Foreword & Introduction
Foreword: As early as I remember - I always wondered why films from the west always look "better". From my early assessment as a 13-year-old there seemed to be a vast difference with the way color in films evolved/was evolving in the west as compared to where I was born - South Asia. Much later in life social media lent me a term, and I say this quite cautiously - "Color Grading". As someone on the outside - about 10 years back if you googled "Color in films", the results were a bunch of tricks sold by folks pretending to understand color. I imbibed it and for a very brief period told myself that I know a thing or two about digital color. It was easy to be a one-eyed king among the blind. My newly honed understanding of color earned me the privilege of time, but delusions can only get you so far.
It didn't feel right - my traditional approach to color began to break - obviously. Fortunately, at this point enough "right" resources were already pollinated by someone somewhere for me to evolve. And from there I took about two years to grasp and gain a remote understanding of where the debate on digital color is headed. Currently I am at a position where I have some objective sense of what colorists and the creative communities value (and I am grateful to be here!), and I have chosen the philosophy I want to explore for now. Colorist Foundry and Filmverse Project are my attempts to engage-in and give back to this community from which I am yet to learn a lot more. Here I aim at providing a good number of real resources for free. But some resources must be created with the aim of sustaining the channel, community and me. And while it comes as a standard piece of software - attached is my word that it'll keep evolving as my understanding of digital color expands
....
Introduction: Currently, Filmverse project aims to be a robust scene-referred film-emulation cum look development plugin designed to achieve a good match to popular film stocks, for both creative and technical purposes and hence providing serious utility to both Colorists and Creatives. It’s available as a DCTL plugin for use within DaVinci Resolve Studio. The plugin is written by Jaideep Panjwani (aka Jai), a color, film, and code nerd based out of Bombay, India. It should be noted when I say a "Good" match I mean to indicate an earnest attempt to cut through a lot of non-accurate film profiling practices and having a precise understanding of where the scratch line begins. How that data is treated - averaged - fitted - rendered onto different images is a whole another debate. Nonetheless, I am excited to share more about my profiling and rendering methods in my upcoming blog series.
Unless one has a very specific storytelling need and a high budget to go down the film emulation rabbit hole, there are two things I find personally hard to believe at a wider scale - 1) Most people are matching digital footage with film in the same timeline using film emulation - and hence film emulations are useful, and 2) Most people want to trick folks into thinking that their “digital” film was shot on film - hence film emulations are useful. I think we can somewhat agree that at a much bigger scale (number of use cases) most people are aware of the fact that, for now - Digital cannot look like film.
So far, the best use case scenario for film emulations (in my view) has been building an organic non-linear look for digital cinema. When I say that, I don’t mean your usual Netflix sci-fi with over the top blue and orange color palette. Rather, what I mean is how film plays a role in handling extreme highlights, how a film maps an edge case scenario, how color is compressed and shaped near skin, how foliage is rendered in darker vs brighter areas, how reflectance is factored in, how shadows appear to have a certain tint to them yet they end in a neutral black/dark-gray when picked with a color picker, how grain is rendered per channel, and I can go on and on with the perspective film lends with that immensely help us shape our digital image in a better way. Studying film, the way it renders colors, its split tone, its contrast curve lends us a far greater insight to where digital stands right now and also give us some perspective on what factors will shape the tools of the future.
Filmverse is aimed at serious colorists and filmmaker creatives. What sets it apart right now? In my stress test Filmverse comes in the ballpark range of the few good emulations I know to be out there. While most folks might be happy with a well-accepted approach in the market, I feel like there’s always a way to simplify and maintain elegance underneath. For example, I can see that in the future versions of film verse the ideal way would be to move away from Davinci’s Color Space and create a custom (but solid) color space (or a color model!) for treating the Image underneath. Obviously, the option to select input and output as DWG will still be there, just more accurate in its function.
This is what personally intrigues me about this project. Ideally a really good product serves creatives who are new to color and is used reliably by color folks who are at the top game. Hence my current approach to this project is building it in a way that it's a direct product of user feedback and the best approaches out there. And this also loops to my promise - Filmverse will keep on evolving as my understanding of color evolves.
Filmverse KD500T: Kodak’s Vision3 series is an excellent starting point for my film emulation journey. I say this with no official association with Kodak, I picked the 500T. Scans were prepared for Davinci Wide Gamut & Davinci Intermediate. Currently the emulation mimics Input vs Output RGB densities in the form of RGB curves. Achieving non-linearity across other dimensions such as sat, and hue maps is rather* simple. The only remotely clever part is choosing the right curve math (linear, poly or spline) and shape to make sure colors maintain a smooth transition. Additionally, I wrote a modified spherical-cum-circular model that is careful near the achromatic axis in regard to chroma noise (more about it in my blogs). The result is process that mimics the non-linearity of 500T film across Saturation, Hue and Tone Curves. Filmverse KD500T emulation that expects Davinci Wide Gamut as input and outputs a cineon log-like output in a Davinci Wide Gamut space.
