News

October 15, 2013

Blackmagic Design announced that Company 3 London has used DaVinci Resolve for color grading the film adaptation of “Captain Phillips,” the new blockbuster film starring Tom Hanks.

Four years after it made headlines, the harrowing true life story of American shipping captain Richard Phillips, swept up in a hostage ordeal after Somali pirates hijacked his ship, has been made into a new film by director Paul Greengrass, with Barry Akroyd as the cinematographer. Color correction for “Captain Phillips” was carried out by Company 3’s senior colorist Rob Pizzey.

“Barry has a naturalistic style of shooting and Captain Phillips was no different,” explains Pizzey. “Everything is filmed handheld, so you never have any locked off shots during the film. Because of that, Barry is right on top of the action. You almost feel like a part of the film.”

The challenge during this grade was the film’s climax, which takes place at night. “Most of the climax was actually shot during the day so we had a big job on our hands matching those shots, which were filmed on a variety of formats, with the night footage.”

A month before the DI, Akroyd and Pizzey had the chance to work on the conformed ‘day for night’ scenes, allowing them to start setting the look.

“We worked through the scenes making sure that we could achieve what we wanted and flagged areas where we could do with some help from VFX. DaVinci Resolve’s unlimited nodes and auto tracking capabilities were a big help during Captain Philips big ‘day for night’ scenes,” said Pizzey.

“The camera is always moving because you’re at sea, so the tracking tool was perfect because I could hand draw shapes and then grade within that area. Resolve’s auto tracking would then map to the movement of the camera so we could get on with matching all of the footage. It was also really useful for lining up faces and pulling out eyes. With the auto tracking, you get the shape on there and it maps it all the way through. It really did save me a lot of time.”

“Having got it in a pretty good place, we then rendered out the DPX files with the grade baked on and sent them over to the visual effects house, who were able to help us in areas where I’d darkened bits down to help sell the look.”

“When those shots came back into the timeline for the main DI they were 90 per cent final. The main DI was attended by Barry for the first seven days, during which time the pair set the look and mood and graded the climax of the film in full.”

About DaVinci Resolve

Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is the world’s highest performance on set, editing and 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 which can be easily upgraded by adding extra GPUs for supercomputer power to handle 4K resolutions, stereoscopic 3D and real time grading direct from raw camera files such as ARRI RAW, RED RAW and Sony RAW files which can be handled with ease.

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.

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News from SONY

At this year's IBC, SONY introduced a number of new products, some of which were already announced at the NAB show in Las Vegas in April this year. The good news is that most of the announced news is already available and there is no need to wait for more months for them. Since this year's IBC was completely 4K, probably the most interesting new product is the compact "handycam" 4K camera PXW-Z100. The camera has a new 1/2.33" Exmor R CMOS 1/2.33" sensor, new wide-angle 4K optics with 20x zoom, and also a new XAVC recording codec borrowed from CineAlta's F5/F55 cameras. The PXW-Z100 is capable of recording full 4K resolution of 4096x2160 at 50 full frames and at bitrates up to 500Mbps. In addition to full 4K, the camera is also capable of recording QFHD (3840x2160) and standard HD at a higher bitrate (up to 223Mbps) in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression at 4:2:2 and 10-bit intra-frame compression. A firmware upgrade to allow recording to LongGOP 4K and AVCHD formats should be available during 2014. Pro audio (2x XLR input), HDMI output for 4K, 3G HD-SDI output, ability to control basic features over Wi-Fi are standard. The PXW-Z100 is expected to be priced at around €6,000 excluding VAT and should be available later this year.

The After Effects CS6 (11.0.3) update fixes several bugs, including a crash on Mac OS X (v10.9). Complete details are here.

October 3, 2013

Blackmagic Design announced that Company 3 in London has used DaVinci Resolve for color grading Ron Howard’s F1 racing biographical action film “RUSH.”

“RUSH” portrays the exhilarating true story of two of the greatest rivals the sport has ever witnessed, drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda. Set against the sexy and glamorous golden age of F1 racing, Rush follows the two drivers as they push themselves to the breaking point of physical and psychological endurance, where there is no shortcut to victory and no margin for error.

After a catastrophic crash during the 1976 German GP at the Nürburgring, which could have killed Lauda, he returns to face rival Hunt in their pursuit of the World Championship. Anthony Dod Mantle was the film’s cinematographer and he presented Company 3’s senior colorist Adam Glasman with an intriguing challenge.

“While Rush was shot using a variety of different digital formats, Howard and Mantle also wanted to incorporate original race footage from 1976 shot on 16mm and 35mm film. Ron and Anthony felt this would help to recreate the thrilling race sequences and give Rush some real F1 production value says,” says Patrick Malone of Company 3 London.

The overall goal during the grade was to create a look that would bind both digital and archived film material together, giving Rush a seamless look throughout. “Our brief was to give the film a 70’s period feel with a modern slant. Inspiration for the colour palette came from a lot of the readily available archived 8mm, 16mm and 35mm footage of the 1976 World Championship.”

“While the traditional look associated with the period is one of desaturated, almost sepia colors, Anthony wanted to push color into the cars so they looked more bold and striking. In addition, he wanted each of the grand prix races to given their own unique feel to reflect the drama and dynamics of the ’76 championship,”

Take for example the opening scene at the Nürburgring, which is a pivotal moment. This had a very stormy, almost menacing feel to it as the film builds up to Lauda’s crash. This is a very bold sequence, which Adam achieved by adding in more saturation while being careful not to crush the information out of the image,” says Malone.

Company 3 London has also used DaVinci Resolve recently to complete the grading of Edgar Wright’s science fiction comedy “The World’s End”, Zombie epic “World War Z” and British action comedy “Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa”.

About DaVinci Resolve

Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is the world’s highest performance on set, editing and 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 which can be easily upgraded by adding extra GPUs for supercomputer power to handle 4K resolutions, stereoscopic 3D and real time grading direct from raw camera files such as ARRI RAW, RED RAW and Sony RAW files which can be handled with ease.

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.