Post Perspective - Color Pipeline: Virtual Roundtable

Here is a Q&A I was recently included in. Check out the full article here at postperspective.com

Warner Bros. Post Creative Services Colorist John Daro

My mission control station at HQ

Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services is a post house on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. “We specialize in feature films and high-end episodic projects, with picture and sound finishing under one roof. We also have editorial space and visual effects offices just one building over, so we truly are a one-stop shop for post.” 

What does your setup look like tools-wise?


I have been a devotee of FilmLight’s Baselight for the past five years. It is the beating heart of my DI theater, where I project images onto a 4K Christie projector and monitor them on two Sony X300s. For that “at-home” consumer experience, I also have a Sony A95K.

Although I spend 90% of my time on Baselight, there are a few other post-software necessities for my craft. I call my machine the “Swiss army box,” a Supermicro chassis with four Nvidia A6000s. I use this machine to run Resolve, Mistika, Photoshop, and Nuke. It also makes a fine dev box for my custom Python tools.

I always say, “It’s not the sword; it’s the samurai.” Use the right tool for the right job, but if you don’t have the right tool, then use what you’ve got.

Do you work in the cloud? If so, can you describe that workflow and the benefits?


Not really. For security reasons, our workstations are air-gapped and disconnected from the outside world. All media flows through our IO department. However, one cloud tool I do use is Frame.io, especially for the exchange of notes back and forth. I really like how everything is integrated into the timeline. It’s a super-efficient way to collaborate. In addition to those media uploads, the IO team also archives finished projects and raw scans to the cloud.

I do think cloud workflows are gaining steam, and I definitely have my eye on the space. I can envision a future where we send a calibrated Sony X3110 to a client and then use Baselight in the cloud to send JPEG XS straight to the display for remote approvals. It’s a pretty slick workflow, and it also gets us away from needing the big iron to live on-prem.

Working this way takes geography out of the equation too. I would love to work from anywhere on the planet. Bring on the Tiki drinks with the little umbrellas somewhere in the tropics with a laptop and a Mini Panel. All joking aside, it does open the talent pool to the entire world. You will be able to get the best artists regardless of their location. That’s an exciting prospect, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this new way of looking at post.

Do you often create LUTs for a project? How does that help?


I mostly work with curves and functions to do my transforms, but when on-set or editorial needs a preview of what the look will be in the room, I do bake LUTs out. They are especially critical for visual effects reviews and dailies creation.

There’s a film project that I’m working on right now. We’re doing a scan-once workflow on that show to avoid overly handling the negative. Once scanned, there is light CDL grading, and a show LUT is applied to the raw scans to make editorial media. The best looks are the ones that have been developed early and help to maintain consistency throughout the entire workflow. That way, you don’t get any surprises when you get into the final grade. Temp love is a thing… LUTs help you avoid loving the wrong thing.

Do you use AI as part of your daily job? In what way?

Superman II Restoration


I do use a bit of AI in my daily tasks, but it’s the AI that I’ve written myself. Originally, I started trying to make an automated dust-buster for film restoration. I failed miserably at that, but I did learn how to train a neural net, and that led to my first helpful tool.

I used an open-source image library to train an AI up-rezer. Although this is commonplace now, back then, it was scratching an itch that hadn’t been scratched yet. To this day, I do think my up-rezer is truer to the image and less “AI”-feeling than what’s available off the shelf.

After the up-rezer, I wrote Match Grader in 2020, which essentially takes the look and vibe from one shot and applies it to another. I don’t use it for final grading, but it can be very useful in the look-dev process.

Building on what I had learned coding Match Grader, I subsequently developed a process to use machine vision to create a depth channel. This turns your Power Windows from circles and squares into spheres and cubes. It is a very powerful tool for adding atmosphere to images. When these channels are available to me, one of my favorite moves is to desaturate the background while increasing the contrast in the foreground. This adds dimension to your image and helps to draw your eye to the characters where it was intended.

These channels can also aid in stereo compositing, but it’s been a minute since I have had a 3D job cross my desk that wasn’t for VR.

Machine vision segmentation with YOLO. 16fps @4k

Lately, I have been tinkering with an open-source library called YOLO (You Only Look Once.) This software was originally developed for autonomous driving, but I found it useful for what we do in color. Basically, it’s a very fast image segmenter. It returns a track and a matte for what it identifies in the frame. It doesn’t get everything right all the time, but it is very good with people, thankfully. You wouldn’t use these mattes for compositing, but they are great for color, especially when used as a garbage matte to key into.

I have also recently refreshed my AI uprezer. I built in some logic that is somewhat “intelligent” about the source coming in. This way the process is not a one size fits-all operation.

SamurAI Image Restoration

It can auto-detect interlace and cadence now and can perform a general analysis of the quality of the picture. This allowed me to throttle the strength and end up with the perfect amount of enhancement on a case-by-case basis. The new tool is named SamurAI.

If given an example from another show or work of art, what is the best way to emulate that?


It’s good to be inspired, but you never want to be derivative. Often, we take many examples that all have a common theme or feeling and amalgamate them into something new.

That said, sometimes there are projects that do need a literal match. Think film emulation for a period effect. People can approach it in two ways. First — the easiest way, while also being more complicated — is to get a hold of some of the stock you are emulating. Next, you expose it with color and density patches and then develop and measure the strip. If you read enough points, then you can start to interpolate curves from the data.

FilmLight can help with this, and back in my lab days, that is exactly whose software we used. Truelight was essential back in the early days of DI, when the “I” was truly the intermediate digital step between two analog worlds.

The second way I approach this task would be to use my Match Grader software. I can push the look of our references to some of the production footage. Match Grader is a bit of a black box in that it returns a completed graded image but not the recipe for getting there. This means the next step would be to bring it into the color corrector and match it using curves, keys, and scopes. The advantage of doing it this way instead of just matching it to the references is that you are working with the same picture, which makes it easier to align all the values perfectly.

Oh, or you can just use your eyeballs. 😉

Do your workflows include remote monitoring?


Not only do they include it, but there was a time in the not-too-distant past when that was the only option. We use all the top solutions for remote sessions, including Streambox, Sohonet ClearView, Colorfront and T-VIPS. The choice really comes down to what the facility on the catching side has and the location of the client. At the moment, my preference is Streambox. It checks all the boxes, from 4K to HDR. For quick approvals, ClearView is great because all we need on the client side is a calibrated iPad Pro.

