m editing so much directly in Resolve. When I need to collaborate with other team members that are working with other NLEs, send out translation files for VFX work, or tackle any other cross-platform task, I’ll be confident in Resolve’s ability to step up to the plate.

No Sacrifices

Some people in the past have had the misconception that certain sacrifices would need to be made in order to use Resolve as an NLE. They thought familiar tools would be missing, the editing capabilities wouldn’t be as robust, and the learning curve would be really steep. In reality though, none of this is true. In fact, the tools couldn’t be better and it’s a very straightforward platform to learn.

It’s not a question of whether or not Resolve can do what other NLE’s can do, it’s what it can do that the others can’t. Features like multi-cam editing, motion paths, trim tools, audio mixing and many more, not only get the job done well, but excel at it.

It’s Free

I’m using the full “Studio” edition of Resolve on my main system since I already own it, but I could easily get all of my work done with the free version if I had to. Blackmagic generously offers both options to it’s customers and they are very wise for doing so.

One of the biggest issues I have with the Adobe subscription model isn’t just the price, but the inability to install the software on more than a couple machines. I understand that a software company can’t give out unlimited licenses just because you purchased one copy, but there needs to be an effective solution for working on multiple machines as a single user. DaVinci Resolve solves this problem entirely by offering their free version.

At my post facility, I have Resolve Studio installed in my main color suite, and the free version installed on my other machines. That way I can easily send projects through to my “B” and “C” systems on the network and work on them seamlessly, before eventually outputting on my main machine if I need the added tools offered in the Studio version.

Final Thoughts

I never would have thought that so many years after FCP X hit the market, the post-production world would still be so fragmented. Premiere Pro may have stole a lot of ex-FCP 7 users, but Premiere certainly doesn’t dominate the market like FCP 7 once did.

That said, if things in the post-world are ever going to settle into place, I believe Resolve is the one application that could make that happen. The price alone is going to entice a huge slew of editors on a budget, and the unbelievably powerful feature set and color capabilities will make it a no-brainer for professionals that haven’t yet given it a chance.

If you’d like to learn more about Resolve’s tools, tech specs, and other relevant info – please visit www.blackmagicdesign.com

For more articles and videos like this be sure to sign up to the newsletter on the right panel of this page.

And be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more updates!

The use of Look Up Tables (or LUTs) has absolutely exploded over the last few years, largely thanks to the abundance of new cameras that shoot in Log color space. It wasn’t long ago that you would be hard pressed to find anyone that even knew what a LUT was outside of a high end colorist, but today they are used even by nearly every filmmaker in one way or another – even film students.

This is a great trend to see, as LUTs offer an extremely powerful and efficient way to manage your color pipeline. From using LUTs with your on board monitoring system to preview looks on set, to integrating them into your post-workflow, a well crafted LUT can increase the speed and quality of just about any production when used right.

Most commonly, LUTs are used to translate video files into a different color space. So for instance if you were to shoot a clip in Log color space (which is very flat), you might use a LUT to convert the image to Rec. 709 space, where it will have more contrast and saturation, and will look more reminiscent of your intended final look.

LUTs are also commonly used as “filters”, as a means to quickly apply a new style or look to footage without having to create a new grade from scratch. Since LUT files can be universally used across many editing and color software platforms, they offer a lot of value for visual filmmakers with all sorts of different needs and workflow setups.

Personally speaking, I create custom LUTs constantly, and for a wide variety of reasons. I’ll often use them on set to preview different looks for clients, or will send them off to offline editors I collaborate with so that even their rough cuts will have a more polished look to them.

Creating LUTs is a very simple process for the most part, and generally involves three steps:

1. Prepping & balancing your source footage

2. Making color adjustments

3. Exporting the LUT

These steps can easily be executed in just about any color software or editing program that supports the exporting of LUT files. But for the purpose of this article, I really want to focus on point 1 –

PREPPING YOUR SOURCE FOOTAGE

The number one mistake that people make when creating a LUT is neglecting to first prep their source footage. It’s common for a filmmaker to bring their source footage straight into their color software, create a look, and export the LUT file without having first prepped their image properly. This can cause some major issues down the line when using the LUT on different clips. Here’s a quick example –

Say for instance you shot an image at the wrong white balance. If you were to craft a look around that image (and balance the color in the process), your generated LUT would not work on the vast majority of footage that you shoot. The drastic white balance adjustment that you would have made to the footage will be baked into the LUT, and it will then be applied to every clip you use the LUT with, even if the clip doesn’t have a white balance issue. Making this kind of mistake would obviously result in a pretty terrible looking final image.

This is an obvious example, but the same kind of issue can occur even if you nailed your white balance on set. Issues with exposure, lighting, or camera settings can all have a detrimental impact on the LUT building process.

The key with creating a LUT is to use the most neutral image possible as your starting point. You want your exposure to be perfect, your white balance to be exact, and your lighting to reflect an accurate and natural amount of shadows and highlights in the image. By working from a neutral starting point, you will ultimately be able to create a LUT that will be far more universal, and can be used across a wide variety of footage.

In order to get your image to this neutral starting point, you essentially need to pre-color your footage before adding the color adjustments that will later become your LUT. In other words, you want to start your process by creating a single layer or node that will “fix” any technical issues with your footage first, and then on separate layers or nodes, create the actual look.

Once your image is looking just right, you can go ahead and delete your very first layer or node (since it is highly specific to the clip you are working on), and then use your software to export the LUT using the remaining color adjustments.

It’s worth noting that using a color chart on set is probably the best way to ensure you will achieve perfect results during this process, and in a future article I’ll be sure to outline color charts in more detail.

My preferred software to create LUTs with is DaVinci Resolve, but if you aren’t a Resolve user or ever find yourself in a pinch, you can even use Adobe Photoshop to generate a LUT.

