🚩 Walter Volpattto - Node Structure in Davinci Resolve

[Music] welcome walter hello yeah i need to undo the mic hello hi my first question is what is a digital chorus for you well i've been asked the question you know many times especially from people that don't work in the industry uh before i start i want to apologize to all of you i don't speak spanish nearly enough to be able to do it in spanish so forgive me will be translated later on um so it's difficult to explain because it's one of those um [Music] craft that changed a lot through the year and now it's more prevalent in what we do in the industry but basically i usually take it down in two different aspects of what we do one is the creation of the look and feel of the movie um if in the past when we had film pretty much the look and feel was dictated by the stock you were using for shooting the stock you were using for printing the photochemical process and you can't really change that much so the majority of what you were doing you were doing it on the set in front of the camera now we can create artificial looks that simply were not possible before so if you think about you know 300 uh matrix joker i mean all the movie that you see now um there is a preparation of the general look that is basically how the shooting on the set will be presented to the main display that it can be hdr they can be standard dynamic range they can be whatever the display we are talking about so in theater will be the projection so p3 projection theatrical uh there is the most fun part but also the smallest part like you do it once for a movie and it's pretty much done the second part is the actual technicality of make the observers all of us think that the movie was shot in one place in one location one after the other imagine a chase that you should throw at the course of perhaps three four days with cars outside inside you may have the sun movie you may have clouds you may have slightly different lighting conditions so our job is to modify the photography elegantly to put everything pretty much as if was shot as a one unique piece so you just think about the action you don't think about hey there was a sun there now it's not there anymore [Music] um and basically like when you start your note structure um does it depend on the movie you're doing or does it you use the same node structure throughout your whole work so um i tend to divide even the node structure that i will show in a moment i divided mentally in blocks so there are blocks that belong to literally put the shot in the ballpark blocks that belong to the fine tuning and block that belong to the trim of the scene and it's basically similar it depends um if it is for example theatrical or tv tend to be very the same if is uh advertisement perhaps i need to add a few more notes just because advertisement usually you tend to do a lot more finesse and what belonged to the actual style the look of the movie usually is not in the main node it's either at the group level or a timeline level because i want to separate mentally the the look of the movie to what i do to a shot the idea is that the look should be global should be something that i do for the whole thing and then the shot is what i do to make that particular shot works with the rest of the photography usually yeah it's about the same node structure um it can be a few nodes more few nodes less or if a specific case come up i perhaps modified at the beginning of the um of the project and just applied that to everything um thank you for the answer of course and when it comes to color space transforming and stuff like that you're taking care of it like before you start your note structure at the end of the out structure or maybe like on the timeline level uh the basic idea for me is um unless you're doing a documentary or a show that has way too many cameras you have a hero camera cabin alexa can be a sony can be a red a black magic you know a canon you name it you have a hero camera and usually you have a hero logarithmic color space so the idea is that that is the color space that i use for all the color corrections if a shot belonged to a different camera then i do a color space transform to bring that specific shot to the logarithmic and the look at the back end you have to imagine to be like um a print that gets the logarithmic final and transform that into the display um gus can i just share my screen so i can put this one on let me see if i share this one you should see a white paper white page okay okay perfect so the basic idea for me is on top of everything there is the look the look target whatever is your display for example the theater so that will be for a theatrical for example a p3 d65 gamma 2.6 that's one of the many colors that we target for theatrical which is okay it could be p3d65 could be p3dci it could be whatever i don't usually work in xyz i work in one of the final one to the look you're feeding a logarithmic that usually is whatever logarithm the camera has in the case of what i'm going to show you in a moment that was done on a sony so it's an s log 3 uh s log 3. that's how the sony was debayer in my case below the look there is pretty much the color that you do for a scene so instead of going shot by shot by shot i tend to go and look at the scene and see where this scene should live so you may have for example a scene 1 scene 2 scene 3 and so forth under the scene then you have all the shots whatever the shots are whatever how many you have and so forth the general idea of coloring a scene if you think about how the proceeding of a movie happen you have a script that's creepy identify guess what a scene when they go on the set they tend to actually build the whole cinematography around the action of that scene it can be break up in parts but the idea is that if you have two people dialogue they put the light for those two people they do the blocking they do the costume they do the set then they shoot the scene so the whole block here should be pretty coherent go ahead and ah go away so if the scene if i can make a correction for the scene to bring it roughly where i want it then the majority of the decisions that were done on the set are transported to the final display to do that i usually look for what i call a hero shot [Music] there is always one or two people in any movie they get paid the big bucks those are the one that you want to look first if you're looking at joker joker is the gay is the guy uh if you're looking at sweet tooth the kid is the guy so that's the guy that you also want to look at guy or girls to be sure that those stars look the best possible the fact that a supporting actor or actresses is not in the best light will take care of that later once you color the scene with the hero shot then it's just matter of technically matching the other shot to the hero and you're done for the scene so let's get my result up let's move this thing out and let's reset everything just because so what i put on the timeline is the actual look so this represent the look if i don't put anything you will see it's simply s log in this case i think it is look three now in this particular case the look what is whatever we wanted to be because they don't have the original director of photography with me but the idea is you prepare the look with your director of photography you decide which exposure is going to use on the set which camera which type of lighting do you want a cleaner look do you want a video look do you want a film look whatever look you think is good for the project you decide that with director of photography and usually they want that look on the set as perhaps um a look at table that they can load on the camera or on the daily so they start to have an idea of what you're going to get in this case i didn't have i couldn't prepare the look it come to me after it doesn't matter so let's say just for simplicity that i want to use an alexa lookup table okay i can't just do that because the alexa lookup table is expecting alexa log c as a color space back to the question you asked me early i need to transform the sony sony s look three cine where is the cna i'm doing something wrong there we are to their alexa and i don't need this one i don't need that one that here so basically i'm telling i know the lookup table is expecting alexa an alexa material i don't have it i have a sony i just do a mathematical transformation to go from one to another for the majority of the color that you're gonna put in front of the camera this transformation will work it doesn't work sometimes for very saturated color neon color where at that point you need to do something to tuck those coloring but as you can see a naturalistic color