What film or show or spot resonates with you from a color perspective?


Going back to my formative years, I have always been drawn to the austere beauty of Gattaca. The film’s use of color is simply flawless. Cinematographer Sławomir Idziak is one of my favorites, and he has profoundly influenced my work. I love Gattaca’s early flashbacks, in particular. I have been gravitating in that direction ever since I saw the picture.

Gattaca

Magic Mike

The Sea Beast

You can see a bit of Gattaca‘s influence in my own work on Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike and even a little bit on the animated film The Sea Beast, directed by Chris Williams.

Gattaca

The Sea Beast

I am always looking for new ways to push the boundaries of visual storytelling, and there are a ton of other films that have inspired me, but perhaps that’s a conversation for another time. I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked on projects that I have, and I hope that my work will continue to evolve, inspire and be inspired in the years to come.

Dear Mama

7/12 - Update: “Dear Mama” Emmy nomination for Best Documentary or Nonfiction Series

Well, if you are my age and grew up in the ’90s, you listened to Tupac. Even all of us white boys from Camarillo knew every word to every song. His music really was the soundtrack to the last decade of the millennium and my youth.

Tonight is the final installment of “Dear Mama.” FX’s most-watched unscripted show.

Perfect for a Mother’s Day weekend! Please go check it out on FX tonight or streaming on Hulu.



Allen Hughes directed this insightful docuseries. Fitting because Allen and his brother directed Tupac’s early music videos. Sure, there was a bit of drama, but that adds to the flavor of the story. That connection to the material made Hughes the quintessential choice for captaining this ship. Tupac wasn’t any one thing; more like an eclectic stew of many influences and identities. One thing is for sure. Dude was thug life for real.

Cognac hues or Hughes as it were

Allen was clear on the look and vibe he wanted for the series. Cognac was the word. We spent a couple of weeks developing a look that feels like you have filtered the light through a fine liquor. We also used Live Grain to achieve that end-of-the-film-era perfect Kodak grain structure of the 90s.


Documentary grading is an entirely different beast. Here are a few tips for you to tackle your next interview-based production.

  1. Color management - I preach this a lot, but even more critical with many different sources.

  2. Sounds basic, but group your interviews.

  3. Normalize the frame rate upfront.

  4. AI up-rez is like salt; a little is good, but too much ruins the dish. Don’t be afraid to let some pictures just look old.

  5. Build a KEM reel of all interview setups. Having the A and B cam shots together in the timeline will help you reference grades quickly.

The first step was look development. Allen had already shot some of the interviews we used to refine the look. I built an LMT that had the cognac golden vibe. I used that look and the ACES standard outputs to create a 709 LUT for Avid media creation. Eric DeAzevedo was the operator responsible for many terabytes of dailies. We also normalized all the archival footage to 23.98 during the dailies step. Cortex was used to make the mxf files and bins. We had to double-hop to render in LiveGrain since it wasn’t supported in Cortex at the time.

Early on, we were still in the late stages of the COVID lockdown. I built a reel of every interview setup and had a ClearView session with Hughes and Josh Garcia (Producer). This scene was super critical to our success going forward. It set the bible for the show's look and ensured that Allen’s vision was consistent through the many days of shooting. At the start of each episode, I applied our base settings using a “Fuzzy” match. (yes, that is a real Baselight thing.) Basically, “Fuzzy” is a setting that allows the machine to match grades presumed to be from the same camera roll rather than a timecode approach. This put all the interviews 90% of the way there from the get-go. The next step was to sort the timeline by clip name and time of day. I would then work through a pass where I would track the shapes and balance out any inconsistencies in lighting as the sun hung lower throughout the day. The archival footage didn’t have as graceful of a strategy applied. Each shot was its own battle as the quality differed from source to source. My main goal was to ensure that it was cohesive and told the story Allen was crafting.

The first deliverable out of the gate was a theatrical version for the Toronto International Film Festival. I graded in ACES cc going out to PQ 1000nits. Then that was run through the DoVi analysis, and a P3D65 48nit version was trimmed. Finally, we applied a P3D65 to XYZ lut on the output render to create the DCDM.

The biggest challenge of this show was keeping up with editorial. As you can imagine, documentary storytelling is honed in the edit bay. The edit was constantly being updated as shots were cleared or discovered. Back at my shop, Leo Ferrini would constantly update my project to chase editorial. Multi-Paste (Remote Grades for our Resolve friends) was clutch in this situation. We took the old grades and copied them across. Leo would categorize the new material so I could sort the scene for the changes. The timelines constantly evolved and took shape until we got Allen in for the final grade. Allen has a great eye and religiously kept us in the world he had envisioned. We paid particular attention to eye-trace and ensured the information from each visual told a straightforward story without distraction. Next was a pass of Dolby trimming to take the approved PQ to 709. We would send that 709 file to Allen and get notes before creating the final IMF for delivery.

A super big thanks to Paul Lavoie for managing this one. There were many moving parts on this production but thanks to him, I rarely felt it. It’s a blessing to have a partner that doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty even though he’s one of the suits😜.


Be sure to check out this killer doc about one of our generation’s most prolific artists, told through Hughes's equally unparalleled artistic voice. Allen is a true master of many formats but has solidified his place as one of the best documentarians. Thanks for taking the time to peek behind the curtain, and let me know what you think.

Here are some more before and afters. Mellow yella’ Dan Muscarella would have been proud.







Cheers to "The Sea Beast" Best Animated Feature Film Nomination!

Sending a big cheers and congratulations to Netflix and The Sea Beast crew for their nomination today. The film is a beautiful culmination of an elite group of artists' fantastic work. I am super grateful and proud to have been a part of the team.

Cheers to "The Sea Beast" Best Animated Feature Film Oscar Nomination!

Flippers crossed for a win on the day!

Best Animated Feature Film Nominations

  • “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson, Gary Ungar and Alex Bulkley

  • “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On,” Dean Fleischer Camp, Elisabeth Holm, Andrew Goldman, Caroline Kaplan and Paul Mezey

  • “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” Joel Crawford and Mark Swift

  • “The Sea Beast,” Chris Williams and Jed Schlanger

  • “Turning Red,” Domee Shi and Lindsey Collins

How To - Dolby Vision

Dolby Vision - How To and Best Practices



What is Dolby Vision

Dolby Vision is a way to dynamically map HDR to different display targets. At its core, the system analyzes your media and transforms it to ranges less than your mastering target, typically SDR 100 nits.