Here is how you can create a LUT in Adobe Photoshop in a few very easy steps:

Step 1 – Import source footage

Obviously in Photoshop you aren’t going to import your entire video file, but you can import one of the RAW frames (if you’re shooting in a RAW image sequence format), or alternatively you can export a TIFF image from your editing software if you shot in a compressed format. From there, simply bring the image into Photoshop as a new file.

Step 2 – Create an adjustment layer & get to work

Once you have a still from your video file loaded into Photoshop, you will want to create an adjustment layer directly above your source file. You will use this layer to make any contrast/curves/color adjustments to your image as you see fit.

Step 3 – Export the LUT

To save the LUT, all you need to do is select your adjustment layer and select File > Export > Color Look Up Tables. This will bring up a settings window that will allow you to customize the export settings of your LUT to your liking.

That’s about it for now! Hopefully you’ve learned a thing or two about LUTs and how you can streamline your process for generating them on your own.

For all of you A7S II users out there, here is a custom S-Log 3 LUT I made available for free.

Let us know if you have any other tips or questions about creating LUTs in the comments section below.

Noam Kroll

Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on social media using the links below for more content like this!

http://www.noamkroll.com

Last month Blackmagic Design brought me on board to direct a behind the scenes documentary for a film they sponsored titled “A Pirate’s Tale”, which just premiered yesterday during NAB.

The narrative film that I documented was produced by Blackmagic in conjunction with a local production company called Moai Films. The idea was to showcase the production capabilities of the URSA Mini 4.6K on a real world set, while also editing the entire project in DaVinci Resolve 12.

The behind the scenes portion of this project (which is what I handled), was treated much in the same way. We shot the entirety of the BTS shots on Blackmagic’s Micro Cinema Camera, and the piece was also edited in DaVinci Resolve 12. The only footage in the BTS video that was not shot on the Micro Cinema Camera was the interview material, which I captured on my URSA Mini 4.6K. The actual footage from the narrative film (which was shot by Lukas Colombo) was of course also shot on the URSA Mini 4.6K, and not on the Micro.

I edited and graded this BTS piece entirely within DaVinci Resolve 12, which is becoming my go-to editing platform for many projects. I also used FilmConvert to color some of the BTS shots within Resolve, which gave it a nice final touch before outputting.

Please note that the narrative footage from “A Pirate’s Tale” was not shot or colored by me. My footage consists exclusively of all the BTS shots and interview material.

In terms of technical details – I didn’t use a speed booster on the Micro Cinema Camera, and primarily shot with a Tokina 11-16mm F2.8, and a Canon 24-70mm F2.8. I was shooting wide open for the most part, often with a Tiffen Vari-ND filter attached to the lens. I used an Atomos Shogun to monitor the video, but didn’t record to the Shogun at all. The footage you’ll see in the BTS video was all recorded internally to an SD card in ProRes 422. A few shots were taken at 60p, but the vast majority were shot at 23.98.

You can check out the video here:

Overall, working with the Micro Cinema camera was pretty great – both on set and in post. The small form factor of the camera allowed me to work very quickly, and in some cases helped me get into some really tight spaces where I simply couldn’t have shot with a larger camera.

I was quite impressed with the quality that this little Micro Cinema Camera brought to the table. To my eye, it has some of the best color reproduction of any of Blackmagic’s cameras, and the resulting images are great even though it has slightly less dynamic range than the URSA Mini 4.6K.

In the future, I’ll be sure to do a more detailed writeup of the Micro Cinema Camera, but for now be sure to check out my previous test film “MICRO”, a small project I threw together to try out the new camera.

The full version of “A Pirate’s Tale” as well as other Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K footage can be found on the BMD website here.

That’s about it for now! Be sure to check back soon for more updates, tips, reviews, and news from NAB!

Noam Kroll

Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on social media using the links below for more content like this!

http://www.noamkroll.com

I love shooting with natural light, and particularly during golden hour. In fact, whenever possible I aim to shoot exclusively with natural light, and only when necessary I will augment it with additional light sources to help enhance the look, as to avoid losing the organic aesthetic that I’m after. This bias has inevitably led me to shoot during golden hour consistently, as this time of day can offer some of the best natural light results when done right.

Golden hour (or magic hour) of course refers to the hour leading up to sunset, but can also refer to the hour beginning directly after sunrise. The sun emits an incredibly beautiful, warm, and forgiving quality of light at this time of day, and it’s unique look simply can’t be replicated. Filmmakers like Terrence Malick have made a career out of shooting around sunset, and many others continue to follow suit as it’s distinctive characteristics are hard to resist.

But shooting in golden hour isn’t always easy, and many filmmakers go into golden hour shoots completely underprepared. It’s a common misconception that shooting at this time of day is easy, primarily because less gear is involved than on a typical interior or night exterior scene. That said, just because you don’t have as many lights, c-stands, or flags lying around on set, doesn’t mean you don’t have your work cut out for you. In reality, shooting in golden hour can be far more complicated than shooting under more controlled lighting conditions, despite what it seems like on the surface.

Over the years of shooting time and time again during golden hour, I’ve developed my share of guidelines that I’m always cognizant of on set.

Below are 5 of the most common mistakes you might make when shooting in golden hour, and how to avoid them:

1. Underestimating shooting time

Golden hour doesn’t always last an hour. Depending on where you are in the world, what time of year it is, and many other variables, the actual shootable time during golden hour may only be 40 minutes or less. Filmmakers often wait until the last second to start shooting in an attempt to capture the most optimal quality of light… But when the sun goes down and they realize only half of their scene has been captured, unfortunately there’s no other solution but to either re-shoot a different day, or cut the scene short.