should fit with not too much problem so this one simply does the log transformation and this one is my general lot uh just let's name it alexa just because it's an alexa later on i'll show you how we can change this one to get a different look i divided the move in groups those groups are the scenes you can see they're all coherent so the idea is whatever the script scene was i try to follow the same story i'm expecting that if i'm here with the two girl talking the whole thing will be similar shot to shot to shot the shot they're not going to change they look at that sorry they're not going to change the light in the middle so there is two dinners uh they're leaving i have one group where the logo the text the countdown the oddballs are this is a smaller bandage scene so let's go to the garden just because the garden has our hero so she is our hero so the first thing we will do as soon as we do the the note group is looking at her and see if she works qualitatively you know for the graphic like we wanted so i explained before that in my groups i have three blocks one block is the basic balance that is bringing the photography let's let's use the word white balance but it's just literally a color balance and exposure where roughly director of photography should have put it then you have a second group that is the tweaks and this is you know many many nodes let's say 10 i don't remember how many but you know tense and the last one is the scene level trim so when i use this particular nodes is something that i want to do to the whole scene when i do something here is just to balance the shot and if i do something here is put a vignette here put a window uh brighten this one darken the green whatever is the tweak for the shot so if you think um even a little bit further these belong to the shot and this belong to the scene and that is you know mentally how would divide my my node structure why we do not structure because no structure give you discipline because you you will tell you immediately what you did where and how to proceed from there so the first node like we say is just balancing this will be the node they will use to do the balancing of the shot now you know i cannot think and bright at the same time you know the shot may require a dynamic adjustment for example a character that goes from inside a bar outside you have not enough light too much light and you have to compensate or somebody's talking and the cloud come in the luminance goes down you have to compensate so in my second node i usually put whatever is the there we are whatever is the the know the key framing that i need to do so at the end of it you should have a shot that is well balanced now because on my level i don't have many key frame to put usually the photograph is pretty good i also use the node if i need to put a noise reducer i tend to put the noise reducer after the main balance because i may have to add contrast to the main balance but before all the trims so the key that i may have to pull it are a little bit cleaner and there is validity on putting it at the beginning there is validity putting at the back i saw also split it with a noise reducer that only feed keys um most of what you see here is just a preference it's not you know in a bible if you wish okay three notes on the top and let me just name it those one for me are the main correction usually windows or key that belong to the main character in the shot for example she is on the right side of the screen this node is the one on the right of the screen if i have to put a window on her i'll put it there the other character is on the left side of the screen so the other node is the left side of the screen center because without saying is the center of the screen so those three nodes for me are main character left of the screen center of the screen right of the screen now we are going to add four nodes there we are let's slam it there my mouse is slippery today okay so the next group of four nodes um the first one i call a log that literally reflect the logarithmic correction for resolve and i usually use it for little correction on the shadow little correction on the highlights if i need to make them closer for example if you are outdoor and the highlights are slightly different show to short i may put it there if i'm um if there is smoke on a shot and i need to tweak the black slightly because some of them feel more foggy than others i tend to put it here and use the shadow control now because now we have a new tool the hdr tool there it is i also put it there i like the idea to have fine tuning tools for the extreme highlights the extreme low lights and to me that is part of a more logarithmic change of the curve so i just put it there as well the next one sky you know after many years of experience i know that when you're outdoor people will ask you to deal with the sky like too bright to dark add blue take away blue whatever it is if it is an indoor shot then you can think about ceiling a lot of people like to put a small vignette or a small graded on the ceiling to take down the uh the ceiling lightness if you wish so you can just add this sky ceiling i'll skip one for a second not label skin now i do not do secondary on the skin for me when i do balance it means that the main actress balance color skin tone has to be right then i do everything else there is no reason for me to make the white white the black black if the skin tone of the main character is not right think about it who tell the story the main character i don't give a damn if the black is not black i need her to look good in this particular shot now why do i have a skin node if i don't do that because especially in tv people ask you to do little refinement on the skin of an actress for example take away a little bit of the wrinkles um [Music] pimples you know this little detail this sometimes they ask you to do so i want a note where i can just select the skin and do whatever i i wanted to do with it and i actually have use quite extensively the beauty plug-in from resolve i think it's fast it gives you a pretty good result so just loosely select the skin loosely put a mask or where the actress is throw the beauty plug in you know work with it you usually get a pretty good result and i use that for tv a lot in this one i'm starting to like in the color warper course and work so if i need to use the color warper or if i need to use the curve for whatever reason there's a particular color that i need to change i want their own node so i tend to put it there and that's more like a global change for example in a movie that i'm doing right now the blue of the window um that they are put it in it feels too green should be a little bit more night light and i know it's something that it's in the whole scene you don't even have to think about it it's the whole scene so i'm loosely selecting the color putting a curve in did the correction that i want with the cyan just dragging it a little bit get what i want and move on then let me do another corrector one two three four five connect those guys put a parallel node there you are add one input put in okay so you see the first two where the first balance block all these in the middle are the tweaks so those five at the bottom is whatever the director wants if they are just free for all after you did all the things you have to do say oh can you just darken the bottom corner the pavement the reflection on the car whatever you need to do in addition to what you already did so those are literally free for you to use as much as you want it this second block will be the tweaks will be the nodes of the tweak this is the 10 actually that 12 i never remember how many now earlier you asked me do you change something for other movies for example for midway with roland emmerich i knew that i had sky but also i knew i had water um the vfx supervisor told me hey you gotta help me because some of the water just doesn't quite work so okay i added simply another node in that case was just before um the left side of the screen was here so i can get a clear key out of my balance and it was called water and i knew every time we go in the pacific i may have to select the water i may have to slightly change the color of the water so sometimes you know ahead of time oh that movie has a particular challenge so you just make a note for that particular challenge another movie that i did where we knew we had to do quite a lot of work on a five or six scene for the trees the tree were shot during um i think it was late spring or early uh summer and they were too green because it was supposed to be already fall or starting of the of the winter so we had to select all those leaf and make