Le Bureau des Légendes Delivered in Ultra HD 4K with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Fremont, CA – Blackmagic Design has today announced its DaVinci Resolve Studio and DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel were used to
complete picture post in Ultra HD 4K on the third season of award winning Canal+ French drama series, “Le Bureau des Légendes.”
Post production for the ten part series now available on Amazon Prime was completed at Paris based Digital Factory by freelance colorist Guillaume Lips. “Not only did we grade the entire series from beginning to end in Resolve, but we also delivered in Ultra HD 4K for the first time,” he begins.
The turnaround for completing the DI on each episode was incredibly tight according to Lips. “With only two days to complete an episode our workflow needed to be both fast and efficient. Not only did Resolve’s realtime performance provide first-class shot tracking but it also meant that we could work with the project native materials in 4K.”
While the main unit captured to ProRes 4444, there was a whole raft of smaller cameras used by the production’s second unit to shoot the action scenes. “Resolve’s extensive format and multi-codec support proved invaluable,” explains Lips. “We carried out a basic technical grade to adjust contrast levels and correct for the differences in color space and that gave us our starting point for the final DI.”
When grading scenes from Syria, Lips drew on DaVinci Resolve’s extensive toolset and a series of power windows to unlock the rich deep tones and add a large amount of contrast while still retaining enough detail in the highlights and shadows.
“In order to achieve that, I used the HDR capabilities in Resolve to finesse the midtones,” he reveals. “And when it came to skin tones I wanted to bring back as much softness as possible to mitigate any over-definition resulting from the 4K delivery which Resolve proved highly adept at handling.”
“As an experienced colorist I have worked with a lot of different grading systems in my career and I firmly believe that DaVinci Resolve remains one of the very best in the market today,” concludes Lips. “Used alongside the DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel you have a very efficient way of working, which allowed me to complete the grade on this particular project in record time.”