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Press Release

London's Goldcrest Post continues the expansion of its Academy Award and BAFTA winning post production services with the addition of three new digital intermediate (DI) theatrical grading suites featuring DaVinci Resolve.

Goldcrest has already used its theatrical grading suites for the DI on Kingsman: The Secret Service, Inbetweeners 2, Breaking the Bank, Suite Francaise and Stephen Frears’ Lance Armstrong biopic. With access to the very latest in DI creative technology and workflows of DaVinci Resolve 11, Goldcrest’s Lexington Street picture post department, which includes leading colorists Adam Glasman, Rob Pizzey and Lee Clappison, is now the only facility in Soho to offer its clients complete audio and picture finishing services for major theatrical releases all under the same roof.

The DaVinci Resolve workflow for Goldcrest’s main DI suites relies on multiple 4GPU Linux DaVinci Resolves for editing and grading, and also includes multiple 1 GPU Linux and Mac Resolves for preparation and lab work. Goldcrest’s two main DI suites feature a 10 meter throw with 6.5 meter screens including the latest Barco DCI projector. All DaVinci Resolve workstations are connected to a half Petabyte San Media storage system insuring playback and realtime grading for multiple 4K streams.

Blackmagic reseller Jigsaw24 proposed the highest specification DaVinci Resolve servers to run the grading and online suites, all on Linux. “This ensured a uniformity across the creative suites, providing easier support and interoperability in the facility,” explained Jigsaw’s Jamie Allan. “The grading and online systems were all built identically, so online playback could be achieved in realtime, without the need for rendering from a grade. All of the systems are powered by Nvidia Titan GPU processing cards.”

“The scope and scale of the features that will go through our facility means that our project management has to be watertight,” said Laurent Treherne, chief technology director of Goldcrest Post who oversaw the upgrade “Using DaVinci Resolve throughout our editorial pipeline has given us a more efficient and flexible workflow because we are using a centralized database. DI, online editing and conform can now be done using the same project files without the need to render any files or translate and check XML data. Jigsaw’s technical consultancy and extensive knowledge of DaVinci Resolve has been essential to the project’s success.”

“This new post production infrastructure demonstrates our commitment to entering the UK picture post arena. As we have secured some of the very best talent in the industry, we had to ensure that our colorists, editors and assistants had an environment offering the highest technological and aesthetic qualities in which to work,” explains Goldcrest Post managing director Patrick Malone. “Our heritage in film financing and distribution establishes our credibility within the feature production industry, and by adding world class post production services to our facilities, clients will have access to a unique, fully integrated service.

Press Photography

Product photos of DaVinci Resolve are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

About Goldcrest

Goldcrest is a vertically integrated entertainment company. From offices in New York and London Goldcrest offers a unique integrated solution for producers of filmed entertainment globally. Highly skilled talent, expertise and experience underpin the company’s activities in three distinct operational areas:

– Goldcrest Films oversees the distribution and marketing of films produced by Goldcrest and third-party acquisitions in addition to monetising Goldcrest’s celebrated library of over 100 titles and recently announced they will be financing and distributing Brooklyn Bridge to which Daniel Radcliffe is attached to star, starting at the forthcoming European Film Market in Berlin.

– Goldcrest Post is a market leading supplier of Academy Award and BAFTA winning post-production services.

– Goldcrest Finance raises funds and structures transactions in the media sector and has funded films ranging in budget from $3 million to $98 million, of which four have opened at number 1 at the US box office.

Press Release

Blackmagic Design announced that the music visualizer for Owl City’s newest track, “Wolf Bite,” was shot on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (EF) and color graded on DaVinci Resolve 11. The video is one of the first projects in the world to be finished on the newest version of DaVinci Resolve.

Following hits like “Fireflies,” “Vanilla Twilight,” and the Carly Rae Jepsen duet, “Good Time,” Owl City’s latest track, “Wolf Bite,” comes from the recently released Ultraviolet EP. The video for “Wolf Bite” features people dressed as wolves riding bikes and dancing throughout the streets around New York City. Shot by Director of Photography Tim Buttner and directed by Andrew William Ralph, the video contains dramatic artistic elements, harsh and low lighting and a number of visual effects.

“When I spoke with Andrew leading up to the video shoot, we talked about the look being pretty artistic and open, considering he was going to do some stylized animations over it,” said Tim. “The first thing he asked was for me to shoot the moon; however, the full moon had just passed. Luckily, I had shot the full moon over the winter in RAW at 24fps on my Blackmagic Cinema Camera for my own purposes. This gave us a great shot of the moon to start with and set the frame rate for the project.”

The video’s nighttime bicycle shots proved to be challenging due to lighting restrictions. To get the footage, Tim sat with the camera on the back of a moving vehicle with a work light shooting out from underneath him. While recording the time lapse footage seen in the video, Tim used the Blackmagic Cinema Camera to capture out of focus lights to be used later in the video as an overlay effect.

“We were happy that the Blackmagic Cinema Camera did very well in low light even at 800 ASA,” said Tim. “I decided not to go above 800 ASA to ensure little to no noise, and in post I pushed the exposure a bit more by roughly a half stop. A lot of the street lights gave a nice look on the road, but I emphasized that in DaVinci Resolve.”

For the scenes with the dancers, Andrew asked Tim to find lights that could simulate car headlights for the scene. Tim quickly found a solution that worked: he used actual car headlights. According to Tim, they were bright enough and the camera was so good in low light situations that they were able to pull off the shots without any cinema lights.

Tim also used the Blackmagic Cinema Camera to shoot the footage of a wolf mask with glowing eyes that appears overlaid in certain shots of the video. He shot the mask against a green screen background that he then keyed out so that he could do a glow effect inside the mask’s eyes.