them gray or make them you know brownish and that was a lot of key and tracking so i had an extra node that was actually a compound node within the compound node i had to do all this tracking and all this stuff was about 50 shots um but because i knew ahead of time i just prepared an extra node called leaf and every time i need it i go in and i do it after this one we are at the trim level this is the short trim and we go there i will explain all of that in a moment two three four okay this one is by fx i should probably start to switch the effect in the short trim because it make more sense i just let me name it and then i will be with you and you know you can use as many know as many more or less nodes you want it it really doesn't matter make a structure try if it works like my structure change several time because during the course of years because you know you get used to it they say hey i think i need one more or you know this thing that i thought it was useful is not actually no sorry [Music] okay so the last block you have a short trim now shot rim is usually useless unless you have supervised sessions so what happened to me let's think about for example tv tv you may have an entire day where you do a pass by yourself to the whole episodes because you know sometimes you can work by yourself and it's great when you can just move this one out and then the director of photography come in and sits with you and you start to do his pass the problem is that he may ask to do a correction that if you do hear you may break the sky key so when i have a live session with a client when i need to rebalance certain shots i actually use this node so i know that none of the selection i did so far will break and you know usually you need to know your clients obviously but usually it's oh i want everything a little bit darker or you know just that shot can you make it a little bit contrastier and if you get used to the fact that that is the director per shot trim you know you're not gonna break anything you did so far you don't have to think about oh my god where i put my next correction i'm going to break something you don't it's after your shot ring ofx down here this guy is usually for little effect the client may ask you put a lens flare or um uh oh dust busting sometimes you have shot with a little bit of dust that pixels um you know the kind of stuff that it's more of a general effect on a shot that you decide to do because you can vignetting inside outside this one again quite a lot of director of photography like the idea of vignette so i already have a node because i know it's going to happen and what happens is sometimes you do a vignette you make your selection you darken it down or the shot feel dark you don't want to go back to the balance and brighten it because again you can break some keys then you just say okay connect those two get the outside and you're good angle i will explain with an example later but let's say that you have two people talking nigh actually will happen in this particular group let me just rearrange for a second you see there is one angle of she talking versus the cousin and then the other angle and then there is the more global one when they are talking to each other from the side uh and there is a couple of singles at the end of she is arriving and sometimes you realize everything is great but one angle is slightly too dark so you can grab all the shot use this angle make a correction trim it up and the whole camera block went where you want it again putting it here doesn't break anything that you did so far at the end there is the actual trim for the whole scene a sintering that is a global scene if you see that the scene need help or if you want to establish from the beginning which is the look of the scene imagine for example that the sea need to be really really blue and desaturated you don't want to do this for the beginning because then it's difficult to pull keys you want to keep the shot with all the color throughout the whole trimming process and just have the scene node at the end making it more blue de-saturated the second one is the scene trim for the director of photography or the director whoever has the power you did everything you think you nailed it you didn't the director of photography say i want everything warmer again that's a specific node for him and you want to put it here so you can also reverse it because one thing that you have to get used if you work supervise is the client asking you can you show me how it was before if you did it here it become difficult to undo it if you did here you can just mute the shot mute the the notes and you can show before and after very quickly if he's a correction for the whole scene you can do it here you can mute that shot for the whole scene and you can go back and forth the last one is the hail mary pass the santa maria shot it's when everybody agree everything is good and you have somebody come out at the last moment usually a producer sometimes an editor sometimes the girlfriend of the goddamn director oh i think this should be much brighter and you have to do it but you want to do it again in a way where you can back off from it and i'm not kidding i got the the the uh the girlfriend of a director of photography he invited her over one night uh just to see what we were doing she made a comment and because the dp likes her we had to show it to her so of course we can do that let me reset then the grade and keep the notes and let's get all the shots all clips we got the beginning we select the beginning and we select the back now i'll do it with the keyboard i save a memory let me just reset for a second and reapply the memory so now everything has exactly the same node okay now why we want to have the same node because of this beautiful two object the ripple ripple ripple allow you to make a change and ripple through a group or ripple through the clip you selected and in the big panel in the new keys keycaps that i don't have yet you have it so if you are used to work on this way and you say oh this scene is the final scene i want everything to be golden let me just do one thing i want to print the lights and i'm just making it golden using printer lights and say color ripple to the group boom all three shots have the right yeah see yeah that's right so the general idea now is let's go back to the garden just because i like her uh this one this is a good shot so first thing you want to do is to see if the scene is where you want it to be so the shot is balanced so that i don't need to do really anything but let's say that for this scene we decide that we want to have a little bit more contrast and a little bit warmer why not so you can do contrast pretty much using the tool you want it i'm going to use straight contrast because why not and i go way farther than what i wanted but so you can see it in your end and then i'm using offset to add warmth again i'm going way too far but just to a little bit less yellow color ripple to the group because i already divided in group the whole scene is getting that particular starting point yeah the next thing i'm doing uh view thumbnail mall thumbnail mode a and c what are those usually you see those little things in the order they are edited in the timeline one shot after the other after the other but what if we can rearrange them based on source time code so if you do that you will see the shot that has been shot let me just make this one bigger so you can see better those three shots were shot about at the same time there are probably different takes but they carry absolutely the same light this shot also carried the same light so now you have group of shots that you can color correct in one chunk if you want to actually this one also belongs to this one that's the cuisine and these four extra shots as her coming over so let's do one thing very simple we reorganize it and i usually map if you don't have a panel i map them to the button a and c on the keyboard so you can easily see how much switching in the panel in the big panel it's mapped already in the small one is not so you can just map it on the keyboard or on a stream deck or whatever you use to support your color preferences so let's see for example um let's see if i can see the two cuz in there we are so that's the shot that we decide to be the hero let's make it bigger and that's her side her side is slightly redder so i'm just gonna grab everything from her side go on the main balance take away one click of red you can see here i took away one click of red copy repo to the selected clip all the shots now got the correction hello then this one i know that those one compared to the hero shot that is 13 display wipe