DigitalFilm Tree Uses DaVinci Resolve to Remotely Grade 'Mistresses'
July 16, 2015

DigitalFilm Tree Uses DaVinci Resolve to Remotely Grade 'Mistresses'

FREMONT –DigitalFilm Tree used Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve for color correction for ABC’s hit show “Mistresses.”

As part of the postproduction workflow, DigitalFilm Tree grades all of the show’s dailies remotely from their LA office, doing in eight hours what used to be a two-day project. 

“Mistresses” is an ABC drama looking at the lives of a group of four girlfriends – each on her own path to self-discovery. The show is now in its third season, and Los Angeles-based DigitalFilm Tree has provided all post services, including remote final color correction, since the show’s start. 

As part of the production for the new season, which began airing this June, “Mistresses” uses new software that DigitalFilm Tree developed called Critique and ProStack, which uses DaVinci Resolve as a core component of the service. Remote dailies grading and transcoding are done with DaVinci Resolve. All RAW camera files, viewing, and editorial files are kept on ProStack cloud server at DigitalFilm Tree’s facility Los Angeles. 

“Doing remote color correction for dailies with DaVinci Resolve, which we also use all across the post process, makes our entire workflow super efficient and cost effective,” said Ramy Katrib, CEO of DigitalFilm Tree. 

In addition to color correction, DigitalFilm Tree uses DaVinci Resolve for online editing last-minute changes and VFX drop-ins. 

“With Resolve, the entire post workflow is simple and works seamlessly with any of the other post software we use,” continued Ramy. “We go from using Resolve on the dailies, straight into editing to conform and then over to Resolve for final grading and any final online editing and tweaks that we need.”

“Remote dailies, using DaVinci Resolve, has reduced a two-day turn-around for remote productions to less than six hours, allowing post to reclaim over half of its precious time. It has proved to be the salvation of efficiency in the dailies process,” said Guillaume Aubuchon, CTO, DigitalFilm Tree. 

Using DaVinci Resolve for color correction, online editing and transcoding for the services, Critique, a cloud-based review and approval software, allows the entire postproduction team to collaborate via the cloud without needing to be in the same location, while ProStack is a software as a service product built on the Openstack platform that provides a seamless hybrid cloud solution to unify every aspect of the postproduction pipeline. 

Ramy continues: “It is just a tremendously effective way to create traditional dailies and remote cloud-based dailies for our productions around the world. We orchestrate all this from our facility in LA, while we set up our systems where the production is. With “Mistresses” being in Vancouver, we use DaVinci Resolve every day to transcode dailies, apply LUTS and/or real-time dailies color, no matter where our dailies colorist is located in the world. No more dealing with shippers, overnight delivery or dealing with customs or waiting for driver to navigate traffic to get to us. Using our ProStack, we are able to easily transport, store, and make all the show’s RAW files accessible to our clients. This is the future of dailies, and Resolve makes that possible.”

“Mistresses” airs on ABC on Thursday nights.