As for the experience of grading - well most corporate video looks horrid, most hollywood is graded by professional specialists, .......snip......I make a more towards doing the first end of the scale on time and on budget.
Fundamentally I think we all need/want to become faster/more flexible better or cheaper.. to get more from our budget and I think adding those tools to Resolve would aid that, is the right thing, is the 'normal' thing in raw grading, and of course any user can choose to leave them untouched.
Morgan on some of this I agree, but I think where some of this falls down is there is a constant comparison of "Hollywoood" production, vs what most of us do.
If Hollywood wants an effected, blue tone look, with great deep skintones, they build a set or change a practical location to match, wardrobe for the look and color, test various stocks of digital settings, test through the colorists and then go forward.
I see it all the time in our work. A client wants a cool desaturated look, though the location has brown walls and yellow trim, the wardrobe is bright primary and that will never color as they anticipate.
On a scene like that you can color, mask, matte, select and effect all you want but a brown scene becomes very global when brought down to deep un saturated blue. You can get close to the look, but it's never going to have the exact refinement or look of a "hollywood" project that is planned for the look way before the cameras start rolling.
If you've seen the movie "Rush" which is shot by a very good dp Don Mandel and in Hollywood terms, shot on a "low budget", $38 million (which didn't allow for any over the line expenses), to achieve the look the DP wanted he had teams of colorists working on site and didn't move off a shot until he was sure he got the look he wanted.
The Movie Gravity took 4 let me repeat this Four years to complete, so in my view any of us comparing our work to budgets that range in the 100's of millions is not an apples to apples comparison.
Few of us have that luxury and the common thought is shoot what you got, then we'll try to fix it later, which means post work is double the time of the actual pre production and on set time.
I do agree that Di Vinci is good, (though I don't think it's that great) maybe 10 will be more intuitive, though if we had a lightroom interface that worked with layers, had some tracking and keying and used sliders instead of those silly wheels, our (and even professional colorists) would find it a godsend.
I personally like coloring on the timeline, because I can play and replay and see that my continuous look is true to the story and though suites like Colorista II are not exactly an easy slam dunk, I find once we have a locked edit and are ready for finish, staying on the time line gives me a more cohesive look, even if round tripping is linear, because round tripping rarely gives you the sound, the soundtrack, the effects and the titles that rest on the timeline.
In video, or motion, or digital cinema (take your pick of the terms) we still have one foot in the new world and one foot in the past and it's time to step up and find a way to go forward faster and easier.
It's funny, I have a friend and supplier that's a top drawer effects artist. At his fingertip he has used Flint, Fire, Flame, Smoke, every expensive effects suite ever made and when we talk about his projects and what he shows on his reel, I ask what was that done in and he routinely says uh . . . photoshop . . . uh After Effects . . . uh photoshop again . . .
But watching recent films and expensive television production, I see budget and time (same thing) effecting the look more and more. I just saw a Hollywood movie last night and the reverse shots of the actors had such a different coloration and look, it seemed like they were shot on different sets with different crews and I assume the dp and director wanted a better match, but I bet budget stepped in and said ok, that's good enough, lock it.
IMO
BC