timeline clip there you are as you can see she's brighter and those two shots belong to the same cut grab them again i'm just going to do our sit down and one extra red no perhaps not color repo to the selected clip so those two shots they belong to the same thing this one it's her turning around so she belonged to the same correction that i did here that one is the first shot let me let me see she looks too bright here compared to when she turn around so let's wipe the timeline clip i'm using the keyboard to do one on and off she feels too bright balance one two three four why not now you see me use offset why do i use offset for one simple reason the color space where doing the color it's a logarithmic color space in a pure mathematical logarithmic color space offset represent almost perfectly an exposure change on the set mathematically and a white balance change as if you're doing it in camera even in a color space like log c or s log 3 they're not mathematically perfect they're still close enough that within to stop of exposure you can use offset and pretty much the photography will behave as if you're doing a changing camera so i don't fiddle with temperature and tint i don't fiddle with the um with the raw parameter i'm expecting director of photography already did that i shouldn't do that it also if you fiddle with the raw parameter the problem you can incur is if the director of photography is looking for a very specific effect for example is shooting in daylight but it changed the liberty the color temperature to making it warmer more sunlight golden if you try to balance it out now you're going against the director of photography so always assume that unless you have an idiot giving you an image you know what he's doing uh what else left in this scene let's see this guy so this guy feels not warm enough so this is the angle we can put it on the end no sorry this is the main but we are still at the main balance main balance this one feels a little bit too contrast so i'm going to take away a tiny bit of contrast and add a warm to it color replant all the change to the selected clips okay so we did um i did something stupid here why this one went off did i mute it without even realizing it yes i did why because i'm an idiot it's okay i did in the angle fine doesn't matter okay so it took me quite a long time to do it because i was explaining but basically what i did is make the main color for the scene based on whatever is the hero she's the hero of the story i want her to look good i don't care about the green in the back we'll fix that later if it doesn't match she looks good then she is the um supporting actor or the other actress in the movie second thing i did earth side be sure that all the shot in her side look good and coherent then i went to the outlier here i know there were a couple of outliers watch always your entire scene before you start color correct so you know where are the outliers and then i did the global here just to merge it with the rest at this point you can start watching it i don't need the audio thank you now you can see that i'm playing a 50 frame a second even if the piece it's actually a 25 because it was european the reason is i want to see more shot in the minimum amount of time possible to see if the scene even works if the scene doesn't work there is no reason to start trimming once the main balance is done then you start trimming for example she likes a little bit of highlights because the sun is not on her so let's let's see if we can help her a little bit let's get all her shot from her angle again and i'm going in logarithmic and i'm gonna just open slightly the top end there you are my knot color repo to the selected clips play again that should be you know slightly better is it perfect no also i'm doing it with the mouse and open the panel but this scene now is in the ballpark now the director of photography should should seen it before you start to do anything else director of photography should be with you and say okay do we like it let's say the director of photography say can you show me a version that is not that this warm okay back to your lady taking away a little bit of worm i did it again with printer lights color repo to the whole group because it's something that you want to the whole group hit play i just did a trim to the whole scene from beginning to end with a simple click and go if you don't have unfixed node structure you cannot take advantage of these you can also use shared node if you wish to do so that means that for example all the dop nodes is shared in the whole scene you do a click and it's there it's a preference because i start to use fixed node structure before the share node were invented i end up to get so used to do it that i'm simply not not usually because i'm not used to but pretty much this is a version that should work now let's go to a different scene just because and let's do something stupid uh yeah why not let's use this one let's say that this scene we want to make any black and white dish uh why not black and white and we add a bunch of contrast and we pop it and we say color repo to the selected group okay so the whole group now has your main scene trim but the good thing is that all your trim are not in black and white they're still in color if i mute this one you still have the original color so if you need to pull a key for a skin tone you can still do it i don't know how which kind of light he has on him uh that's a little bit silly but why not so let's say that we want to pull us a very soft key on him let's see yeah something like this there you are just making it stupid just because and let's say go away and let's say that we want to why not just brighten him slightly there you can still do it because the color is still there the color decision that you took to making it black and white it's after the fact so now you can just reorder your shot and deal with brightness in this case just because it's black and white like this one is too dark i know here there are shots from all over the place this should be brighter brighter this one's a bit brighter this one brighter okay those four five shots should be all brighter and so forth i think there are three left yeah this guy's is the husband completely useless okay and so forth then you start to watch it you start to trim it whatever you have to do it like this one way too bright just darken the oops and styling and so forth so this is the basic idea fixed node structure physical structure should give you discipline should give the ability to quickly repo a correction throughout multiple nodes um any give you also the idea of what you did if you reopen a project three year from now if i open for example green book even if it was a different color strike different node structure because it's clear what i'm trying to do you look at the node you you see what you did funny story about green book we did the first pass me and the director of photography sean and we went really dramatic like way too dark and pick the director come in and say you guys are ruined my movie what the is this i don't see marsha lee what are you thinking so the fact that i have a full node structure i went to a scene a second let me do something i brighten it up about a third of a stop i did it for the whole scene i play this and say is this more in line of what you want to see and say yes give me 10 minutes in 10 minutes every single scene in the five reel was streamed and i can go to the beginning hit play i just brightened the whole goddamn movie a third of a stop with a very simple correctional trim could not do it if it was not a fixed node structure oh thank you oh a participant [Music] let's go my bluetooth devices so sorry don't worry about it coming [Music] oh while uh fred is doing what he's doing let me reshare for a second uh chef for a second let me go back to the okay now go ahead go ahead okay what i'm right here do you listen you listen to me yeah i can hear you okay thank you walter thank you for everything for every class that i received from you your special reference to me and i got a question about texture about film grain yeah about for example an interstellar that i think is the best writing of the world which amount of free brain is part of your work yeah is from the footage i mean how do you work with free with film grain and texture in general okay so uh unfortunately i have i'm changing my mind on grain and i explain you why first of all i love grain i love the idea of grain and for me it reminds me of film i mean there is really nothing more obvious than grain to tell you this has been shot in film an interstellar was shot in film like dunkirk like others so the