Anyone who works in the world of post knows the benefits of Blackmagic Design‘s DaVinci Resolve Studio when it comes to the remote workflows needed to get footage, sound, graphics and other elements between locations, but Blackmagic Design has shared one particular case study about how creative studio Nice Shoes have been using the software for its workflow between locations in New York, Toronto, Boston, Chicago and Minneapolis.
Blackmagic Design’s case study revolves around Nice Shoes’ Senior Colorist Maria Carretero and her grading on the award-winning feature Waikiki, as well as her work on the Sundance film All Light, Everywhere (recently picked up for distribution by NEON‘s Super Ltd. after winning a Special Jury Prize) and the music video for “Lost Horse.”
Waikiki is a drama from Hawaiian filmmaker and Sundance Institute Native Lab fellow Christopher Kahunahana, which gives an unflinching glimpse into the gritty realities of life in paradise. During post, Carretero was based in New York with Digital Intermediate (DI) Producer Katie Hinsen in Los Angeles and Kahunahana in Hawaii. The team collaborated over a secure, color accurate video link developed by Nice Shoes. Originally created for advertising clients, Nice Shoes’ technique was refined to meet the unique demands of the pandemic and expanded for its film and episodic projects.
Hinsen noted, “Usually we’d have only a handful of clients per month using remote workflows, but now it’s almost all. We also used to have most of these sessions facility to facility, but we scaled up to have both the artist and the client at their homes, both using secure color accurate viewing links to their monitors to view the output of DaVinci Resolve Studio.”
She continues, “Quite a few of our projects, from last year and continuing into 2021, use DaVinci Resolve Studio’s collaboration features, which have been very complementary to our remote workflows. It really helps us make the best use of our resources, since our assistants and online editors can access any project on any machine at any time. Before going remote, an assistant would go into the colorist’s room and drop a shot into the sequence. Now, they can go into the timeline no matter where they are physically in the world. It has allowed us to make better use of our teams in different locations and time zones, which has been crucial for projects like ‘Waikiki.’”
Another recent remote project that Carretero worked on was Asaf Avidan’s “Lost Horse” music video, a project shot and posted remotely during quarantine with Director Adi Halfin based in Berlin. Carretero notes Halfin’s specific tastes when it comes to the look of the video, stating, “She is always looking for something very delicate, so it’s a lot of work putting together the saturation levels and recovering information into the shadows to get the feeling that you can breathe the air that the image has into the scenes.”
Hinsen concluded with, “DaVinci Resolve Studio has been a great asset to Maria and the rest of our colorists. The color management and collaborative toolsets have been instrumental as we’ve adjusted and refined our workflows while collaborating with filmmakers all over the world. While everyone has understood the reality of the past year, remote DI is not something most feature clients were used to, and DaVinci Resolve Studio absolutely aided us in making believers out of our clients.”
You can learn more about DaVinci Resolve Studio at BlackmagicDesign.com.