The key to timing out your shoots right is simple: put effort into pre-production. Scout your location, know the exact times you will be able to shoot, rehearse your actors like crazy, block beforehand, and so on. The more legwork you do up front, and the more decisions you make before you start rolling, the more time you have to actually shoot your material. Every second counts during golden hour and if you spend 5 minutes formatting a card, or re-blocking a scene because you didn’t prepare properly. you just lost another take.

2. Inconsistent exposures

Under controlled lighting conditions you have the luxury of setting your exposure in camera, and leaving your settings exactly as they are for the duration of your scene. When shooting in any type of natural light though, you will never have this luxury as you are always going to be chasing the movement of the sun. This issue is exaggerated tremendously during golden hour, since the light can literally change by the second.

As such, if you aren’t constantly changing your exposure settings – either by opening your aperture, bumping up ISO, or adjusting your ND filters, your images are going to be all over the place, at least exposure-wise. From your first take to your final take, your light levels will be drastically different. This means you’ll need to rely on heavy color correction work in order to match the shots, which of course can eat up a lot of unnecessary time and money on the tail end of your project.

This might feel like an obvious point, but I can tell you from first hand experience as a colorist that this is an issue I have seen more often in the color suite than nearly anything else. So always remember to keep an eye on your light meter, histogram, or whatever your exposure tool of choice may be – and tweak your camera settings constantly in order to capture a consistent, well exposed sequence.

3. Missing an early golden hour

Any of you that have ever shot during golden hour more than once, know that the light quality at this time of day can vary significantly based on cloud coverage and other environmental variables. A sunset one night might light up the clouds in the sky with pink and purple, and the very next night there may be no clouds in the sky at all – ultimately giving you a much more subdued look.

On a more extreme end, when there is a lot of cloud coverage, golden hour practically doesn’t exist. The hour leading up to sunset will look just like the rest of the day – drab and dull – if there aren’t enough pockets in the clouds to let the light come through.

This can cause a lot of problems, especially if you are planning to start shooting at a specific time. Let’s assume sunset is at 7pm and you want to start rolling at 6pm. By the time 6pm rolls around, the light could actually look worse than at 5pm, since not only is there still cloud coverage, but now it’s much darker, meaning you are now also fighting lower light levels.

In situations like this, all you can do is start shooting as early as possible. For instance, if you were to start shooting at 4pm, you would at least have a couple of hours of nice light (even if you don’t get a sunset), before things get too dark. You might even luck out and find that the clouds start to clear away just at the perfect time… There’s no way of knowing. The bottom line is, when in doubt – just start shooting. There are no guarantees with golden hour, so sometimes you just need to be willing to work with what you’ve got.

4. Shooting into blue hour

Blue hour is the small pocket of time after sunset (usually 20 – 40 minutes), where the sun is completely gone, but there is still some ambient light lingering. This is another incredible time of day to shoot at, but it is even more challenging than golden hour, since the window of time is so small and the exposure levels are so low.

Some filmmakers will continue to roll a scene well into blue hour (that began during golden hour), which can ultimately cause a number of issues, particularly when shooting a substantial amount of coverage. For example, imagine you were to shoot a closeup of one of your actors during golden hour, and then shoot a second closeup of a different actor during blue hour. While shooting this might not seem like an issue at all, since you may be able to expose both shots properly in camera. But this scenario can be extremely problematic with regards to matching colors later on in the edit suite.

Obviously in any color grading software you can color balance to get your talent’s skintones to match each other, and use curves or color keys to fix specific issues with the overall color balance. But you will never make the sky look the same. Boosting up a sky in post just never looks right, and while it is possible to go down that path, a far better method is to just get it right in camera.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t ever shoot during blue hour – but simply that you should never assume you can match blue hour footage to golden hour footage, as sometimes they are just too far off, and the look of your scene may become very distracting to the viewer. Always aim to finish your scene before blue hour, unless the purpose of the scene is to extend into the evening, and that’s the look you are going for.

5. Over-saturating in post

Not all golden hour problems happen on set. Some can happen in the color suite too. It’s common for filmmakers to want to get the most out of their golden hour footage when color grading, and in an attempt to play up that quintessential “sunset look” they often end up pushing their colors way too far. Some filmmakers will be tempted to push more orange and yellow into the midtones and crank up the saturation significantly to make the golden hour effect even more obvious. Unfortunately though, this type of color work is counter-intuitive to an ideal golden hour look, as it can completely take away from the natural feel of any given scene.

Golden hour is all about capturing that magical, yet realistic quality of light that feels beautiful in an organic way. As soon as your image is noticeably “colored”, you’ve lost the whole essence of what makes golden hour footage look so good. Your footage becomes synthesized and digital looking, which completely defeats the purpose of shooting during golden hour in the first place.

Keeping your saturation and color balance natural looking is one of the most powerful ways you can craft a look around footage shot at sunset. The goal should be to let the natural colors shine, and play into the organic beauty of what the environment actually looked like – not to make it look like a Michael Bay film. That’s not to say you can’t stylize your footage, or give it it’s own distinct look… But rather that you should be tasteful and subtle with your approach to coloring in order to maintain the unmistakeable quality of light that was captured at the source.

That’s about it for now.

Hopefully those of you that like to shoot during golden hour as much as I do have picked something up here, and I’ll see ya around the site next time!

Noam Kroll

Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on social media using the links below for more content like this!

http://www.noamkroll.com

I am very excited to announce that today I am releasing 3 brand new Cinematic LUT packs through NoamKroll.com! Many readers of this site have been asking me to deliver more color grading tools and resources, which is why I’ve decided to release these Cinematic LUT packs exclusively through my blog as of today.