grain was naturally what they feel negative actually in this case interpo inter positive was giving you [Music] and i always like to add grain to my project there is a problem and it's how we actually watch nowadays uh footage um netflix or amazon or tv whatever the system is kill is killing the details so there is a problem where the more grain you add the more hard the compression algorithm has to work in order to keep those details and the more compression you get on the actual overall image uh so nowadays unless the image already has grain or unless the image was unless director of photography really wanted me to add a bunch of grain i tend to do not add it anymore because you'll never see what i'm seeing the compression will kill it it is just the way it works and um when i work with materia dance grain i only worry about the shot to shot to shot consistency so i'm looking for the outliers usually you know the underexposed shot if i need to attack grain i only reduce the underexposed ones just enough that they blend with the other ones i try not to remove add i work with the director of photography did he like to shoot in field and the first thing he does is passing through neat video to take away the grain because he like the color film not the grain i don't think it's a good idea but hey if you like it we'll do that usually if somebody's shot in film is because they like the texture and i usually tend to just preserve it just don't do anything stupid to it try to preserve it as much as possible try to blend it and that's about it but i'm well for the longest time i was the one asking you know add grain now i don't do it anymore now for the actual quality of grain itself you can use you know resolve grain plates like seen a grain you can use live grain that costs impossible amount of money giving that at the end of the day everything will will be compressed and giving that on a real image you will not be able to see the difference who cares use whatever grain you have it's fine i usually use a resolved grain um occasionally use scenic rain but the one with the flicker just to make something look extremely old or for example if you have old footage and you have to blend the new text then that's a good idea i was doing a restoration of um it was a 1920s silent movie and the only version they could find was the french one with uh the french cards and we had to do an english one so we need to make to retype it we find a font that was close enough was a phone from the 20s we found something was close enough but it looked too modern so we want to make it worse so we were able to just do use that grain and that flickery to add enough then we got one of the original cards and i track it and i got the tracking data put it on the other one so you get the waviness that is very coherent with the original one and then we we try to evaluate how much out of focus the lens was doing on the edges and try to replicate that is it perfect no but it's close enough that you don't think oh this is a new card i did i answer your question yes yes of course thank you so much of course [Music] you can also probably ask the question in the chat yeah why not okay i will actually there is a question hold on okay so it's talking about um workflow for visual effect yes now the basic idea is you want to try to do not collapse the color decision until is absolutely necessary so let me share again uh my screen let me get this one let me get a new layer i'm a donkey with photoshop okay let's get a new layer so the basic idea is you build the look okay the look can be a combination of many different things but at the end of the day you can represent a close enough look with a lookup table for example you cannot represent a vignette you cannot represent grain you cannot represent an out of focus if you put that in a vignette you cannot represent that but you can represent the general tonal grade color decision whatever is the main look of your movie that one should go to the vfx company okay the original camera they also go to the vfx company in either logarithmic or a lot of people want linear light linear light basically means how the sensor captures the data no transformation applied they do the v effect together looking under the look they give to the editorial uh quick time with the look baked in so they can see if it fits within the photography and now the problem is okay but um a shot may require a little bit of color adjustment you can but my recommendation is to um that should be like that is to only use rgb offset every call every vfx patch package can do rgb offset because remember rgb offset in logarithmic represent very well exposure and white balance if you are in linear light you want to only use gain gaining linear light absolutely represent perfectly exposure and close enough white balance to give you an idea if you are on the set and you double the amount of light the sensor will get double amount of light the actual value in the raw data is double that is linear light satellite if you gain by two you exactly do one stop of exposure so everything correlates and that's why usually vfx people want to work in linear light because using gain you actually match very very good what the photography was and the 3d package can give you objects that are in linear light and the physical light works in that way also the edges works much better when you do the blending in linear light once the vfx is completed then they give you a log version back to the color correction and it's basically not dissimilar to just debayer log so that is the preferred workflow occasionally the problem is that the sequence is all over the place and you do need to do color correction so you have the original camera raw you debayer that as a log you put it in your color corrector let's say you have a sequence made of all these shots but only these shots here these shots these shots these shots are the effects so only some of them are vfx but you need to do a basic color grade to bring them in the ballpark so just use again rgb offset to basically you know do whatever you have to do to bring them in the ballpark and then i recommend to export exr 16 bit if you can logarithmic so the idea is you give back so one two three four you did your balancing pass the scene now is coherent and you give to the people they have to do vfx shots that they are not too destroyed if you start to put windows if you start to do too much now it can be difficult later on to reconcile the effect so you want to do just a basic balance bring it in the ballpark if you need to do a little bit of contrast to match cameras do that but that's it and then send it over so that's roughly um that's roughly how we do how we do vfx now i see a second question do use exposure or show lots yes i use show lots um all the time what i usually do let me see let's see go back here what i usually do i build the look on and here we can just lose ourself if i start to talk about this but i usually use frame like this one they represent the photography itself so let's explain what that frame look like and why look like that imagine for a second an ideal camera an id alexa camera it shot all the light from the set and then you have to convert that in log c okay log c now log c is a well defined color space a relog array um germany decide i want a color space that can contain 16 stop of latitude equidistance one two three four five up to sixteen [Music] because they they think that within 16 stop you have enough latitude to create your photography and to play with your photography with enough um overexposure and under exposure if you look at the red the red log g310 log g3 log 3 g10 i never remember how to spell it it's log 3 g10 there is the current one also is a 16 stop exposure color space canon canon log the same sony s look 3 the same so they basically say we think as a general purpose that 16 stop of latitude should be enough to bring the photography from what you're trying to do on the set to the final display and now the question is okay how many stops actually are usually used by a director of photography i don't know if we were just used to it because that's what film can do or it's because it's the most pleasing way or whatever usually seven stops roughly what the director of photography exposed on the set roughly so you have the 18 percent gray card there is the gray card that they put on the set they measure that every camera that you use has a exposure set that basically decide where this guy goes from there roughly people like me they have a white mozzarella skin tone are one stop over brown people or light african-american people they are at stop very dark skin like a senegalese a dark skin