Project Setup

The first step is to license your machine. Once that is in place you need to set up your project. Go into settings and set your CMU(Content Mapping Unit) version. Back in the day, we used an external box, but nowadays the software does it internally. You will also need to set which version. V4 is the current iteration whereas V2.9 is a legacy version that some older TVs use. Finally set your Mastering Display. That is a Sony x300 in my case which is set up for PQ P3 D65 1000 nits.

Baselight Project Setup

Resolve Project Setup

It’s not what you said, it’s your tone

The goal is to make our HDR master look good on an SDR display. To do this we need to tone map our HDR ranges to the corresponding SDR ranges. This is a nonlinear relationship and our shadows mid-tones and highlights will land in the wrong areas if we don’t tone map them first. See below for an example of an SDR image that has not been tone mapped correctly. You can see the highlights are way too hot. Now we could use a curve and shape our image to a discreet master for SDR, but most studios and streamers are requesting a Dolby delivery regardless if a separate SDR grade was made. Plus, Dolby does a pretty decent job of getting you there quickly since the v4 release.

The first step is to analyze your footage. This will result in three values that will set a tone curve, min, max, and average. These values inform the system how to shape the curve to get a reasonable rendering of your HDR master in SDR.

Image courtesy of Dolby

Tone mapping from HDR to SDR

What we are trying to do here is fit 10 pounds of chicken into an 8-pound bag. Something has to give, usually the bones but the goal is to keep as much chicken as you can. Rather than toss data out, we instead compress it. The system calculates the min, max, and average light levels. The idea is to keep your average or the “meat and potatoes” of your shot intact while compressing the top and bottom ranges. The end result is an SDR image that resembles your HDR only flatter.

How a colorist goes about the analysis is just as important as the analysis itself. This is going to get into a religious debate more than a technical one and everything from this point on is my opinion based on my experiences with the tech. Probably not what Dolby would say.

The original design of the system wanted you to analyze every shot independently. The problem with this approach is it can take a consistent grade and make it inconsistent depending on the content. Say you had two shots from the same scene.

One side of the coverage was shooting the character with a blown-out window behind them. The other side shoots into the darker part of the house. Now even though you as a colorist have balanced them to taste, the Dolby analysis will have two very different values for these shots. To get around this, I find it is better to average the analysis for each scene vs doing independent shots. The first colorist I saw work this way was my good friend and mentor Walter Volpatto. He went toe to toe with Dolby because his work was getting QC rejections based on his method. He would analyze only a grey ramp with the d-min and d-max values representing his media and apply that to his entire timeline. His thought process was if it was one transform to HDR it should be one transform down.

Most studio QC operations now accept this approach as valid metadata (Thank you, Wally!) While I agree with his thought process, I tend to work based on one analysis per scene. Resolve has this functionality built in. When I’m working in Baselight I set it up this way and copy the scene averaged analysis to every shot in preparation for the trim.

Scene average analysis in Baselight.

Setting the tone

Now that your analysis is complete it’s time to trim. First, you need to set what display output your trim is targeting and the metadata flag for the intended distribution. You can also set any masking that was used so the analysis doesn’t calculate the black letterbox pixels. The most common targets are 709 100nits, P3 48nits, and PQ 108nits. The 709 trim is for SDR home distribution whereas the other two are for theatrical distribution. The reason we want to keep the home video and cinema trims separate is that displays that fall in between two trim targets will be interpolated. You can see that the theatrical 108nit trim is very close to the home video 100nit trim. These two trims will be represented very differently due to the theatrical grade being intended for a dark theater vs home viewing with dim surround lighting conditions. Luckily Dolby recognized this and that is why we have separation of church and state now. The process for completing these trims is the same though, only the target changes.

Trim the fat

Saturation plus lift gamma gain is the name of the game. You also have advanced tools for highlight clipping and mid-tone contrast. Additionally, you have very basic secondary controls to manipulate the hue and saturation of the six vectors.

Baselight Dolby trim controls.

Resolve Dolby trim controls.

These secondary controls are very useful when you have extremely saturated colors that are on the boundaries of your gamut. I hope Dolby releases a way to only target the very saturated color values instead of the whole range of a particular vector, but for now, these controls are all we have.

Mid tone offset

Another tool that affects the analysis data but could be considered a trim is the mid-tone offset. A good way to think about this tool is a manual shifting of what your average is. This slides the curve up or down from the midpoint.

I usually find the base analysis and subsequent standard conversion a little thick for my taste. I start by finding a pleasing trim value that works for a majority of shots. Then I ripple that as a starting place and trim from there until I’m happy with the system’s output. The below before and after shows the standard analysis output vs where I ended up with the trim values engaged.

It’s time to export once you are happy with the trims for all of your needed outputs. This is done by exporting the XML recipes that when paired with your PQ master will create all the derivative versions.

XML

Here are two screenshots of where to find the XML export options in Baselight and Resolve.

Rightclick on your timeline -> timelines - >export -> Dolby XML

Shots View -> Gear Icon ->Export Dolby Vision Metadata… This will open a menu to let you choose your location and set primaries for the file.

The key here is to make sure that you are exporting an XML that reflects your deliverable, not your DSM. For example, I typically export PQ P3 D65 tiffs as the graded master files. These are then taken into Transkoder, placed into a rec 2020 container, and married with the XML to create an IMF. It’s important to export a rec2020 XML instead of a P3 one so that when it is applied to your deliverable it yields the intended results. You can always open your XML in a text editor if you are unsure of your declared primaries. I have included a screen grab of what the XML should look like for the Rec2020 primaries on the left and P3 primaries on right. Always go by the numbers because filenames can lie.

Rec2020 XML vs P3 D65

There is beauty in the simplicity of this system. Studios and streamers love the fact there is only one serviceable master. As a colorist, I love the fact that when there is a QC fix you only need to update one set of files and sometimes the XML. That’s a whole lot better than in the height of the 3D craze where you could have up to 12 different masters and that is not even counting the international versions. I remember finishing Katie Perry’s “Part of Me” in 36 different versions. So in retrospect, Dolby did us all a great service by transmuting all of those versions we used to painstakingly create into one manageable XML sidecar file.

