• DaVinci Resolve

  Trying to achieve “The Rum Diary” Grading

  Posted by Sebastian Cepeda on November 14, 2011 at 8:38 pm

  Hi guys,

  I shot a feature film a couple of weeks ago and in a couple of months we are going to start grading the whole feature. I talked to the director and he would like to get a similar look as in the rum diary.

  We shot everything on a red mx so we have enough room to play with. I will be grading with DaVinci resolve.
  Now my question to you, how would you achieve that look?
  What I realised so far: The images have almost no contrast, the blacks are very soft (when i saw the trailer on my waveform, you could see that the blacks never are at 0IRE they are more around 10IRE -20), but the skins tend to be pretty orange (almost like in a transformers movie).

  How would you do a similar grading? i mean in terms of davinci, Hue Vs Sat. (as an example), what kind of method would you use for that purpose?
  thanks for helping me out.

  best regards
  sebastian

  Ps. here the trailer to check it out. https://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/therumdiary/

  Richard Dee replied 14 years, 5 months ago 4 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Dan Moran

  November 14, 2011 at 9:44 pm

  I’d definitely start with Red Color 2 and RedLog Film. That will give you a nice flat image to start with.

  A lot of shots have a very natural 16mm film look that hasn’t been pushed too far or at least looks that way to my eyes.

  Import a still as a reference and see if you can eye match the characteristics is probably the best way forward!

  Dan Moran
  DaVinci Application Specialist
  Blackmagic Design EMEA
• 

  Sebastian Cepeda

  November 15, 2011 at 6:25 pm

  Hi Dan,

  Thanks for your reply. Thats exactly what i ve been doing so far. Gamma2 and redlog film…then image as reference and tried to match the feeling.
  Its kind of hard though. One of the “hardest” things is to match the face colors they have, is pretty reddish/orangish…

  if anyone else has another tipp im open to it…
• 

  Sebastian Cepeda

  November 16, 2011 at 2:08 pm

  Here is a Jpeg frame of the image im using to try to achieve the Rum Diary look, I wanted to upload a Tiff but its too heavy for imageshack…

  This is the RedlogFilm without any correction to it:
  https://img205.imageshack.us/img205/8599/redlogfilm.jpg

  And this is my try to get as close as possible to the Rum diary look (not quite there yet):
  https://img824.imageshack.us/img824/3682/corrected.jpg

  If you could help me out would be great.
  This are the steps im doing so far:
  I start to push a little bit the contrast, pushing the lift a bit down, while trying to maintaing the highlights at around 640IRE.
  Desaturating most of the parts except for humans. Desaturating skin colors and then adding some orange (HSL key). It doesnt look bad, but im missing something big. its not quite there yet.

  Like with the skin tones, i cant get to “match” them with rums diary (i mean similar color not exact the same, but as soon as i push towards orange they tend to exagerate.)

  If someone could help me that would be amazing.

  Thanks a lot.
  Sebastian
• 

  Tim Farrell

  November 18, 2011 at 1:07 am

  It’s fairly low con with overall desaturation and cyan in the whites. Cyan sat lifted. Use the cyan preset hue curve.

  Midtones going towards brown and you could try a hue curve for some more saturation here too. Have it spread over yellow/red.

  Hope this helps a little.
• 

  Richard Dee

  November 18, 2011 at 8:05 am

  [Sebastian Cepeda] “I talked to the director and he would like to get a similar look as in the rum diary.”

  Oh… He’s the one who saw Rum Diary…..

  Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

  Great suggestion for achieving the look, though.

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