there is an actor that i'm working with for queen sugar he tend to be really dark he may be a minus one um a very white skin tone with a porcelain tone it can be you know one and a half above so that's roughly where skin tone goes and we use number one just because unfortunately the majority of all of the people that goes in front of the camera are white mozzarellas if you do a movie for example in africa you will have a lot of this type of skin if you do a movie in mexico peru where you have a little bit more of brown skin you tend to be you know in this particular zone so from here you have let's say one stop above you have your main character and then you expose three stop above and this is diffuse white so the whole portion above that white will be the shoulder of your s curve you gently bend that just a little bit of detail but mostly we don't care about what happened there on the bottom it's similar but uh which color was using red you do one two let's say three stop a good exposure and the rest is the toe of the s curve so if you build an s curve you will have an 18 gray here and you will have one two three and the rest fall actually four in the rest fold one two three and the rest fold if you get pretty much any look at table that you can find that looks good that you will see the roughly seven stop of exposure are correctly represented in the final display being your display the theater via display um [Music] a tv internet and i don't do much more different for hdr i probably add one stop on the top and a little bit on the bottom so perhaps eight but that's how i do hdr it doesn't really change so if we go here and we take away this one and we put this one up okay scopes there we are you will see that that signal is literally uh discovered going out to the screen sorry let me make it smaller is one two three four blah blah sixteen steps and where the gray scale goes that one i basically downloaded the white paper from uh sony from arie and from red and it'll tell you which number those fell and it's literally again the manufacturer decide i want my grayscale to be at this value so in the case for example of sony it fails there for array feels there for red fills there what happened sony tend to have a little bit more low end stops and a little bit less on the top arri is the most balanced red does the opposite red says i want to have a lot of stop of exposure of overexposure but not many of underexposure and that's actually a problem for red because if you underexpose you only have one two three four five stop under gray if you underexpose you clip the signal you got nothing left there so while red keeps saying oh exposure 1600 i actually tell you expose at 800 because you go up a stop and it's actually closer to what alexa will do so rate red cameras at 800 you will have a much much cleaner sensor after that you make the look so let's say do i have an alexa here yes i have an alexa if i just put the alexa lookup table on and nothing else that's the s curve that come from munich i didn't invent this one this is how arie munich decide to have the lookup table build for alexa look at tablet from every nothing else is that an elegant way to bring your photography to the screen and if you go from the gray you can see one two three four and a half stuff above and then you start to fold one two three and a half below and you fold so four and a half three and a half it's an eight stop of ex of um contrast it means it's a flatter look than what film will be uh if you look at the sony one i think i have a sony yeah if you look at the sony we have to do the sony transformation there is this one and that's not dissimilar to what alexa did because we are using the same alexa representation the grayscale is roughly the sorry 18 percent degree is roughly in the same place you have the same amount of stop on the top same answers up on the bottom nothing change so when i build a look i tend to look at this kind of stuff how many stuff the director of photography would like to see let's say the director of photography want to see less a much more contrast one you know five stop of exposure uh let's do it with the contrast let's put back the skill that it is there we are so if you see i just add contrast now i have one two and a half on the top one two and some on the bottom this is only five stop of final contrast now why do i do all of this because you have to think about how the director of photography light a set they have one reference that is the gray chart and then they put light to illuminate a subject and they they use the light meter and say okay skin tone one stop over great that particular diffuse white to stop over great i'm done what about the black measure here measure there i'm done so they measure ratio of light on the set namely stops i want this ratio to be preserved when i build the look if we build the look together like that one and i build a lookup table and i send it to the camera the director of photography know he has five stop one two three four five almost six almost six top of good exposure the rest is either on the shoulder or on the toe and that's it that's how i build look at table i tend to look at the photographic stops and if you build it in this way it doesn't matter what the content is on the set it's about ratio you put the light meter there if the skin tone of the character is a stop above it will fall here it doesn't fall anything else it's not brighter or darker it falls there it's just math i hope i answered the question even if it was a big aggression it's okay more than okay thank you very much walter um i had just one more question it's more regarding like like delivery and like limiting for example if you're gonna go for rec 2020 i want to limit it to for example p3 and how would you go about doing it with a color space transform with a custom color management in the in the node structure okay so the basic idea i need to share before i start to talk otherwise you don't see what i'm doing so let's say for the sake of discussion that i'm building um [Music] an hdr look right so up to here we were in uh 709 so this lookup table was done for 709 was done for normal video so you want to transform this guy to hdr if you just put color space transform you know you're getting a 709 2.4 because that's what that lookup table is doing and you can you know build your hdr as you want it doesn't matter to p3d65 and yeah okay okay so you can see here let me switch this guy to hdr you can see here you have an s curve and you're limited 100 nits because that's what i'm doing i'm literally just saying grab the 709 gamma 2.4 and slam fit into the um hdr color space now let's say for just for example they want to do um two three four five hundred needs mapping just to do something quick and dirty with you i'm just gonna paint this one to roughly here and then i'm gonna get just some of those highlights that's too much too much too much touch just yeah we are ah the mouse is difficult sorry about that [Music] okay so i just did something very silly very stupid very simple i grabbed my lookup table that was done for sdr i remap it for 650 nits i guess yeah 650 nits and that will give you a starting point to do your hdr now why do i do that for the same reason i'm keeping the same exposure stops they were giving me by the director of photography so i'm starting to the hdr with the same photographic spread using the same photographic principle this one you're targeting now p3 uh pq so the hdr color space because tvs that's what they do i mean you don't have a 2020 tv unless you have a high-end sony x300 with a 2020 option so you usually color on a p3 pq that could be a flander it could be an lg it could be whatever your budget can allow to do it after that you need to deliver a 2020 and you need to limit to p3pq so the first thing you want to do it's actually that color transformation go away uh p3d65 st2084 that is the pq color space 2020 against t 2084 i don't want any of this fanciness now the problem is you're not limiting you can create color that exceed the color space so here you have to make a limiter that i think is this one i need to check because i never remember so the current gamma it's not this one yes this one okay curry gamut is p3d65 and you are in pq and you want to limit that p3d65 so basically you're telling whatever is above p3d65 please don't give it to me i don't want it so this is your limiter and this is your 2020. okay everything is good everything is great except you're not passing um quality control it will fail and it will tell you there is a single goddamn pixel in the whole goddamn episode that pass the value by literally a bit a one beat that's the problem with