Purchase AJA Io XT for broadcast-quality capture, monitoring and output for Avid and receive free Eye Scream Factory presets to quickly add stunning effects to your productions. Pair Io XT with Avid, MacBook Pro and Thunderbolt storage for a no-compromise
more...
For a limited time, Digistor is including Digital Tutors online training with every commercial 3ds Max or Maya purchased* giving you and your team access to the world's largest online CG training library for free.
more...
Grass Valley and Corsair Solutions are proud to announce that, as part of a special competitive upgrade promotion, users of Apple's Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and Avid's Media Composer can now upgrade to EDIUS 6 nonlinear editing software for just...
more...
IF and the Sydney Film Festival are giving away a Flexi10 worth $137
more...
Your Vote
Do you agree that the producer offset should be raised from 20 to 40 per cent for television?
Yes
No
|
Company 3 uses DaVinci Resolve for 3D and color grading on Underworld: Awakening
[Mon 06/02/2012 11:41:22]
Press release from New Magic Australia
Blackmagic Design today announced that Company 3® used DaVinci Resolve with Resolve Control Surface for color grading the 2D, 3D and IMAX 3D versions of Screen Gems and Lakeshore Entertainment’s, in association with Sketch Films, "Underworld: Awakening". The film, directed by Mårlind and Stein, shot by Scott Kevan, based on characters created by Kevin Grevioux, Len Wiseman and Danny McBride, and with story by Len Wiseman, John Hlavin and screenplay by Len Wiseman, John Hlavin, J. Michael Stracynski and Alison Burnett, is the latest in the hugely popular and visually stunning vampire themed "Underworld" series.
Senior Colorist Siggy Ferstl at Company 3's Santa Monica facility worked with the filmmakers to help bring a refreshed look to the new installment of this popular series. Known previously for its overall cold, steely, blue feel, the world of "Awakening" is somewhat different. "The creative team was intent on building a bold new look for the franchise, especially since this is the first 3D installment," says Ferstl.
"Of course, being part of the 'Underworld' series, a lot of the story takes place in darkness with characters who are often dressed in very dark costumes. We used color a lot to help the viewer differentiate between people, vampires and Lycans, often during intense, fast-paced action scenes."
Shot by cinematographer Kevan, the original material, Ferstl recalls, "had very rich, deep blacks. The wealth of information in the shadows gave me a tremendous amount to work with during color grading. It was great to have so much to work with in the darker areas of the frame and to have such control in Resolve to finesse things.”
"This is especially important for a stereoscopic film," he adds. "Today's 3D projection technology can't display whites as brightly as we're used to in 2D, so if we want to see a lot of contrast on the screen, it has to come from the darker areas."
Ferstl explains how he made extensive use of Resolve's parallel node function to help fine tune the film's look. "If you give the scene an overall cold, blue look, of course you lose a lot of your warmer tones," he notes. "The richness of red, say in blood, will be lost. But by using parallel nodes, I can very efficiently give a scene that colder feel in one node and then bring back certain information from an earlier node. This way, the shot can have a kind of blue feel overall but the blood can still retain that powerful red color it had before I added the blue wash."
Resolve's stereoscopic 3D hardware capabilities also played a significant role in the grading process. "Any movie shot in 3D can have some alignment issues between the left and right 'eyes’, that impair the 3D illusion," Ferstl explains. "In the past, these would have to be fixed at a visual effects facility. But I was able to use the Resolve's auto alignment function for virtually every shot that needed adjustment. It worked very well and added a great deal of efficiency to the DI process."
"'Underworld: Awakening' was a challenging project from a color grading standpoint," Ferstl says, "and I was very glad I was able to do the work in Resolve."
Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is the world’s highest performance color correction solution for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux computers. DaVinci Resolve supports more real time color correction than any other system because it’s not limited by the performance of the computer it’s running on. DaVinci Resolve eliminates this performance barrier because it’s based on a cluster of high performance GPU cards, so all processing is always real time. DaVinci Resolve has the power of a true real time performance solution so handles complex color grades even when using dozens of primaries, secondaries, Power Windows™, multi point tracking, blurs, and more. DaVinci Resolve provides incredible performance in a low cost solution that can be easily upgraded by adding extra GPU’s for supercomputer power to handle 4K resolutions, stereoscopic 3D and real time grading direct from raw camera files such as ARRI raw and RED raw R3D files can be handled with ease.