Thanks for reading

I bet in the future these trim passes end up going the way of the 4x3 version. Especially with the fantastic HDR displays available from Samsung, Sony, and LG at continually lower price points. Remember the Dolby system only helps you at home if it is something other than what the media was mastered at. Until then, I hope this helps.

Check out this Dolby PDF for more information and deeper dive into the definition of the various XML levels. As always thanks for reading.

-JD

Questioning Color

I was recently interviewed for an article on the power of color. The questions were very thought-provoking, and some topics I hadn’t thought about in years. I think it’s always a good practice to periodically approach the profession with a kindergarten mindset, ask the important “why’s”, and question or reaffirm first principles.


You can check out the article here and see the complete list of questions and my responses below.

Hopefully, this helps my fellow hue benders out there. Let me know if you disagree with anything in the comments. I always appreciate new ways of looking at things.


  • John Daro, Senior Colourist, Warner Bros

    John Daro is a Lead Digital Intermediate (DI) colourist at Warner Post Production Creative Services, a division of Warner Media. He has supervised the finishing and grading of many feature films, television pilots, commercials, and music videos for clients, including all the major studios, in addition to independent productions.

    Daro started his career at the film lab FotoKem. His first notable achievement was architecting a direct-to-disk dailies pipeline. From that role, he moved on to film scanning-recording and, with the DI process's creation, his current position as a finishing colourist. His past jobs gave him a mastery over colour transforms, and he started to couple those strengths with the art of cinematography. He continued to pioneer post-production techniques, including 3D conversion and the early days of HDR imaging. As a founding team member of their digital film services department, he helped FotoKem achieve its status as one of the premier post houses in the film and television post-production industry.

    In this interview, Daro talks to us about how colour can be used to shape an audience’s interpretation of a film and provides examples of how he’s used colour to help communicate a narrative in the past. 

  • How do you think colour shapes the way audiences perceive film?

    It's funny that you asked how colour shapes the audience's perception because, in a way, the colour process is literally “shaping” what we want you to see and what we don't. At its most basic, colour finishing is the process of highlighting and subduing certain key areas which directs the viewer’s attention to where the filmmakers intended. Before digital colour grading, cinematographers highlighted these key areas through shadow, light, depth of field and lens effects. Photochemical timing changes were limited to colour and density.  Nowadays, the sky's the limit with shapes, articulate roto masks and matte channels. Ultimately, the end goal of all these tools is to make it feel natural and true to the story and highlight key moments necessary for the viewer to absorb the supporting narrative. It's an old cliche, but a picture tells a thousand words. 

  • How have you used colour to communicate with an audience?

    A couple of examples that popped into my mind involve using dynamics to simulate coming out of a bright area. I think I used this technique most effectively in Laika’s The Boxtrolls. When Eggs, the film’s protagonist, came out of the sewer for the first time, we applied a dynamic luminance adjustment to simulate what your eyes would do when adjusting to a bright light coming from the darkness. 

    Another example is Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, where colour choices define geographical location to help the viewer know where they were without needing additional information.  I also used this technique in Natalie Portman’s adaptation of Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness. For this film, we were dipping through memories and a fantasy world.  Colour choices defined the real world versus the world inside the character’s head.

  • Can you talk us through your involvement in choosing and implementing a colour palette for a specific scene/film?

    So many of these decisions are decided upfront through lighting, production design and wardrobe. It's always a pleasure to be brought in on a project early enough to have been part of those conversations and understand the motivation behind the choices. I feel there's great value for everybody to be on the same page and know how specific colours on the set will render in the final output.

    Look development can have many muses. A style guide, concept art and a reference deck are great tools. I like to start by picking two or three key colours that are important to the story, symbolize a character, or represent a message. Then the objective is to find the best way to shift and enhance to make a split complementary palette. Contrast and simplicity are at the heart of the finest design in my opinion.

  • Do you think colour is the backbone of emotion in film?

    I don't think so, no. I think sound is. Smell would be even more evocative, but luckily for the Jackass movies, smell-o-vision didn't catch on!

    I prefer to grade with the latest mix. It's the sum of all the parts that make a great cinematic symphony. Colour and sound must be playing in concert, similar in tone or in contrast but always together.

    I think that kind of sensory feeling might be ingrained in our DNA. Whenever I hear the opening to Peter and the Wolf, I visualize spring greens. It doesn't work the other way, however. I don't hear Peter and the Wolf every time I see green. Colour must be taken in context. Green can make you feel safe and calm like a lush field of grass blowing in the wind does. At the same time, it can evoke feelings of jealousy or sickness. It all depends on context and the motivation behind the story being told.

  • How do you know when a specific colour scheme does or doesn’t work?

    There are a few academic reasons I could give you. For example, certain colours clash with other colours. Certain colour harmonies are not particularly pretty, but that doesn't mean that you can't use those mismatches. Especially if what you're going for is to make the viewer uncomfortable or uneasy. Colour is subjective; balance is not. 

    Ultimately, the real answer is feeling it in your gut. You know when it’s right. I have an internal rule when taking my passes. The reel is done when I can watch it down and have less than three tweaks to make. You are never really finished. Most often, you just run out of time.

  • How do you work with the director and cinematographer to achieve a specific look in a film?

    I first watch a rough cut or read the script and get an idea of the story. Next, I take camera tests and start to build a basic look. The goal with this V1 transform is to find something that works for the cinematographer and gets them repeated results in different lighting conditions. Obviously, it should also have an aesthetically pleasing visual component. It's important when building a look to ensure that the camera still behaves as expected regarding sensitivity and dynamic range. You don’t want to bake anything that could hamper the original photography. Essentially, make sure mid-grey still maps to mid-grey. 

    Once we have dailies, the process begins again, where I might have a V2, V3, or V4 version of the look that we're going for. I put those in a still gallery on a server for remote viewing, and we constantly update the conversation forum page with feedback from the creatives. I maintain before and afters of all versions to ensure we improve and never go backwards creatively. The last step is to ensure that the look works for the story once the film is assembled. Tweaks are made to the show look and certain scenes get special treatments for effect. 

    CDLs are a vital part of this process as well. Grading your dailies is very important for ensuring that there are no surprises when everyone gets to the DI theatre. I've had past experiences where producers see something that has the final grade, but it's too far of a departure from what the look was in editorial. To combat this reaction, we always want to ensure that the look is consistently maintained from the first shot out of the camera through to the final finish.

  • How can colour set the tone for a scene? 

