Victory // Resolve 8

Director: Mark Querubin

The new Resolve 8 will be coming out soon! They said it has big updates that include a multilayer timeline! Thank you! I’m looking forward to the new features! I hope they come out with Blend Modes next!

Handy Nodes

When you’re grading for advertising, your clients will want the product in the shots to be the EXACT SAME COLOR as the real thing (or at least the artwork). Even if you have this surreal treatment for the rest of the image, the product has to be as realistic as possible. And, most likely, you’ll be isolating each color on that product to get it to match.

Here’s where nodes come in pretty handy! This little technique saves me a lot of time, especially if your product is moving and you need to track it. It’s not just useful for product shots, but for those things you intend to have a lot of keys in.

Meranti // grading Canon DSLR

graded with the Da Vinci Resolve

Directed by Jose Ticsay

I love the time lapse shots here. I did make two separate grades for each shot that show two different times of the day. They dissolved them into each other to get more of that time moving feel.

I believe they used canon cameras for those time lapses. Isn’t that amazing? Canons are starting to be common for shooting TVCs nowadays, which makes them much cheaper to produce, I suppose. Still, they’re not Film, RED or Arri. But, they’ll definitely do those jobs that are impossible for big bulky cameras.

Ibiza

graded with the Da Vinci Resolve
Directed by Matthew Rosen
Camera used was RED Mysterium X

I woke up one morning to the ring of my cellphone. It was direk’s line producer calling. This was a week before the scheduled grading session, so, I wondered why she was calling me.

I nervously answered, “Hello?”

“Toni,” she said, “direk has a question for you.”

Dissolve Effect with Da Vinci Resolve

I personally believe that working with dissolves is easier with the Nucoda Film Master. With the Resolve, it has some limitations that make it a little trickier. If you put your dissolve in the track within the Color tab, you must use the exact same nodes in the dissolving clips. The dissolve here basically just interpolates your nodes, moving your values from your first setting to the next. So, if for example, you have a node with a qualifier that changes values from the first clip to the second clip, then you might see a sort of “morphing” within the dissolve (which I should probably start calling, “dynamic”, in this context, rather than “dissolve”). Since it is a dynamic, the clip is still whole and applying a saved grade would erase that dynamic. As opposed to how the Film Master does it, splitting the clips in two and placing an actual dissolve over the cut. Since the two parts are separated, it’s easy to just apply a saved grade to either without affecting the other clip or the dissolve.

I’ve noticed a lot of engine searches for “dissolve in Da Vinci Resolve” or something similar. I tried doing the search myself and I didn’t find much. But, if I’m not mistaken, the Resolve manual has instructions on this. But anyway, as a quick reference, here’s how to do it. Depending on your situation, you can create a dissolve effect either in CONFORM or COLOR.