As a director and colorist, I have spent countless hours color grading hundreds of projects of all shapes and sizes. From commercials and music videos to feature films and television content, I have been through the wringer and back in the color grading suite. During this time I created dozens of creative LUTs that I would later use to speed up my workflow and improve the quality of my work. Drawing inspiration from many of these LUTs that were created in the field and on real world projects, the LUTs included in this series have all been crafted around the same goal: To give filmmakers a means to improve their color quality dramatically while mitigating post-production time.

Unlike simple translation LUTs, which are typically designed to convert color spaces (for instance converting Log footage to Rec. 709), the LUTs that I have created are stylistic in nature. They are intended to be used as creative tools that will help filmmakers experiment with different color looks quickly and easily, giving them more freedom to work creatively and spontaneously in post.

These LUTs can be used with footage from virtually any camera. Whether you are grading RAW footage from a RED or Blackmagic camera, ProRes from an Alexa, H264 from a DSLR, or any other format for that matter – the Look Up Tables included in these 3 packs will work every time.

Many of the other LUT packs that are currently available online are far too extreme in nature, at least in my opinion. Some of these extreme LUTs will only work well on daylight shots, while others might only look good when applied to low-light footage. While those types of LUTs may be useful in some scenarios, they are far less universal than the ones that I have created, which are designed to be used with the widest variety of footage possible, while still delivering a distinct presence to the images.

The full range of 36 LUTs have been organized into three individual packs of 12: Vintage, Summer, and Winter.

A brief description of each pack along with some sample images graded with the LUTs can be viewed below:

VINTAGE

The timeless looks included in the Vintage Pack are specifically designed to evoke the feeling of nostalgia in the viewer. Warm, desaturated tones on certain LUTs call back a mid 1970’s vibe, while the stark black and white aesthetic offered on another creates a powerful film noir look. In this pack you’ll also find a poppy and colourful 1960’s look, a washed-out & faded film look, and much more. These looks are perfect for adding that unique vintage quality to your footage, even without using any film emulation.

SUMMER

Each and every one of the looks in the Summer Pack is designed to deliver a beautiful, warm aesthetic in their own distinct way. Some looks combine lifted shadows with varying degrees of warmth to create a soft, hazy look, while other offer a more raw, punchy aesthetic that is undeniably bold. Whether you just want to add a touch of warmth to your footage to make it more inviting to the viewer, or you’re looking to create the look of a total heat wave, this pack can do it all.

WINTER

The looks included in the Winter Pack have been carefully crafted to deliver beautifully cool tones across the board, and are designed to evoke a slightly unsettled feeling in the viewer. Some looks utilize heavier contrast in combination with an ice-cold color balance to leave their mark, while others take a more subdued approach by reducing contrast and limiting the cold-tones to more specific areas of the color spectrum. No matter which LUT you apply from this pack, you can expect a chilling look that still feels organic.

The video below demonstrates the dynamic effects of three LUTs (one from each pack) on a single shot:

Many similar LUT packs sell online for anywhere from $50 – $100, but in the interest of allowing these LUTs to reach a wider audience I have priced them at only $36 per pack. Additionally, all three packs can be purchased together for a discounted rate of $89.

The packs themselves each come with 12 individual LUTs (or 36 LUTs if you purchase the full pack), all of which come as .cube files – the industry standard file type for LUT management.

In addition, you will receive a 4 page PDF with your purchase that will provide instructions for installing and applying your LUT files in various software programs, including: DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer, and Adobe Photoshop.

To purchase the packs individually or together, you may do so using the links below. Happy coloring!

Noam Kroll

Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on social media using the links below for more content like this!

http://www.noamkroll.com

There’s a big misconception that color grading black and white projects is easier than grading in full color. While in some respects, grading in color does add an additional layer of complexity, achieving a filmic B & W look can be just as complex for different reasons.

Many filmmakers use virtually the same grading approach that they would use for color footage on their black and white projects, and more often than not wind up with less than stellar results. In fact, many of the techniques that help color footage look more organic or filmic, can actually have the opposite effect on black and white footage, making shots appear dull or video-ish.

Below are a few of the biggest considerations to take into account when coloring your black and white footage.

Keep in mind that while I am using DaVinci Resolve to create these looks and demonstrate some of the techniques, you can apply these principles in virtually any basic editing software too.

CONTRAST IS YOUR FRIEND

In recent years there has been this push towards the “milky black look” on color projects. This look is achieved by lifting the black levels on shots so far that sit far above true black (or 0 IRE). The idea is that lifting your shadows will emulate the look of old film stocks, which sometimes had lower contrast qualities to them.

Personally, I don’t like when this look is overdone – for film or black and white, as it is more based in a nostalgic memory of what film used to look like, as opposed to what really good film stocks are able to reproduce. But I’ve already tackled this on a different article.

Many old black and white film stocks were actually very high contrast. In fact, many of them also didn’t have a ton of dynamic range, and as such footage from these stocks were known for crushed blacks and bright highlights, creating a very punchy expressionistic sort of feel.

With that in mind. The number one piece of advice I give when coloring black and white footage is to embrace your contrast curve.

Take a look at the shot below as an example.

Ungraded

Desaturated

Desaturated + Contrast

The second image clearly looks more like desaturated video, where the final image looks more filmic. This once again, is because many black and white film stocks tended to have more contrast to them, and we have replicated that more accurately in the third image of the series.

With that said, there is a time and a place to lift the shadows on your black and white footage. Sometimes you might want to give your footage a more vintage or nostalgic feel, and bringing up the black levels could be the right choice.

In that case, it’s important that you first crush your blacks, and then lift them up. If you simply leave your blacks lifted and desaturate your image, the shot will look flat and boring. On the other hand, if you add contast to your image and then lift your shadows up, you will achieve a much more interesting effect.