    To set the tone, it's all about warmer, colder, brighter, or darker. As I've already touched on, it's really important to pick a few colours that you want to enhance and then let the background support that enhancement, whether through a complimentary value or making it recede. They're also the obvious washes that you can do. For example, if you make a scene very red, the warmth invokes a sense of romance or love. It can also yield a literal hot vibe. Something very cold, very desaturated invokes a sense of bleakness or a dystopian feeling. Magenta's a weird one because it can be warm and cold at the same time. Depends on the context and how it's used. Green-yellow also functions similarly. It can seem sickly and off, but it can also be romantic and warm, depending on what side of the hue you're on. I don't know where these generalities came from, but they're almost universal at this point. My gut is that human evolution has something to do with it. I think the responses to these colours helped us survive at some point. When I say it’s in our DNA, I do mean just that.

  • What technical difficulties do you come across with undertaking this critical part of film production?

    You can avoid many technical difficulties by ensuring you’re doing no harm to your pixels. The most important thing is that you have a colour-managed pipeline, in that you’re never working on what the film looks like, but rather what the film was captured as. Make sure you’re always working in a photon real-world scene-referred way. At that point, the displays don’t matter as much. They simply target what you’re trying to hit. They can always be adjusted after the fact if there are technical concerns. I always work with soft display-referred transforms that gradually roll off your highs and also have a nice toe in the black. This generally helps cut down on the number of technical issues. 

    Past that, it's all about keeping your eye on the scopes and ensuring there are no technical glitches in the actual capture or renders like quantization, dead pixels, hits or bad frames. All it takes is an eye for detail and a great QC department.

  • How does your role as colourist differ when working on animation compared with live action films? 

    At the core, the two are very similar. The same principles that make a strong image still hold true regardless of how the image was created. Modern render engines are very good at doing what light does. So much so that a lot of DoP buddies of mine are pre-vising lighting setups virtually.

    Nowadays, that line is being blurred even further, where some films can be comprised of mostly VFX shots. Many of these setups, especially with the advent of digi doubles, are not very different from a fully animated picture.

    Now, if we’re defining a “live-action” shot as being something captured with a camera, and no further manipulation, then the biggest difference comes from the workflow. For example, if you take a live-action setup that has been shot with clouds and maybe some inconsistent lighting situations, your first step is technical colour correction just to balance the shots together. You don't have this problem with animation, but you do have a similar situation where you might have many artists working on the same scene. This can sometimes lead to slight inconsistencies that must be smoothed out.

    A huge advantage of CG-originated shots is that they tend to have advanced matte channels. These could be as simple as a matte for the main character or as complicated as depth or normals. These additional tools allow for more complex grades but also increase the time that you spend on each shot.

  • Can you tell us about your grading suite? What could you not be without while at work?

    My grading suite looks like a hot mess. Imagine the Great Wall of monitors. I have two x300s, and two GUI monitors for Baselight, one extra wide LG for what I call my Swiss Army box and an admin computer. The most important display is my Christie 4k projector. I also have an LG C2 to simulate a consumer experience.

    The most important machine in my tool set is the Swiss Army box. Essentially, it's a super micro chassis with four a6000s that has every single piece of post-production software that has ever been useful. I also use this box for coding and the development of my own in-house tools. I would consider this machine mission-critical. Second to that, the next most important piece of gear would be an external scope. Your eyes can lie to you, but scopes never do. Software scopes have made huge advancements in recent years. I can't say I use the external one every day, but when you need one, there really isn't a substitute.

  • How does Baselight aid your role as a colourist?

    There's a lot of great software out there and I always say use the right tool for the right job. For most of my jobs, that ends up being Baselight. The reasons are straightforward. Firstly, the colour science in the machine is second to none. Next, I appreciate the simplicity of the interface. When colouring long form, most of what you're doing is manipulating groups of many shots. Baselight makes this very easy to do. The other thing I can't live without is how Baselight organises and categorises. When you get towards the end of the project, things get hectic, and it's very nice to be able to sort and view in any way that a project demands. Often this has to do with missing visual effects or work I need to get to after the session. I use categories and marks so that I always know what the status of a scene is at any given time. This organisation also aids in communication. I can always keep post supervisors up to date with reports. Additionally, my in-house team always knows what needs to be done and what is already completed based on the organisation that we have put in place. I've always felt that Baselight was built by people who do the job of colour – not by committees or nonpracticing theoreticians. 

  • What are you working on now/next?

    I’m currently finishing a docuseries directed by Allen Hughes for FX about Tupac Shakur’s life and relationship with his mother called Dear Mama. The interviews have an exciting cognac look that I can’t wait to share. The first part premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was very well received.

    Later this month, I will be finishing a feature called Sweetwater. It’s about the story of the first black NBA player, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton. It is a period piece, so a lot of fun in the colour department. We contemplated a black-and-white double X look for the show but ultimately landed on a derivative of an Ektachrome simulation that I had built a while ago. It has a super cool look if I do say so myself.

    We are also supporting pre-production and dailies on A Gun on Second Street. This show is shooting on film, which is always pleasurable and exciting.  The look for the show is a straightforward Kodak film vibe, expertly lensed by Leo Hinstin.

    While we are on the topic of film shows, I’m also supervising the remastering of Superman II (yes, both cuts.) This will be released in early 2023 just in time to get people excited about Michael Shannon’s General Zod in The Flash. Kneel before Zod!

    Additionally, my team and I will return to animation early next year for an upcoming Netflix feature. More on that later at www.johndaro.com.



DC League of Super Pets

Super excited for everyone to check out the latest from Warner Animation. DC League of Super Pets is a super fun romp expertly animated by the talented team at Animal Logic.

Toshi the Wonder Dog!

Anybody that has ever had a pet is going to love this movie.

Post services provided by Warner PPCS include an ACES HDR picture finish and sound. Truly a post-production one-stop-shop.

The project was supervised by Randy Bol. The great thing about working with Randy is we have a level of trust that has been built over many other projects collaborating together. There is definitely a shorthand when both of us are in the suite. One of the best post sups you’ll work with plus just a good dude too.

Color was supervised by co-director Sam Levine. This guy was cracking me up every session. Not only was he hilarious, but damn, what an eagle eye. I was sort of bummed when our time together ended.

A big thanks to Paul Lavoie and Leo Ferrini too for keeping the ship afloat. I would be drowning in a pile of pixels without these guys.

