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Resolve on-set & look transfer to post production
I have just set up a Resolve workstation as part of my data management gear. I am doing one-light color on set, directed by our DP. The end goal is to be able to set something that is as close as possible to usable for final output on-set so that when the show is finished we can be true to the intentions of the DP.
Is anyone else doing this sort of workflow? I would love to hear about how things worked out, issues you may have had, etc.
Dave
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6 Replies
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On-set color direction is a kind of Holy Grail. The biggest challenge is not with the numbers, but controlling the environment. Set is normally semi-chaotic, so detached evaluation is very often an illusion. Notwithstanding the uncalibrated nature of most portable equipment, the reality is that even a “calibrated” monitor will not look right if its not sitting in controlled conditions. Even with dailies, attempting to pilot a grade out-of-context is a very different animal than dealing with a locked cut. The guiding principle, when there’s going to be another layer of final grade, has to be ‘do no harm’, and without very tight controls, scopes, and so on, its easier said than done. Clip or crush anything — you’ll be back to square zero, or you may as well not try to do the final grade with the onset dailies. Most colorists would rather not deal with somebody else’s on-the-fly interpretation, but — if you do save your “looks” then they can at least be passed on to a final (DaVinci – family of color correctors) grade and maybe the ColorTrace will be a shortcut back to the original source media and corresponding corrections. It will be important to keep the door open to going back.
Kodak and many, many others have tried to institute approaches to translate on-set chart or numerical references (FilmTools, Gamma&Density, etc.) to transfer. Success, more often than not, is a matter of politics and luck rather than good management. The biggest single factor, though, is usually verbal communication between dP and colorist; when they’re looking at the exact same monitor in the exact same room. Otherwise, its a bit of mind-reading to really get at “intent”. Sometimes what happens on set isn’t exactly deliberate.
If control is what you’re looking for, then what you need is absolute control. And that encompasses a lot of factors.
jPo
You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?
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What Joe said…
Basic grade with primary’s only and no clip or crush and export a CDL for compatibility and you have half a shot of the finish colorist paying attention to it….
-Rob-
Robert Houllahan
Director / Colorist
Cinelab Inc.
http://www.cinelab.comMAHC-PRO 6-Core 3X GTX285 20Tb SAS Wave Panel Panny 11UK SDI Plasma.
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I’ve never really understood everyone’s interest in coming up with elaborate ways to pass numbers to a colorist. Colorists are only interested in images. This is true for many reasons, but the primary one is that color grading is a specialty skill. You can achieve a “look” in many different ways, but some will be much cleaner, have more depth, and better color separation than others. It’s the colorist’s job to be able to achieve that, and it’s almost impossible to achieve in the atmosphere of production, for all of the reasons already mentioned and others. If whatever is decided during production is simply baked into the editorial dailies, and the show is conformed to that from original files, the offline cut itself is the visual indicator of the original intent. Numbers are almost useless because in most cases, the final colorist won’t want to work from someone else’s grade anyway, especially when the colorist has a better tool set and a better environment in which to work. Doing so would just be a return to tape to tape color correction days. CDL is a very, very limited pallette with which to work, and in a world where we’re now dealing primarily with log coded images, a very inappropriate approach, because proper contrast can rarely be achieved using CDL controls without seriously crushing blacks. The CDL was developed to deal with “normal” video gamma images, not the log images we’re working with now. So unless you combine the CDL with a proper log to video conversion, you’re not really coming close to what can be achieved with a proper grading toolset.
I wish everyone would forget about figuring out how to pass numbers that are essentially discarded anyway, and just be concerned with creating images.
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I personally have always thought that on set color correction is, was and will always be a stupid idea. One of the reasons I really like Film (remember that stuff??) is that you don’t have a video (idiot) village and a committee of fussy people dicking around with grading and crap on a set.
However if I was hired to do the job of being a DIT/On Set Colorist I would think that having a calibrated display and then putting a display LUT (non baked in) on the CC output and then making a CDL and stills with notes for the Post colorist would be a way to get a daily rate and make everybody happy about the money they wasted paying me.
I suppose if I was the finish Colorist I would tend to ignore the DIT colorist grade unless the producer/director/dp insisted on looking at it. Then after wasting that billable hour or five we could get on with doing the grade the way the producer wants it, ignoring any and all artistic intent of the DP.
Tounge in cheek……
-Rob-
Robert Houllahan
Director / Colorist
Cinelab Inc.
http://www.cinelab.comMAHC-PRO 6-Core 3X GTX285 20Tb SAS Wave Panel Panny 11UK SDI Plasma.
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True in so many ways! Makes me chuckle inside.
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[Robert Houllahan] “get on with doing the grade the way the producer wants it, ignoring any and all artistic intent of the DP.”
Oh, man if the walls could speak. This is the rule, not the exception.
jPo
You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?
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