Desaturated + Contrast + Lifted Shadows

In the example above, lifting the black levels was achieved with a simple curve in DaVinci Resolve that looks like this:

So in fact, it’s entirely possible to have the best of both worlds. You can have a relatively high contrast shot that also has lifted shadows – your contrast is just going to live in your mid tones rather than in your blacks.

USE POWER WINDOWS ORGANICALLY

Power windows can be a very useful tool when color grading – either to add a basic effect such as a vignette, or to highlight a certain area of the frame that may not have been lit perfectly. With that in mind, I recommend using power windows when they are called for to enhance the B & W look, while being cognizant that the “less is more” approach will almost always serve you best.

One of the most powerful qualities of the black and white look, is it’s ability to hide distracting details. Black and white footage can add mystery or intrigue on a visual level by hiding distracting colors or unnecessary shadow detail. By this same token, vignettes can be used to focus the viewers attention more effectively and hide details on the periphery of the image that may be better left in shadow.

In the example below, the vignette I am using is very subtle, but it’s there. If I were to go overboard and start adding multiple vignettes to highlight different areas of the frame, the organic nature of the shot would be lost entirely. You never want to see a vignette, you should just barely feel it on an almost subconscious level.

Desaturated + Contrast + Vingette

So remember: Limited use of power windows will help to emphasize black and white’s ability to hide the details, but too much will push you right back into digital territory.

PUSHING YOUR COLORS STILL MATTERS

If you were to shoot a black and white image on actual B & W film stock, you would have a couple of options in terms of your production technique. You could simply load a black and white stock into your camera and start rolling, or alternatively you could use a color filter in front of your lens which would have a dramatic effect on the contrast quality of your image.

Take a look at this image from Tiffen, showing what two different yellow filters in front of the lens would do to your black and white shot:

Different contrast effects could be achieved by using any number of other color filters (not just yellow), each of which will make their own unique mark on the image.

The point is not that you need to shoot with a color filter on your lens, but rather that you can in fact push and pull your color wheels, white balance, curves, and other color settings to dramatically change your look in this same way while color grading.

Take a look at the images below as an example. We’ll start with our baseline:

Ungraded

Now we’ll add a really extreme color effect using the primaries bars in DaVinci Resolve like this:

This will give us an image that looks like this before it’s desaturated:

We can then desaturate, which will give us this:

Color Channels Pushed + Desaturated

Pushing the colors like this obviously has a dramatic effect on the image, and in this case makes things look much more unique and dynamic.

One important technical detail to note, is that in order for this technique to work,  you need to make your color adjustments on a layer or node that precedes your desaturation. In other words, let’s say we have three nodes on DaVinci Resolve, they should be set up like this:

The first node should be our color effect (let’s say pushing the red channel up), and the remaining nodes are where we desaturate the footage, add contrast, and make any other final tweaks. If we were to apply the desaturation before the color effect, we would simply be adding color to an already desaturated image.

This order of operations will apply no matter what software you are working in. So even if you are adding layers in your editing software (instead of using nodes in your color software), you will want to stack them so that your desaturation is on top of your color adjustments.

LUTS CAN BE USED

Many filmmakers and colorists are now using LUTs to color their footage, but often feel it is unnecessary when coloring in black and white, since most LUTs are designed for color. With that said, you can still use creative LUTs in powerful ways when grading B & W material, you just need to adjust your workflow slightly.

Much like the previous point that states that any color effects should be added before you desaturate your image (in your layers or node tree), the same applies to color LUTs. Assuming they aren’t black and white LUTs, you will want to add the look of your choice to your footage before desaturating the image.

By doing this, you can still benefit from the design of the original LUT (contrast, levels adjustments, etc.), while using it to stylize your black and white footage in a unique way.

For instance, the second image below uses a Vintage LUT that I am applying from one of my recently released Cinematic LUT Packs.

Ungraded

Ungraded + Vintage LUT

Now here is what happens when we desaturate after applying the LUT.

Vintage LUT + Desturated + Contrast

Obviously there is a big difference in what the final image looks like, even though this particular LUT was designed for color footage. Personally, I love to use LUTs when coloring black and white footage as I can easily cycle through different looks and test out all sorts of unique contrast/color combinations to see which works best on my footage.

If any of you are interested in learning more about my Cinematic LUT Packs, be sure to click this link. I currently have three different packs available, Vintage, Summer, and Winter. They are designed to be used by independent filmmakers of all skill levels that aim to color their own footage and achieve powerful looks right inside their editing or color software.

That’s it for now. Check back soon for more updates, filmmaking tips, camera reviews, and much more.

And be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more updates!

Noam Kroll

Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on social media using the links below for more content like this!

http://www.noamkroll.com

The URSA Mini seems to just keep getting better with each new update. The latest beta firmware (4.0) is the biggest leap forward yet, and one of it’s flagship features offers users the ability to load and export custom LUTs from the camera. Having just installed the firmware a couple of days ago, I decided to run some tests by creating custom LUTs that could be loaded onto the URSA Mini 4.6K for future use on set.

As I was trying to decide which custom LUTs would be most useful to have loaded into the camera,  I thought – why not make a LUT that is designed to emulate the Arri Alexa look.

One of the reasons I love the URSA Mini 4.6K is that it’s look can be very Alexa-like. That said, it is a different camera, and there are some notable differences in the colors, contrast, and other visual parameters, as no two cameras will ever look identical. With that in mind, my goal was to take the already filmic image from the URSA Mini 4.6K, and tweak it just slightly to get it to look more like native Alexa footage.

It took a lot of heavy lifting to do this, which might be surprising considering the results of the LUT when applied are actually quite subtle.

Using DaVinci Resolve, a ton of Alexa footage (including lots of color charts), and even more URSA Mini 4.6K footage, I slowly but surely was able to develop a LUT that I believe gives URSA Mini 4.6K Film footage a look that is closer to Alexa.