* I say simple assuming we have prepped the negatives factoring in how slight changes by means of light, lens and lab scanning processes can lead to wider changes later on in the emulation process.
Filmverse KD2383D65 & Filmverse FF3513D65- There are two Print film stocks I have targeted to begin with, one Inspired by Kodak Vision Color 2383 Print Film, and another one inspired by Fujifilm 3513 LUT. Again, I say this without any official association with neither Kodak, nor Fujifilm. I have approached Print film emulations with a broader stroke approach as compared to Negative Emulations. The motivation behind doing so was to be able to layer Negative and Print Film together mathematically as separate functions that come together and create the final look - all of this in a scene referred color space. Both Filmverse KD2383D65 & Filmverse FF3513D65 successfully capture the tone curve trend with high accuracy. However, when it comes to modeling saturation & hue - in both print film emulations I tried capturing an average trend rather than going for a 1:1 match. This keeps things simpler while layering it with negative emulation. Despite this, the overall emulation looks pretty comparable to most print film LUTs that I have used - this includes the ones that are available online & the one included within Davinci Resolve itself. This makes for a solid use case if you want to emulate Print Film within a wider color space itself. In future version of Filmverse, I am planning a method to toggle between rendering overall emulation, negative emulation only, or print film emulation only. Film Stocks I plan on adding in near future include Vision 250D, Vision50D, Vision Premier 2393. Vision 2983.
Here are the films that were shot on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219/7219 Negative film - for a sense of general aesthetics. Here are the films that were printed on Kodak Vision Color 2383 Print Film - for a sense of general aesthetics. Here are the films that were printed on Fujifilm 3513 D.I - for a sense of general aesthetic.
I wanted the control set of Filmverse to feel intuitive. But intuition can mean different things to different groups of people, its especially contrasting when you consider people who are at the beginning vs who are much ahead in their journey as colorists/DPs and creatives. The ideal way would be to define controls that most people (including me) would reach out for as soon as applying a grade on a timeline level. Second step would be writing these controls into the plugin - directly allowing people to stretch, pull and push an analog profile in digital context. This thought process has led to me drafting 3 control groups - skin, tonal adjustments, & saturation. Here's an overview of how each control works:
Skin: Historically, in film productions, certain skin tones have always required more light than other. While film setup had to be shifted to compensate for various skin-types digital allows us the flexibility to bridge the gap between different skin types. Currently Filmverse can isolate and manipulate skin-zone based on the skin vector without introducing significant chroma noise in darker reds. Users can manipulate signals on skin vector across - Hue, Lightness & Chroma. For future versions of Filmverse, there's a skin compressor that I am working on. It compresses all skin types to a better suited saturation and luminance average for better digital treatment.
Tonal Response: This group focuses on manipulating the overall tonal response of the film emulation. It includes S-curve intensity adjustments, highlights, shadows, split tone mixing and custom split-styles. These tools are essential for replicating the dynamic range and tonal characteristics that are unique to the specifically chosen film stocks. The s-curve is a fundamental part of film emulation, defining how contrast is applied across the tonal range. The highlight control enables fine-tuning of extreme whites, while the highlight threshold determines the starting point for these adjustments. Similarly, the shadow and shadow threshold controls let users define the black point and shadow regions, offering control over how deep or lifted the black point appears. Split-tone feature is crucial for adjusting the split-tone response, blending color-only emulation with traditional filmic tone responses. It gives users the flexibility to control the degree of film-like character in their image. Retro/Modern controls provide an intuitive way to create different stylistic looks by adjusting the overall tonal palette, in both highlights and midtones of the image.
Saturation & Density: Saturation and density adjustments are key to emulating the color richness and depth characteristic of film. The saturation slider in Filmverse 2.1 increases color saturation in a way that aligns with the film's original saturation curve. Film sat uses proprietary techniques to emulate the nuanced saturation behaviors seen in film. Filmverse 2.1 has separate density sliders for each color channel (red, green, and blue), as opposed to the single density slider in earlier versions. Density controls have been worked rigorously over the past year, making sure that adding density doesn’t break the image.
Davinci Resolve Studio is an excellent editing and color host software. Compared to most platforms, Davinci has a wider appeal when it comes to color. Naturally it makes sense to target Resolve for the initial phases of this project. This is where Davinci Wide Gamut comes in. Currently, I have designed everything to work withing DWG. This allows for the flexibility of accepting footage from any source and exporting for various output options. The only current limitation with film verse being designed for DWG is that it is reliant on Davinci's Tone mapping functions. In the next version I aim to solve this by writing my own DRT and going a step ahead with the picture formation options within Resolve. Currently Filmverse also works well with other DRTs out there.
Considering how the landscape might look a year from now, two sides become apparent - external changes in Filmverse & internal changes in Filmverse.