“The quality provided by the Blackmagic Cinema Camera made that job so easy, especially the extra pixels from the 2.5K resolution for masking the shape of the eyes for the glow effect,” said Tim. “Overall, I love using the Blackmagic Cinema Camera because the footage looks so amazing. It’s so affordable, good in low light and easy to use, but to me the biggest selling point is the 13 stops of dynamic range and the ability to shoot RAW, which allows me to do whatever I need to do in post.”

During the color grade, Tim used the VisionColor ImpulZ LUTs on a few shots as a base starting point, and then used the Power Windows and color picker in DaVinci Resolve 11 to emphasize various elements.

“DaVinci Resolve 11 allowed us to give the bicycle sequences a distinct look compared to the dancers,” said Tim. “I was able to emphasize more blue tones in the dancers to contrast to the red and orange tones of the bicycle sequence. And for the bicycle sequence, I was asked to emphasize the wolf’s fur by making it more of a brownish red color, and being able to pick that specific part of the image and use a Power Window to track the head was great.”

Tim also used Resolve 11’s new media management duplication feature extensively. This allowed Tim to securely back up and save digital camera files through a clone tool that copies media drives, memory cards and camera packs to multiple destinations simultaneously. In the office, he had two hard drives, so while he worked on one of them he had everything copied to another as a backup. Once the color grade was finished, he exported the files to be edited. Per the client’s request, the finished project was delivered to BitMAX in Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) 23.98fps in 1920X1080.

“All the color grading was done before editing, which isn’t a normal procedure, but for this project it made the most sense,” said Tim. “DaVinci Resolve gave us so much control over the RAW images and it made life so easy to be able to use such a powerful tool.”

Press Photography

Product photos are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Some time ago, we brought yousamples of footagefrom several cameras from our offer. For each model you will find a brief description of the format in which we recorded the footage. After you start the video demonstration, you can then download the unedited footage (see picture).

This software update includes on screen histogram and audio metering for Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Pocket Cinema Camera, as well as extended white balance, shutter angle options and other improvements. Download the update for Windows or Mac OS X.

Press Release

Blackmagic Design announced that Twentieth Century Fox and ABC’s hit television show “Modern Family” is graded using DaVinci Resolve at LA based Modern VideoFilm, which provides world class post production and distribution services to the film, television and media content industries.

“Modern Family” follows the Pritchett Dunphy Tucker clan, a wonderfully large and blended family. The recipient of four consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Television, the series has been critically lauded for revitalizing the television sitcom.

“Grading at times is more difficult on a show like this because I‘m actually trying to hide complicated tricks, preserving the authenticity of the documentary look. Luckily DaVinci Resolve has all the tools that I need to achieve this. In general, footage is given a very subtle low contrast grade trying to achieve very readable blacks and shadows on air. We really want the show to feel as filmic as possible, but still give things a nice treatment when needed,” remarked Aidan Stanford, colorist at Modern VideoFilm.

“Modern Family” is meant to look and feel like a documentary, with candid and organic moments. To enhance moments like an uncomfortable glance at the camera in an undetectable way, Aidan often adds a soft window on a character’s face and eyes and uses dynamic keyframes to complete the grade.

“I’ll use the mid dark luma custom curve adjustment. I really like those curves, and they are such a time saver,” noted Aidan. “Another great time saver is DaVinci Resolve’s interactive tracker, which came in handy for the recent ‘Australia’ episode, as well as the two part finale wedding episodes. Some scenes take place during the afternoon and into the evening. DP James Bagdonas wanted the footage to look really specific to the time of day, ending in a really beautiful sunset finale.”

“Every detail is so important to creating the mood, so things like magic hour or sunsets have to match, and DaVinci Resolve’s interactive tracker is the perfect tool. I was able to isolate foregrounds from horizons seamlessly,” he continued. “DaVinci Resolve took care of a lot of complicated tracking, as well as dynamic grades in windows that were being graded and tracked completely separate from the backgrounds.”

“Some shots had windows on every actor’s face in order to keep the skin and sky balanced, correcting for the changes in natural light during shooting. Since DaVinci Resolve allows you to use as many nodes as needed, I was able to keep adding nodes and pulling keys on whatever aspect of the shot was needed, such as warmth or density,” he said.

Aidan noted that even during review with the show’s creative team, if a scene needs to be made warmer or darker, he can isolate shots or even whole scenes with the track grade, and with one quick grade, the change is made in real time.

“I love being able to toggle a grade on and off as a whole, or mark it individually. Also I’m able to turn a LUT on or off as needed in a node, either in the tracker or the clip mode, which is very helpful and most importantly quick for the client. As a colorist I never feel stuck with DaVinci Resolve, and I know I can achieve what the DP is asking me to do, and everyone is happy with the results,” concluded Aidan.

“Modern Family” stars Ed O’Neill as Jay, Julie Bowen as Claire, Ty Burrell as Phil, Sofía Vergara as Gloria, Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Mitchell, Eric Stonestreet as Cameron, Sarah Hyland as Haley, Nolan Gould as Luke, Ariel Winter as Alex, Rico Rodriguez as Manny and Aubrey Anderson-Emmons as Lily.

“Modern Family” is produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television in association with Picador Productions and Steven Levitan Prods. Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd are the creators/executive producers. Danny Zuker, Dan O’Shannon, Bill Wrubel, Paul Corrigan, Brad Walsh, Abraham Higginbotham, Jeffrey Richman and Jeff Morton also serve as executive producers.

Press Photography

Product photos of DaVinci Resolve are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.