Now go see DC League of Super Pets only in theaters… Preferably a Dolby Cinema one.

Looking Back on 2021

I wanted to take a quick moment to look back on all the great work that the team and I accomplished this year. There were a ton of fantastic projects with amazing filmmakers. Paul Lavoie and I also got the opportunity to take a second crack at some of our earlier work by giving it a 4k HDR makeover. Have we really been at it that long?

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Leo Ferrini and Paul Lavoie for their dedication to our clients and never compromising on quality. They keep me honest. I’m very grateful to have partners like this A-team. Our operation is strong here on the Warner lot. Looking forward to what will come in 2022!

2021 New Theatrical and Remasters

Happy New Year and happy grading everyone!

-JD

Space Jam: A New Legacy - Multiple Worlds, Multiple Deliveries.

Hey Everybody! Space Jam: A New Legacy directed by Malcolm D. Lee is out today. I wanted to take a second to highlight the super slick color workflow which allowed us to work on multiple versions concurrently.

Capture

Space Jam: A New Legacy was masterfully lensed by Salvatore Totino. The two primary capture mediums were 35mm Kodak film and the entire lineup of Arri cameras, mainly the LF. The glass used was Zeiss Supremes and Master Primes. There were also a handful of scans from archival films which were used as plates for animation.

VFX

ILM was running point for the VFXs on this show. Grady Cofer and his team were a dream to work with. There is a reason ILM continues to be the best in class. The knowledge and expertise ILM employs is second to none. Early on Grady connected me with their head of color science, Matthias Scharfenberg. I thought I knew what I was doing when it comes to color science until I saw what Matthias had going on with CTL and Nuke. I learned a lot from our chats. He was super gracious in sending over his Nuke scripts which allowed me to build a Baselight transform that matched ILM’s pipeline. This insured a one-to-one representation of their stellar work.

Two Worlds, One Grade

The show can basically be broken down into two looks. In “Space Jam: A New Legacy” there is the real-world and the Warner Bros Serververse.

We chose an analog celluloid vibe for the real world. The Serververse has a super clean, very 1s and 0s look to it. Most of the real world is shot on film or is Arri Alexa utilizing film emulation curves paired with a grain treatment. Some sequences have a mix of the two. Let me know if you can tell which ones😉.

The look of the digital world changes depending on where the characters are in the Serververse. The base look of the Serververse is the vanilla ACES ODT with restricted primaries in the mid-tones complimented by exaggerating the saturation for highly saturated colors.

All the other looks are riffs off this base LMT with the exception of the library classics. These were graded to look like their existing masters and the new footage was matched in.

Multiple Deliverables, One Timeline

The challenge of this show, beyond the sheer number of VFX and moving parts, was the delivery schedule. The Post Supervisor Lisa Dennis asked to have the theatrical version and the HDR video versions delivered days apart. To hit the dates requested, I graded simultaneously in HDR and SDR. I did most of the heavy lifting in HDR PQ 1000nits. Then I trimmed at 14FL to ensure the reel was ready for filmmaker review. Poping back and forth between outputs was made possible by two great tools. Firstly, I used ACES 1.1 color management to normalize all the different sources into one grading space.

Secondly, I used Baselight’s “Bypass Categories” functionality to if/then the timeline. Basically, I had one timeline that would represent itself differently depending on the output selected. Different layers were toggled for different sources and outputs. The LMTs used often had SDR and HDR versions to further exacerbate the combinations. This was a critical hurdle to overcome and the Baselight gave me the tools to accomplish the organization of a very complicated timeline with ease.

Approvals

The Color sessions were supervised by Malcolm, Sal, and Bob Ducsay. We used Nevion and ClearView for remote sessions, but most of the work was done in-person on the lot here in Burbank. The Animated sequences were supervised by Spike Brandt and Devin Crane. These guys are animation heavyweights, so very cool to be in such good company for an animation nerd like me.

Most of the tweaking on the animation was for continuity fixing. A few of the shots we composited for final in the Baselight. This gave Devin and Spike a little extra creative freedom than a baked shot would have.

Reference for Tweety’s floor

After all the color decisions were made, Malcolm had his final pass and the masters were created. All deliverables from that point were sub-masters from the hero PQ deliverable. These included deliverables such as the Dolby Vision Theatrical version and 709 SDR version derived from the Dolby XML metadata.

Go See It!

Thanks for reading how the look of this candy-colored revival came together. Working on Space Jam was a wild ride. I had to tap into my background in photochemical film processing and knowledge of the latest digital grading techniques to create unique looks for all the different cinematic worlds visited. The film is a nostalgic love letter to the rich history and legacy of the Warner Bros. Studio. I couldn't be more proud of the Warner Color team, especially Leo Ferrini and Paul Lavoie. A big thanks to you guys! Putting this film together was a monumental task and I am ecstatic with end result. Check it out in theaters and on HBO Max today!

Best Practices: Restoring Classics

2020 - The year of Restorations

Now that we seem to be on the other end of the pandemic, I wanted to take a moment to look back on some of the projects that kept me busy. Restorations were the name of game during covid times. With productions shut down and uncertainty in the theatrical marketplace, I had time in my schedule to breathe new life into some of my favorite classics.

Over the last year, I have restored;

Let’s take a look at a couple of these titles and talk about what it means to remaster a film with our contemporary toolset.

The Process

The process for remastering classic titles is very similar to finishing new theatrical work with a couple of additional steps. The first step is to identify and evaluate the best elements to use. That decision is easy for digitally acquired shows from the early 2000’s. In those instances, the original camera files are all that exist and are obviously the best source. Film shows are where it gets particularly ambiguous. There is a debate whether starting from the IP or original negative yields better results. Do we use the original opticals or recreate them from the elements? Black and white seps vs faded camera neg? These questions all need to be answered before you begin the work. Usually I prefer to start with the OCN when available.

Director Scanner

Director Scanner

Arri Scan

Arri Scan

Scanning

Scanning is arguably the most critical part of the process. Quality and success will live or die by the execution of great scans. Image breathing, movement, and general sharpness are issues to look for when evaluating. Scans should not be pretty but rather represent a digital copy of the negative.  In a perfect closed-loop system, a scanned piece of film, once shot back out on a calibrated recorder needs to closely match the original negative.