approximation of mathematics uh resolve approximate that particular value of the pixel to x but that x is literally x plus one in the qc report so how you deal with that the best way to deal it is literally going here and instead of 50 you say 49.99 it will not change the look and feel of your movie nobody can see a one percent less saturation also you still have to compress this you still have to send it through the pipe people at home are uncalibrated so that little saturation change will not do anything to your image but you will pass qc so the limiter plus the 2020 transform plus that little saturation that you do should guarantee you the you pass qc and you'll be able to do a master that fits the bill at the moment i've not been asked to do a 2020 without the p3 limiter i just never been asked so for me is that's what we do we usually finish we usually start with a lookup table there was a daily sdr lookup table from that lookup table we build an hdr mapping we do the color correction then we transform the p3 pq to 2020 with the limiter if you look at sweet tooth on netflix has been done in that way the look was decided before me uh starting the color so they have a very specific look at table they want to use we remapped the lookup table to the first episode is different because it was the pilot but all the other one i think i mapped it to 650 uh opening slightly the shoulder so you see a little bit more detail in the skies a little bit more detail there and then color happen until you know they say we like it we did the 2020 we send it now why i don't do let me digress yet one more why i don't do what other people do for hdr where you have your photography right and oh it's already a log i just bring my photography and i go to the pq space that it's already a log space and i color until i'm happy because i don't think that's it's correct the director of photography only expose a certain amount of steps let's say seven or eight i want those one to go to pq i don't wanna redesign the shoulder and the toe for every single shot arbitrarily [Music] and the idea is you're not redoing the photography you are grabbing the photography that was done on the set you are enhanced another thing that people do let's say you have a lookup table with an s curve and that lookup table goes to pq they just stretch this one to infinite because i want to have the all this power but your subject is still here your main character is sorry your main character is here why do you get white god damn it i don't know i don't know what i'm doing yeah your character is here if the difference before was three stop and it was pleasing now you may have seven stop of difference and frankly if somebody's against the window i don't give a damn what's outside of the window usually it's distracting so you do this with your look at table and in correction the first thing you do guess what is rebuilding the goddamn shoulder why do i want to do that to me the most elegant thing to do you have the lookup table you have your look that it's an s-curve this has curve it's remapped to let's say it was 100 nits or 48 theatrical this is a map to let's pick a number 500 needs and then i just give you a little bit of detail back so the sky gets better the clouds get better but this is no more than a stop i stop it's already a lot because if you have a character against a bright sky i stop it's a lot so not more than that give you some detail perhaps recover a little bit of those and you go up to let's say 650 650 everybody can see it most of the tv out there can do 650 even the ipad can do 650s well 500 ish but the idea is every single stop the director of photography sweat for three months to put on the set is retained i don't keep you know i don't keep the this guy down here and just give you highlights that doesn't work to me it doesn't work and i know a lot of people do the other way they're very successful kudos to them i don't like them okay um thank you very much walter of course one question um which curve and diameter you prefer we second which color management oh color management yeah yeah the idea is that i because i come from a period of time where there was no color management i worked on on quantel for freaking 10 years um i got used to doing my color management so i used resolve of x transform to bring the shots from the color they are to the color space that i want to i work in logarithmic and then i do whatever transformation look a lot whatever it is that it makes sense at the end if i have to go to another color space like you just saw me go into hdr again i use the color resolve of x i did a couple of project in aces it works now that doesn't the only problem for me for aces is the way they do hdr they do what i show you where they only open the highlights and i don't think it's a good way to do it [Music] so you need to work harder to force aces to do what you wish that's the problem for me for aces um the thing is like i say i got so used to do that that implicitly i do all the transformation by myself there is actually okay so there is a question about uh documentary ballerina i think it's a documentary um on havana the gosh what was the the title doesn't matter it's um people dancing in havana okay so documentary in general first of all trust your camera your director of photography again if you go with an alexa outside and you have you know people dancing outside you cannot put dancing card you cannot put lighting but the cameras are built in a way they can capture um daylight correctly you just have to put literally measure with your exposimeter the main 18 gray make the white balance at 5500 you're done most of the camera captured correctly the challenge is usually is when you go on the dark where oh we couldn't put any light so we have to do whatever we have to do in that case then yes you need to help with recovering lights recovering exposure you get a noisier image i finished something for apple plus called fathom where um those are scientists that follow whales half of the movie is done in alaska half of the movie is down in polynesia completely different skies completely different light condition just follow whatever the light was if a shot is done in um daylight it's probably daylight it's unlikely that you want to do a day for night yes you cheat a little bit like pre-dawn for dawn or better lighting for dawn or you know sunset but that's kind of the skill you build to create a look for the scene blending the shot shouldn't be that difficult now every single camera unless you're using really a cheap ass camera can get you enough latitude where you can reveal the the rebuild the photography close enough if he's clipped or if he's crushed it's not there anymore there's nothing you can do [Music] again [Music] [Music] please tell me something about this look [Laughter] of course of course everybody asked me the question i know i know uh take away the shouting the sharing i'll tell you how this was done okay okay so i need to add one more layer okay so first of all we need to understand who's christopher nolan and who's holbein ointment in terms of the stylistic choice they do i screen you see my screen right yes the christopher nola love photochemical printing love photochemical representation for him digital can die tomorrow he'll be happy the problem is the film especially as a projection died a decade ago so for us the challenge for dunkirk was to reproduce the photochemical finishing that he wanted to do so let's start with the basics how photochemical finishing is done so let's talk about 35 millimeter just because it's simpler but they were using imax and 65 doesn't change much it's just more complex so you go on the set and you shoot your roll of film okay the raw film are shot using the 18 gray and the photographic stops that in that case hovernoid my director of photography choose to do on the set for example interstellar half of it was done in 35. one it's developed and it's a negative okay there's the develop on the lab we create a negative now you cannot see a negative just you can't you don't want to do this so the negative need to be printed on a positive print the print is projected okay here in the middle based on the way it was shot the director of photography you should talk with the caller timer on the lab and it says you know i was add exposure can you add a bit of blue i want everything warmer or cooler you use printer light now for interlight because you get a print out of this process and light because you physically add red green or blue light to make this print lighter darker or with more red or more blue or whatever it's that literal they add light to a negative during the exposure process