While my LUT building process initially started by lining up color chart footage shot on both Alexa and URSA Mini 4.6K and matching each color square individually, it quickly evolved from there. I later took my initial version of the LUT and applied it to regular footage, making very small adjustments to my eye. So really, the creation of this LUT was half scientific and half instinctual.

The difference between my Alexa-style LUT and the standard 4.6K to Video LUT isn’t massively different, and it’s not supposed to be. As I mentioned above, the 4.6K already has a very Alexa-like quality to it, so the differences between these two LUTs are not intended to be monumental.

Take a look at some examples below.

All of the images were shot in 4.6K 2.4:1 aspect ratio in ProRes HQ Film mode.

RAW

URSA MINI 4.6K VIDEO LUT

URSA MINI 4.6K TO ALEXA LUT

The differences between the two LUTs are subtle, but still distinct – especially in the rendering of greens and magentas, as well as the overall contrast. The two samples above have not been graded other than using the LUTs, but below are two more examples of the same shot that are slightly graded (using the exact same grade) to bring back the window detail.

URSA MINI 4.6K VIDEO LUT – GRADED

URSA MINI 4.6K TO ALEXA LUT – GRADED

What’s great about this LUT is that it’s effects will be different depending on the scene you are shooting, since there were a high volume of tiny changes made in the process of creating the LUT. In other words, depending on the color palette of any given scene, the effect of the LUT may be more or less obvious, since some 4.6K colors are natively closer to Alexa than others.

Here are a couple more examples.

RAW

URSA MINI 4.6K VIDEO LUT

URSA MINI 4.6K TO ALEXA LUT

RAW

URSA MINI 4.6K VIDEO LUT

URSA MINI 4.6K TO ALEXA LUT

You can download the URSA to Alexa LUT by clicking here.

FIRMWARE 4.0

I’ve only been shooting with the new firmware for a couple of days now, so I’m not going to write a detailed breakdown of my thoughts on it just yet. But for now, I can tell those of you that haven’t tried it out yet that practically everything has changed from a UI/design perspective on version 4.0, and for the better. At the same time, the simplistic design Blackmagic is known for hasn’t been lost in the process which is really nice to see.

There have seemingly been countless new features added in version 4.0, and I feel like I’m discovering more of them each time I use the camera. There are far too many new additions to list here, but here are a few of my personal highlights:

• Beautifully designed new operating system
• Heads up display
• Individual monitoring control for each SDI output
• Ability to load and export 3D LUTs
• Auto white balance
• Tint control
• Customizable focus peaking colors and settings
• 2.4:1 aspect ratio in 4.6K
• 3K anamorphic recording
• Custom camera settings presets

The heads up display is probably the most useful of the new features when shooting a real world project. It’s essentially a menu overlayed on your LCD screen, which makes changing basic settings like ISO or white balance way quicker. All of your settings and parameters are laid out on the top and bottom of your screen, and if you want to change something (let’s say the audio input levels), it’s as simple as tapping the audio meters and making an adjustment right there on your screen. There’s no need to step into the menu using the buttons on the camera body.

For the most part, all of the features in version 4.0 seem to have been designed to not only make the camera more functional, but more useable. Once I’m able to shoot some more substantial material with the camera using this new firmware, I’ll be sure to post some more detailed feedback. For now, I would say it is definitely worth trying out if you are a 4.6K user – even while it’s still in beta mode.

As for the URSA 4.6K to Alexa LUT, I may create an updated version of it down the line once I get a chance to shoot with the camera more frequently. So for those of you that do use the LUT, please send me some feedback so I can continue to refine it over time.

And for any of you that aren’t URSA Mini 4.6K owners, but are looking for a similar Alexa-style LUT for your camera, be sure to comment and let me know below. I may make some more of these in the future for different camera platforms…

Also, be sure to check out my Cinematic LUT Packs by clicking here!

Noam Kroll

Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on social media using the links below for more content like this!

http://www.noamkroll.com

When I was first starting out as a filmmaker I would constantly make little short films as a means to experiment with new techniques. I never went to film school, so instead I would write, direct and edit little experimental video projects whenever I could. Some of them turned out well, and others not so well… But I always learned something from them, and they each played their own part in my learning process and growth as a filmmaker.

These days, unfortunately I have much less free time than I did when I was starting out. Between my commercial work, and my longer term directorial projects (including an upcoming feature film), it’s become harder and harder to set aside a week or even a few days to just get out there and shoot something spontaneous. And while my needs from a creative development standpoint have certainly evolved over the years, my desire to shoot these small projects has never really gone away.

Thankfully though, last month a small window of time opened up that allowed me to get back to my roots, and shoot a fun no-budget short film. My goal going into this project above all else, was to experiment with a number of new techniques and approaches that I might later put to use on future productions.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been working with larger crews, which has been a lot of fun. That said, with this project I wanted to challenge myself to create a film where I did everything myself. This is by no means how I normally like to work (part of the reason I love film is because of the collaborative nature of the medium), but in this case I thought it would be an interesting challenge to do everything – from directing/DPing to sound and color – by myself. I was curious to see what would happen by working this way, and how the limitation of having no crew would affect the end product.

I also wanted to experiment with shooting something in a cinema verité style, and in this case that translated to blocking each scene so that virtually no coverage would be required. This is a style that I’ve been particularly drawn to for a while, but haven’t really had the opportunity to put into practice until now. Part of taking on this documentary-inspired approach meant that in addition to being my own DP I would also run my own audio, which I documented in this blog post from last week.

Camera-wise, I decided to shoot on the URSA Mini 4.6K – again as a means of experimentation. I’ve been shooting with the 4.6K for months, but I’ve mostly been using it on commercial or corporate projects, and wanted to put it to the test on a narrative shoot. Not to mention I was really eager to try out the new URSA 4.0 firmware, and even created a BTS video on it that will be released soon.