Externally the plugin will take shape on the basis of end user’s feedback and demand. This could mean expansion of user controls, adding internal color space transforms, adding internal tone (& gamut) mapping algorithms for a much pleasing picture formation - rather than depending on Davinci Resolve's systems, conversion from DCTL to an OFX, and much more practical aspects of Filmverse in terms of its day-to-day utility. I am particularly keen on fine tuning each control to a point where it exceeds a general utility threshold of the existing toolkit within Resolve. This happens when controls are designed to fill in the blanks between how controls should act in context of film and how each control contributes to look development process. - which has already begun with a couple of controls (RGB Density). At the end of the day, controls are designed to lend the end user enough utility to go a mile ahead, again - blending film profiles in a digital context to create practical hybrid film looks for modern cinema.
Internally, I see a major diversion ahead in the film emulation debate. Approach one - focuses on aligning “appearance” of digital with film in terms of patch data, curve analysis, etc., this in my view in theory is expanding in both community discussions and in terms of functions within Filmverse. Approach two is a deeper study of the relationship between how film models light in terms of energy and how we can model our modern pipelines to align with it. I feel that the latter is a higher potential candidate for building future image manipulation pipelines. I am yet to take a deeper dive into this approach and would be glad to provide both under the umbrella of project Filmverse - of course without any upgrade costs.
Here are commonly asked Questions about the Filmverse project. If you have any more queries, feel free to reach out to me at - jai@filmblade.com
Yes. It's important to note that when you pay for the Filmverse Plugin, you're becoming a part of the Filmverse project. All the upgrades (not only Updates) will be delivered to you. You don't owe anything extra for any major upgrades or milestones we achieve with this project. This involves everything from addition of new stocks, adding our own DRTs, adding a new version for a better emulation render and much more. All with no additional cost.
The updates are currently delivered via email - I am working on a system where the updates can be accessed via user's dashboard. System should be up and running before 2024 ends.
Currently Filmverse works in Davinci Resolve Studio Version. Important - Studio version.
Installation is straightforward:
1. In DaVinci Resolve, go to the Color page and open settings.
2. Navigate to "Color Management" and click "Open LUT Folder".
3. Place the Filmverse DCTLE files in this folder.
4. Restart Resolve.
5. In the Color page, search for DCTL in the Effects library and drag the Filmverse plugin onto your node.
Scene-referred color in Filmverse means that the plugin processes color data relative to the original scene, before any display-specific transforms. This approach allows for more flexible and accurate color manipulation, preserving the full range of color information captured by the camera. It's particularly useful when working with high dynamic range content or when you need to make significant adjustments to your footage.
Filmverse operates in DaVinci Wide Gamut space because it offers a larger color volume than traditional color spaces like Rec.709. This allows for more accurate representation of film colors and behaviors, especially in highly saturated areas or extreme highlights. Working in this wide gamut space gives colorists more flexibility and precision in their grading, particularly when emulating film stocks known for their wide color gamut.
The film stocks in Filmverse, such as Filmverse KD500T (inspired by Kodak's Vision3 500T), are created through a meticulous process of analyzing and replicating film characteristics. Here's a brief overview:
- Scans are prepared for DaVinci Wide Gamut & DaVinci Intermediate.
- The emulation mimics Input vs Output RGB densities using RGB curves.
- Non-linearity across saturation and hue maps is achieved using carefully chosen curve math (linear, poly or spline) and shapes to ensure smooth color transitions.
- A modified spherical-cum-circular model is used to handle chroma noise near the achromatic axis.
- The result is a process that mimics the non-linearity of film across Saturation, Hue, and Tone Curves. Print film stocks like Filmverse KD2383D65 and FF3513D65 are approached with a broader stroke, capturing overall trends rather than exact 1:1 matches. This allows for easier layering with negative emulations while still providing comparable results to traditional print film LUTs.
Filmverse is written by Jaideep Panjwani. For any questions or support, you can reach out to jai@filmblade.com.
Currently, Filmverse includes emulations inspired by:
- Kodak Vision3 500T (Filmverse KD500T)
- Kodak Vision Color 2383 Print Film (Filmverse KD2383D65)
- Fujifilm 3513 LUT (Filmverse FF3513D65) Future versions plan to add emulations inspired by Vision 250D, Vision 50D, Vision Premier 2393, and Vision 2983
Filmverse approaches negative and print film emulations as separate mathematical functions that can be combined to create the final look, all within a scene-referred color space.
This layered approach allows for more flexibility and control over the final image. Future versions of Filmverse plan to include options to toggle between rendering overall emulation, negative emulation only, or print film emulation only.
You can read the licensing terms here.
While we do offer refunds, they are considered on a case-by-case basis and are typically limited to about 50% of the purchase price. We encourage users to thoroughly review the product information and documentation before making a purchase.