Davinci Resolve Color Training in Los Angeles

[Jesse Rambis]

Hey Everyone, I was looking to see if anyone had recommendations for advanced color training in Los Angeles for Davinci Resolve. I have seen two day courses, but most of them are the basics of Resolve and Color Theory type of thing. I have also seen this site: http://icolorist.com/ that seems to offer color training more in the direction I would like to go (unique and cinematic looks and more advanced grading). So here are my questions...

1 - Has anyone taken any courses through icolorist? If so, how did you like the course. Also, do you think courses like their "Popular Looks" Would be a good fit for learning more advanced grading and unique looks?

2 - Does anyone have recommendations for training in Davinci Resolve at a more advanced level?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I know that the ICA holds classes at Roush Media in Burbank every so often. I'm not sure if they do the "colorist strategy" course, but that would be the kind of thing I'd recommend.

Alexis Van Herkman's Look Book Technique has some pretty good ideas in it that you can build on and develop new looks with. I'm not a fan of the so-called "Look LUTs" that some people sell out there, because I'm of the opinion that you're better off understanding how the color-correction system works and do it all yourself with nodes, curves, and keys. The exception would be a fast-paced situation where you needed a LUT to get you in a better starting place, or a situation (as with Red) where you had proprietary color science and needed to push the signal into a practical direction, like RedLogFilm or moving from Rec709 to P3 color space.

There's lots and lots of discussion about this kind of thing on the LiftGammaGain colorist discussion group. To me, 90% of it just involves getting about 10,000 hours' worth of experience to the point where you're very fast and comfortable with the system and can deal with almost any client-supervised situation. Another good chunk of it would involve coming up with (say) a couple dozen prefab PowerGrades of your own that you could pop in if the client asked for "desat blue" or "stylized high contrast" or "bleach bypass," stuff like that. I also have several power window presets so that I can immediately have a face-shaped oval, which I use a lot, or a corner vignette (very popular on TV series).

Spending a few weeks just sitting down and going through all of the 750-page Resolve manual (which is very good) is highly recommended. Van Hurkman's Ripple Training tutorials and Warren Eagles' FXPHD tutorials are also very good; each has a very different approach, but both are very useful. I'm iffy on the subject of online training, but you can try Patrick Inhofer's Tao of Color website. His newsletters are very informative.

 

[Jesse Rambis]

Great, thank you very much Marc! I will look into the book and links you provided.

 

[Paul Provost]

Second on reading the books and manual. And then read the manual. Twice more because you already forgot most of it.

 

[Paul J Steinberg]

I took the 201 class in NYC last month and found it well worth it. It definitely wasn't an introductory class. Warren is an excellent instructor and paces the lessons well. I went down with lots of questions about things I was struggling with, they were all answered and I came home with pages of notes on techniques I could apply right away.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I took the 201 class in NYC last month and found it well worth it. It definitely wasn't an introductory class. Warren is an excellent instructor and paces the lessons well. I went down with lots of questions about things I was struggling with, they were all answered and I came home with pages of notes on techniques I could apply right away.

Warren Eagles is a first-class guy with a good sense of humor, and he grasps the realities of color correction and post very well. When I first made the switch to Resolve from Baselight several years ago, I got more out of Warren's training than anything else -- though Alexis' books and manual are extremely useful as well.