One final element I wanted to experiment with involved utilizing some new film grain that I created from scratch.

As many of you might know, I am a big fan of adding film grain to my footage, but I have never been a hundred percent satisfied with any of the film grain that I have access to in my library or through plugins. Recently, I decided to shoot some film grain on my own using 35mm film (which was scanned at 6K resolution), and I am currently in the process of developing a number of grain packs that I will release through NoamKroll.com soon. Some of these packs will offer clean film grain, and others will offer dirty film grain. On this film, I used the dirty grain which still has some dust, scratches, and hair on it, and even has some authentic 35mm flicker. I am very much looking forward to sharing the grain packs with all of you soon, and hope to release them within the next month.

Below are a couple of screen grabs from the film (blown up to show the grain). The first is clean, and the second uses my 35mm dirty grain scan. Please forgive the JPEG compression, which somewhat diminishes the effect of the grain structure:

THE PROCESS

Once I decided to go ahead with this project, everything moved very quickly. Knowing that I wanted to test out a lot of different things with this project – from a new type of shooting style, to the camera, to post-production techniques – I decided to write a minimalistic concept that would serve each of those needs.

To keep things simple, I set the entire film in one location and limited it to only two characters, as I knew this would make it easier for me while shooting as a one man crew. Within a day or two I had my locations and cast locked down, and I was ready to go. It also helped that I was working with two actors that I’ve collaborated with before – Timothy Lee DePriest and Flavia Watson – who in fact were both in my short film The Mechanic, a couple years back.

The shoot itself took place in Malibu, CA and was shot over the course of four hours beginning right around sunrise. Initially I thought we would need closer to 5 or 6 hours (as the script was about 5 pages), but since there was so little coverage, things moved very quickly. It really made me realize how much material you can shoot in such a small amount of time when you aren’t over-covering your scenes. Shooting 5 pages in one location can take four hours or four days. It all depends on how elaborate you want to get… But sometimes less is more, and for my personal taste, using less coverage often yields a much more interesting creative result.

My URSA Mini was rigged up primarily with the standard Blackmagic URSA accessories (EVF and Shoulder Kit), as well as my Zoom H6 audio recorder. I also attached a Chrosziel Mattebox with some IRND filters, but didn’t use a follow focus or any other accessories.

I had a full kit of vintage Zeiss Superspeeds (MK I) with me, but decided to shoot the whole film on a single lens – the 35mm. Knowing that I would be shooting with a very limited amount of time, and no AC to help me swap lenses, it just made sense to shoot everything on one lens. I considered shooting everything on the 50mm at one point, but ended up sticking with the 35mm since I knew it would be a bit more versatile.

These vintage superspeed lenses are absolutely incredible and really add a unique quality to digital footage. Sometimes they flare in a very unusual way, and some of the colors they produce are a bit unpredictable, but that’s the whole beauty of shooting on vintage glass.

When it came time to shoot our main dialogue scene, the fact that I was essentially only shooting a master (again, with no coverage) was pretty liberating. It didn’t matter if the actors changed their marks from take or take, or even improvised some lines. There was no continuity that had to be adhered to, so it was really great to be able to let the actors work and not get in their way, or have to cut a take short for strictly technical reasons. We shot at least 10 takes of the dialogue scene, which is far more than I would usually shoot. But because we were moving so quickly, we used the extra time we had to try out a bunch of different options for the scene. In  the end, it was the very last take that made the cut.

With regards to the edit, I once again wanted to keep things as simple as possible. I have recently been using DaVinci Resolve 12.5 to edit most of my projects, but I wanted to challenge myself to both edit and color this film inside of FCP X. Normally I would either edit and color entirely inside of Resolve, or edit in FCP X (or Premiere) and then send the project to Resolve for color. But in this case my goal was to step out of my comfort zone and color the film using the very limited toolset available in FCP X.

Ordinarily I would want to have the full color control that Resolve gives me, but in this case I opted to treat the color as I would if I were color timing motion picture film. I wanted to make minor, overall corrections, and not focus too much on making everything perfect.

After coloring the footage in FCP X (giving it a low contrast, but natural look), I added my custom film grain to it. I will be sure to do a separate post on this in the future once the grain is publicly available, but for now I will say that I overlayed my “dirty” 35mm grain at 80%.

I also used one of my Vintage LUTs from my Cinematic LUT Pack, to add an overall color wash to the piece.

The film itself was shot entirely in ProResHQ at 23.98 in 4.6K 2.4:1 aspect ratio. Even with the color and grain added, it held up really well and I didn’t regret not shooting in RAW! If I had more CFast cards with me or at least some time to dump cards on set, I probably would have shot RAW just to be safe. But given my situation I opted for the extra record time, and didn’t feel like I took a hit in the image quality department at all.

That’s about it for now. The film is embedded below for you to check out!

For more content like this, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter!

Noam Kroll

Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on social media using the links below for more content like this!

http://www.noamkroll.com

I’ve been a fan of FCP X since it was first released (despite the controversy), but over the past year I’ve been using it less and less. I’m not someone that is married to any one editing platform, and my goal is always to pick the right tool for the job. This year, I’ve shifted many of my projects to DaVinci Resolve 12.5 thanks to it’s incredible new editing toolset, but I still regularly cut projects on Premiere Pro and of course FCP X.

I like having the ability to choose the most suitable editing software for any given project, and although my use of FCP X has dwindled a bit this year, I think that’s about to change thanks to version 10.3.

The latest update of FCP X comes loaded with a ton of new features, and a very sleek UI re-design.

There are a ton of new features under the hood (more on those below), and the new UI alone is a welcomed change.