Digital Restoration

The next step in making an old project shiny and new is to repair any damage to the film from aging or that was inherent in production. this includes painting out splice lines, gate hairs, dirt, and scratches. Film processing issues like breathing or turbulence can also be taken care of in this step. I prefer to postpone flicker removal until the grading step since the contrast will have an effect on the amount of flicker to remove. Some common tools used for restoration include MTI and PF Clean. This work is often outsourced because of the high number of man-hours and labor costs associated with cleaning every frame of film. Some companies that do exceptional restoration work are PrimeFocus and Prasad among others.

Grading

Grading restoration titles is a total sub-discipline from grading as a whole. New theatrical grading starts with references and look development to achieve a certain tone for the film. There is a ton of work that goes into this process. Restoration grading differs since the goal is staying true to that original intent. Not reimagining it. Much like new theatrical grading, a good reference will set you up for success. My preferred reference is a filmmaker-approved answer print.  These were the master prints that best represented the filmmakers’ creative intent.

kinoton-fp30d-696x1024.jpeg

A good practice is to screen the print and immediately set looks for the scans getting as close as possible at 14fl projected. An upgrade to this workflow is to use a projector in the grading suite like a Kinoton. These projectors have remote control and cooling. This allows you to rock and roll the film. You can even freeze-frame and thanks to the built in cooling your film doesn’t burn. Setting up a side-by-side with the film vs digital is the best way to ensure you have a match to the original intent. These corrections need to happen using a good color management system. Aces for example has ODTs for theatrical 48nits which is the equivalent of 14fl. Once you have a match to the original, the enhancement can start.

There would be no point in remastering if it was going to look exactly like the existing master. One great reason to remaster is to take advantage of new advancements in HDR and wide color gamut formats. Film was the original HDR format containing 12 stops of range. The print was the limiting factor, only being able to display 8 of those stops. By switching the ODT to PQ P3D65, we can take advantage of the larger container and let the film display all that it has to offer.

My approach is to let the film land where it was originally shot but tone-mapped for PQ display. This will give you a master that had the original intent of the print but in HDR. I often use an LMT that limits the gamut to that of the emulsion used for original photography. This also ensures that I’m staying true to the film's original pallet. Typically there is some highlight balancing to do since what was white and “clipped” is now visible. Next is to identify and correct any areas where the contrast ratios have been disrupted by the increased dynamic range. For example, if there was a strongly silhouetted shot, the value of the HDR highlight can cause your eye to iris down changing the perception of the deep shadows. In this case, I would roll off the highlights or lift the shadows so the ratio stays consistent with the original. The extra contrast HDR affords is often welcomed but it can cause some unwanted issues too. Grain appearance is another one of those examples.



Grain Management

Film grain is one of those magic ingredients. Just like salt, you miss it when it is not there and too much ruins the dish. Grain needs to be felt but never noticed. It is common for the noise floor to increase once you have stretched the film scan to HDR ranges. Also, the grain in the highlights not previously visible starts to be seen. To mitigate this, a grain management pass needs to be implemented. This can come before the grade, but I like to do this after since any contrast I add will have an effect on the perceived amount of noise. Grain can impart a color cast to your image, especially if there is a very noisy blue channel. Once removed this needs to be compensated for and is a downside of working post grade. It is during this pass that I will also take care of flicker and breathing which the grade also affects. My go-to tool for this is Neat Video. You would think that after a decade of dominance some software company would have knocked Neat off their throne as king of the denoise, but it hasn’t happened yet. I prebake the scans with a Neat pass (since Baselight X doesn’t play nicely with Neat yet.) Next, I stack the Neat’ed scan and the original as layers. This allows me to blend in the amount of grain to taste. The goal of this pass is to keep the grain consistent from shot to shot, regardless of the grade. The other, and most important goal is to make the grain look as it did on the print.

Dolby Trim

After the HDR10 grade is complete, it’s time for the Dolby trim. I use the original 14 FL print match version as a reference for where I want the Dolby trim to clip and crush. Once all the trims have been set, I export out a Dolby XML expecting rec2020 primaries as input. Yes, we graded in P3, but that gamut will be placed into a 2020 container once we export.

Mastering

Once all the work has been completed it’s time to master. Remasters receive the same treatment as new theatrical tiles when it comes to deliverables. The common ones are as follows:

  • Graded PQ P3D65 1000nit 16bit Tiff Files or ACES AP0 EXRs

  • Un-Graded PQ P3D65 16bit Tiff files or ACES AP0 EXRs

  • Graded 2.6 XYZ DCDM 14fl

  • Graded PQ XYZ 108nit 16bit Tiff Files or ACES AP0 EXRs for Dolby Vision Theatrical

  • Bt1886 QT or DPX files created from a Dolby XMLIMF PQ rec2020 limited to P3D65 1000nit

Case Studies

Perfect worlds do exist but we don’t live in one. Every job is a snowflake with its own unique hurdles. Remastering tests a colorists abilities across many disciplines of the job. Stong skills in composting, paint, film manipulation, and general grading is what is required to achieve and maintain the original artistic intent. Here are two films completed recently and a bit on the challenges faced in each.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

For those of you that don’t know the Ninja Turtles are near and dear to me. Not only was I a child of the 80s, but my Father was in charge of the postproduction on the original cartoons. He also wrote and directed many of them. When this came up for a remaster, I jumped at the chance to get back to my roots.

This film only required an SDR remaster. The output delivery was to be P3 D65 2.6 gamma. I set up the job using Baselight’s color management and worked in T-Log E_Gamut. The DRS was performed by Prasad with additional work by yours truly BECAUSE IT HAD TO BE PERFECT!

dark_1.13.1.jpg

There were two main color hurdles to jump through. First, some scenes were very dark. I used Baseligt’s boost shadow tool to “dig” out detail from the toe of the curve. This was very successful in many of the night scenes that the film takes place in.

Another trick I used was on the Turtle’s skin. You may or may not know, but all the turtles have different skin colors. Also, most folks think they are green, when in fact there is very little green in their skin. They are more of an olive. To make sure the ratio of green to yellow was correct I converted to LAB and graded their skin in that color space. Once happy, I converted it back to T-Log E-Gamut. LAB is a very useful space for affecting yellow tones. In this space, I was able to tweak their skin and nothing else. Sort of like a key and a hue shift all in one.

tmnt_lab.gif

The SDR ended up looking so good that the HDR was finished too. The HDR was quick and painless because of Baselight’s built-in color management. Most of the heavy lifting was already done and only a few tweaks needed.