of the print then the print is develop as well and you you get your projected daily those dailies are screened by the director and the director of photography to see if they got everything they needed if there is any quality of issue or you know autofocus so when they say yeah we got what we wanted they moved to the next scene what happened after that this print uh depends this negative sorry not the they don't do the print anymore the negative gets scanned or telecine okay let's see that and they do for example i don't know dnx 36 quicktime this go to the editorial stuff in the old days the print was used to actually do an edit card now it's digital so this one goes till the cna becomes digital you have proxies these proxies retain the original key code of the print so every single negative in the world has a unique key code for each frame of that particular role the key code is maintained so later on you know that if you need that particular frame you need to cut the negative at that particular frame there it is done and i know i'm going from i'm going very from far but there is generate a cut list y is called cut list because it's literally the list where you need to cut the physical negative to generate the final edit so the cut list and the negative go in a place where the negative cutter basically splice this is the portion of the negative we wanted and there is the next one and there is the next one and they physically glue them together to create the final cut of the movie and i'm doing all of this because both dunkirk interstellar tenet are done with the same principle they still cut and joined the negative like we were doing in the 90s for um christopher and hoyte there is no digital process that is cutting the negative together so the next thing that happened chapter 5 the last thing that happened you have a negative [Music] with all the cuts the color timer has the lights the printer lights from the dailies based on that and based on what the director of photography wants he modified those printed lights to create a new print a work print with the new printer lights okay this one is a contact print literally a one-to-one from the original negative this print is screened if the screening goes well you're done usually it's not you screen with director of photography again with the director and they say okay that scene is fine i want this thing warmer darker that particular shot need to be brighter that particular shot and you can't really stop and look at single frames that thing is playing at 24 frames a second and you have a counter on the top that tell you where you are roughly in there and you have to quickly write down the counter name the note until you screen the whole print then you go down and you do it again new printer lights with correction like this one change this one change depending how much money you have you can do the process a few times and the ability of the color timer in the past was to be able to see a print and knowing by experience how much printer how many printer lines they have to change to get it closer if you just look at the print done you know in the past and you look critically like we do today where you're stopping a friend you get an image you go to the other frame and you look at the other image they don't look close by a lot but when you see that in play it's close enough it's fine once you are at the last level and everybody say i like kids this become the hero print that is the print that represents the photography of the movie in the particular reel as best as technologically possible using a photochemical [Music] workflow now dunkirk has been released in print there were 150 projectors but we need to do the digital version because there are 10 000 projectors around the world they need a digital version so what do we do well we need to match the hero print we need to be able to do a digital version that match the hero print as class as possible so what's the next step photo chemically photochemically in the old days everybody was printing from the negative it's a bad idea you destroy the negative so using the printer light the final printer light that you have now you create an intermediate positive so we'll call this one i p intermediate positive this one at all effects it's a low contrast stock that is actually really close to the print nobody's going to project that but if you project it it's pretty close to the print just a lower contrast from that inter end you basically you do from the negative probably let's see six of them where uh one or two usually are stored for future if something happened and from the other one then you start to do the printing process how you do the printing process from the intel positive you make another intermediate inter negative that inter negative retain pretty much well roughly the same contrast of the original negative but also all the printer lights that you decided before from here then you strike all the prints you wanted usually they strike i don't remember how many but let's say 100 prints from every internet so you have four inter positive from this one you can do about 10 inter negatives sorry 10 not 100 so 10 from each will be 40 40 by hundred you do four thousand print after four thousand print you make new enter positive new enter negative you print again that's how we were working in the nineties that's how we're working in the first half of the early 2000s nothing you know mysterious about that but uh let me get uh which color let's go black this guy this guy has every single decision that christopher nolan and hoyt binoytma wants it's there every printer light it match the hero print as good as possible can we scan this guy and just make one trim that can give us back the hero print that is exactly what we did so you have a few challenges first of all in one side you have a screen you have a projector that projector has a 5500 kelvin cine lamp and that projector project the print the hero print okay so we want to split the screen in a half and here we project the hero print in this side there is the digital one they have to match and i'm not joking here we project the hero print for dunker or interstellar against a digital version they have to match the funny thing is is not even a projection that simple the screen is split in a half and it's butterflies so they have exactly a butterfly mirror version they have to manage how you achieve that we did a bunch of printings and a bunch of uh redexometric readings of the filmic process with this one we build an intermediate lot we scan the inter positive and then we start to look at the result the lot was close let's say about 90 percent just using math but not perfect so we did a series of loop between going back to printing some tests watched again under the loop and keep this loop few times until we went around 95 of visual match side by side that particular lot become the dunkirk lot we end up basically it took us three months three months to build that lot because has to sustain a true side by side you're not just watching a print go in another building watching the digital it's projected at the same time your eye the worst thing you can do is showing two displays it will pick up any difference and you have a full photochemical process on one side and a photochemical press scanning plus digital plus whatever you want to add in the other side so we basically scan uh for dunkirk where 10 rolls uh because they were half outfields of millimeter five curve that was my hero in this side i have a 65 millimeter five curves and i had the hero print i was actually manually myself threading the hero print from the negative in one side in the other one uh they look at table and there was one small correction per reel because when you scan something it'd be slightly off so it was just a small correction to balance it hit play and go so i had one correction per reel and three months to build the actual lookup table we used for dunkirk that lookup table represents a full precise 65 millimeter um workflow so yeah it's a how much was the color correction for did they really didn't really color correct it we spend a lot of time to refine the lot to be able to sustain a side by side [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Gus Sanchez

Views: 5,946

Keywords: Davinci resolve, alexa, arri, blackmagic, blackmagic design, cine, clours, color grading, color post, davinci resolve, davinci resolve 17, digital colorist, dunkirt, estructura de nodos, film, films, grading, motion films, node estructure, node structure, nodes, nodos, post color, red, walter, waltervolpatto

Id: ymr4wyo7GcA

Length: 103min 56sec (6236 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021