FILMIC POWERGRADE
Elevate your color grading game, with a modular power grade that will add character, and nostalgia to your footage.
Easiest process to get a distinctive film look
If you ended up on this page, it’s most likely because you haven’t found the secret to creating a film look. And I totally understand the feeling. If you’re like me, you probably spent way too much money on LUTs, but never really got the look you were going for.
After spending the last 3 year analysing films, and recreating the looks in Davinci Resolve, I am finally ready to release my brand new Filmic Powergrade, emulating the look of 16mm film.
Please not that the price is in USD.
Powergrades vs LUTs
What sets this Powergrade apart from traditional LUTs is its unprecedented level of control. Instead of having all the effects baked into your footage, the Powergrade allows you to manipulate each element individually, ensuring you attain the precise look you envision while avoiding artifacts in your image.
Now let’s dive into the powergrade, and I’ll go through each node, and show you how to use it, step by step.
1. Setting your camera profile
As you probably know, many movies were shot on the Arri Alexa camera due to its exceptional dynamic range and color science. What if I told you that we can transform your footage into this color space to achieve outstanding skin tones and dynamic range?
To properly prepare your footage for grading and mimic the ARRI look, you need to inform DaVinci Resolve about the camera you shot with. Navigate to the 8th node, where you'll find the Color Space Transform OFX (CST). Here, adjust your input color space and input gamma settings to match your camera's specifications. Please note that NODES 06 and 07 should remain untouched.
3. Protecting the highlights
One characteristic of film is its ability to preserve details in the highlights. If you love the overall exposure of your image but are losing highlight details, you can select the sky in NODE 02 and recover those highlights.
Be sure to apply some denoising to your selection to minimize artifacts.
2. Balancing your image
Once you've applied your camera settings, your image may appear too warm or cool. Don't worry; this can be corrected with just a few clicks. Head to NODE 03, and use the offset wheel to balance the image.
It's advisable to ensure that your skin tones are correct. If your skin doesn't align with the skin tone line, use the hue vs. hue curve to adjust it until it falls in line with the desired skin tones on your vectorscope.
4. Introducing bloom
Film often features a soft rolloff and a bloom effect, which results from the film stock and vintage lenses. In NODE 08, you can control the level of glow by adjusting the Shine threshold slider and spread to achieve the desired effect. If you find the glow too intense, you can tone it down using the global blend slider. Additionally, you can customize the color of the glow for a warmer or cooler look.
N0DE 09 introduces halation, which adds a unique character to your image. Please note that this effect is only available in the Studio version of DaVinci Resolve. If you're using the free version, consider purchasing the halation plugin by Film Convert for more control.
5. Adding texture
Grain is a must when it comes to emulating film.
Resolve offers grain as an OFX, which is also only available in the Studio version, so if you don’t have access to the full version, you can easily find some hi-res film grains to overlay over your footage, or get a licence of Film Convert Nitrate, which will allow you to have access to a variety of grains (Super 8, Super 16, Super 35mm, etc.)
6. Emphasizing the subject
If order to direct the attention in the middle of the frame, I love to add a soft vignette, by dropping a point in the mids, using my curves.
In NODE 12, you can either leave it as is, of play with the curves to make your edges darker.
In NODE 13, you can bring up the center of the frames using the top point in the curves.
7. Noise reduction
Cameras that shoot RAW, like Blackmagic, don’t have noise reduction built in. I love to use this node to clean up the image, but only use it if your image is noisy, as it’s very taxing on your GPU