Space Jam

Space Jam was a formative film from my youth. Not only did I have Jordan’s at the time, but I was also becoming a fledgling animation nerd (thanks Dad) when this film was released.

I set up the project for ACES color management with a Kodak LMT that I had used for other films previously. This reigned in the extreme edge of gamut colors utilized in the animation.

The biggest challenge on this project was cleaning up some of the inherent artifacts from 1990’s film recording technology. Cinesite performed all of the original composites, but at the time they were limited to 1k film recording. To mitigate that in a 4k world, I used Baselight’s texture equalizer and convolutional sharpen to give a bit of snap back to the filmed out sections.

Vishal Chathle supervised the restoration for the studio. Vishal and I boosted the looney tunes to have more color and take advantage of the wider gamut. The standard film shots, of which there were few, were pretty straightforward. Corrected mostly with Baselight’s Basegrade. Basegrade is a fantastic tool where the corrections are performed in linear gamma. This yields a consistent result no matter what your working space is.

Joe Pytka came in to approve the grade. This was very cool for me since not only did I grow up watching this film of his, but also all those iconic Superbowl commercials from the 90’s that he did. A true master of camera. He approved the grade but wished there was something more we could do with the main title. The main title sequence was built using many video effects. To recreate it would have cost a fortune. We had the original film out of it, but it looked pretty low res. What I did to remedy this was to run it through an AI up-rezer that I coded a while ago for large format shows.

The results were astounding. The titles regained some of their crisp edges that I can only presume were lost from the multiple generations of opticals that the sequence went through. The AI was also able to fix the aliasing inherent in the low res original. In the end, I was very proud of the result.

The last step was grain management. This show needed special attention because the grain from the Jordan plate was often different from the grain embedded in the animation plate that he was comped into. In order to make it consistent. I ran two de-grain passes on the scan. The first took care of the general grain from the original neg. The second pass was tuned to clean up Jordan’s grain that had the extra layer of optical grain over the top. It was a complicated noise pattern to take care of. Next, I took the two de-grained plates, roto’ed out Jordan, and re-comp-ed him over the cleaned-up plate. This gave consistency to the comps that were not there in the original.

Another area where we helped the comps were in animation error fixing. Some shots had layers that would disappear for a couple of frames, or because it was hand-drawn, a highlight that would disappear and then reappear. I used Baselight’s built-in paint tool to repair the original animation. One great feature of the paint tool is its ability to paint on two’s. An old animation trick is to only animate at 12fps if there isn’t a lot of motion. Then you shoot each frame twice. This halves the number of frames that need to be drawn. When I was fixing animation issues I would make a paint stroke on the frame and Baselight would automatically hold it for the next one. This cut down my work by half just like the original animators!

I was honored to help restore this piece of animation history. A big thanks to Michael Borquez and Chris Gillaspie for the flawless scanning and deep investigation of the best elements to use. Also a tip of the cap to Vishal Chathle for all the hard work and lending me his eagle eye!

Final Thoughts

Restoration Colorist should be a credit on its own. It’s unfortunate that this work rarely gets recognized and even less frequently gets credit. It is hard enough to deliver a director’s artistic vision from scratch. It’s arguably even harder to stay true to it 30 years later. Thanks for reading and check out these projects on HBO Max soon!

Recommendations for Home Color System

I have recently had a lot of inquiries about setting up a home color system. Even with the vaccines rolling out, I think coloring at home will stick around. There is no substitute for a full DI bay with best-in-class equipment, but this is some of the gear that I use when at home.

Color Correction Panels

These will vary based on the software used but here are the ones that I think give you the most bang for your buck when using Baselight, Resolve and others.

Filmlight Slate Panel for Baselight

Filmlight Slate Panel for Baselight

Filmlight Slate

Now I love my BlackBoard 2, but if desk real estate is at a premium the Slate is the next best thing. The great thing about this panel is it can double as a remote option for daylight when on set. The downside is this panel only works with Filmlight software.

BMD Micro Panel for Resolve

BMD Micro Panel for Resolve

Blackmagic Micro

I find that I use the mouse a lot more when working in Resolve. For that reason, I like the Micro panel more than the Mini. The Micro gives you just the basics, but the additional features the Mini has do not justify the premium paid. I think you are better off getting a Stream Deck and mapping the missing buttons to that. Controlling curves in Resolve is still best done with the mouse in my opinion. Just like the Filmlight offering, these panels only work with Resolve.

Tangent Elements Panel. Works with Mistika, Resolve, Flame, Lustre, Premiere, Scratch, Red Cine, Nucoda, Quantel

Tangent Elements Panel. Works with Mistika, Resolve, Flame, Lustre, Premiere, Scratch, Red Cine, Nucoda, Quantel

Tangent Elements

If you are like me then you probably use multiple software packages to complete your work. One great aspect of the Tangent Panels is that they work with many different types of software. An honorable mention goes out to the Ripple, especially if you are looking for a small footprint at an entry-level price.

Tangent Ripple Panel. Works with Mistika, Resolve, Flame, Lustre, Premiere, Scratch, Red Cine, Nucoda, Quantel

Tangent Ripple Panel. Works with Mistika, Resolve, Flame, Lustre, Premiere, Scratch, Red Cine, Nucoda, Quantel

Monitoring

Get a Sony X300 if you can find one and afford it. That said not everyone has 30k to invest in their home setup. The LG CX has one of the best price-to-performance ratios out there. You won’t be hitting 1000nits but the color can be calibrated to be extremely close to the x300. Thanks to Dado for making this video that has all manufacture codes to unlock this display’s true potential and a walkthrough on Calman calibration.

LG CX

LG CX

Sony X300

Sony X300

I’m also excited to test the new displays from LG display. The next-gen LG panels found in the Sony A90j and LG G1 can achieve over 1000 nits. I’m expecting the same colorimetry performance with increased brightness. I will let you know what my real-world measurements are once I get my hands on these.

I don’t do affiliate links and am not paid by any of the manufacturers listed here. I just wanted to let everyone know what I’m using these days in the home office. Let me know what you all are using and if you have any hacks that you find helpful. Thanks for reading!






Baselight Tips and Tricks

Hey everybody! Here is a video that Filmlight just released on their website. It’s a great series and I’m happy to have contributed my little bit. Let me know what you think.