Not only is the interface cleaner, but it’s also more functional. Previously, my biggest issue with the FCP X interface was it’s inability to be customized, but that’s now been remedied as version 10.3 supports full custom layouts that can be saved as presets.

Unlike Premiere Pro, where your panels are prone to get closed or moved accidentally, FCP X locks your custom interface down with anchored panels. You can change the layout by way of the menu bar, but the panels will never become undocked as they often will in other NLE’s. For me, this is a win-win, and makes for one of the best implementations of a customizable UI that I’ve seen.

FCP X 10.3 also has several new presets for panel layouts, including a Color Correction layout as seen below:

I’m not going to touch on all of the new features in FCP X 10.3 here, as there are simply too many to cover and I haven’t had long enough to experiment with them all.

With that said, here is a list of some of the highlights:

• Redesigned flat UI
• Customizable interface
• Macbook Pro Touchbar support
• Remove effects/attributes
• Rec. 2020 color space support
• New timecode reader
• Flow transition
• Improved/faster audio fades
• New roles panel
• Audio lanes

Clearly there is a lot to be excited about if you’re a FCP X user. In particular, the support for Rec. 2020 color really sets FCP X apart from many other NLE’s that are limited to the aging (but still standard) Rec. 709 color space.

But the last item on the list above is the one that I think deserves the most attention: Audio lanes. It’s a feature that deals with one of the central issues that critics have had of FCP X all along – the magnetic timeline.

AUDIO LANES

FCP X’s magnetic timeline polarized editors since it was introduced in version 10.0. While a handful of filmmakers (myself included) embraced it right away, most others saw it as an annoyance, especially with regards to it’s handling of audio.

In principle, the magnetic timeline always made a lot of sense. It introduced us to a new paradigm for editing, designed to speed up workflow and increase creative productivity. By allowing users to move clips anywhere in the timeline without accidentally overwriting other clips, it became faster than ever to experiment with new edits that involved moving large chunks of the timeline around. But those benefits mainly pertained to video…

Audio on the other hand is much more complex, and editing dialogue and other audio clips has always posed some notable challenges for the magnetic timeline.

In many cases a given timeline will contain numerous audio clips for every one video clip. For example, a single video clip may have a dialogue track, ambient audio, sound effects, and score attached to it. Without traditional tracks to lock those audio clips into place, the FCP X timeline can get very messy, creating many layers of connected audio clips that can be hard to manage and edit.

Apple clearly came around to the idea that while the magnetic timeline is extremely powerful for video, it has it’s downsides in the audio department… Which is surely how Audio Lanes were born.

An Audio Lane is simply a new way of organizing the audio in your timeline based on roles. In the past, if you had numerous audio tracks connected to your video clip (as described above), they would simply float at the bottom of the timeline without any rhyme or reason. It was difficult to keep things organized visually, and being able to see exactly where a specific effect or music cue was placed was next to impossible.

On more traditional NLE’s, audio tracks are often used to separate different types of audio content. For instance track 1 may be dedicated to dialogue and track 2 might house the sound effects. This allows for a simple way to keep audio files organized, but it comes at the expense of limited flexibility while editing.

Audio lanes essentially give users a best of both worlds scenario. Audio can still be connected to video clips just as it always was in previous version of FCP X (meaning edits can be made very easily), but Audio Lanes now offer an extremely powerful organizational function.

Take a look at the image below as a point of reference:

In the timeline above, the audio lanes are divided between dialogue, music, and voiceover. If I were to add a new voiceover track to the edit, it would automatically populate the orange voiceover lane. In previous versions of FCP X, a new voiceover file would simply appear as another green connected audio clip, completely indistinguishable from the other audio files in the timeline. Lanes on the other hand, effectively work as ever expanding audio tracks with color coding as an added point of reference.

Unlike traditional tracks that are limited to only single audio clip, lanes can house as many clips as you’d like. You could have 10 different sound effects layered on top of each other, and as long as they are all assigned the same role, they will all stay organized together in a singular lane.

In the image above, not only are the roles being used to organize the audio lanes, but sub-roles are also activated, which allow for added control and functionality over each individual audio channel within any given file. The view above shows a timeline where the sub-roles (in this case different channels of audio on the VO track) are expanded, which is why there are so many layers on the voiceover track.

Here is what it would look like when when the sub-roles are fully collapsed:

Having the ability to expand or hide your audio channels or sub-roles (which can effectively be assigned in an infinite amount of ways), is a life saver and can make complex audio edits so much faster and easier. The Index panel on the left can also be used to change the stacking order of the lanes, so that you could place your music on top of your dialogue for instance.

The Index can also be used to shrink the sizing of audio lanes that aren’t currently being edited:

You can also create a compound clip of your entire project to make global adjustments to your lanes with ease.

For example, a compound clip of the timeline above would look like this:

When Audio Lanes are turned off, it looks like any other compound clip.

But when they are turned on (using the Index panel), this happens:

Now each lane can be adjusted independently, and can also be further expanded to show sub-roles for even more fine-tuning control.

Clearly there is a lot to like about Audio Lanes. They are making FCP X’s timeline far more effective, organized, and functional, while speeding up the audio editing process immensely. There are still some improvements that could be made – for instance, a roles based audio mixer would be a life saver – but even in it’s current form, this is a very powerful addition to FCP X.

I’m not certain this, or any other new FCP X 10.3 feature is going to covert die hard Premiere Pro or Avid users. But for some editors that are still on the fence, 10.3 may finally be the version of FCP X they were waiting for.

I will definitely be experimenting more with 10.3 over the coming weeks and months and will be sure to post further thoughts and updates in the future.

For more content like this, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter!

Noam Kroll

Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on social media using the links below for more content like this!

http://www.noamkroll.com