Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/559853
www.postmagazine.com 38 POST AUGUST 2015 4K HDR AND arvel's DareDevil is the latest hit from Netflix and, just like the pro- vider's other shows, is being streamed online in 4K. The series stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer who, with his enhanced senses, fights crime as the costumed superhero. To maintain the show's moody and stylized look — shot dark on Red Dragon cameras by DP Matthew J. Lloyd — the DPX files are handed over to Encore's Tony D'Amore for the grading and mastering. Here, D'Amore discusses how he gets just the right look for the series, and how DaVinci Resolve fits into the 4K workflow. What was your understanding of how the show should look? "It started with DP Matt Lloyd and I just talking about the show, what the intentions were, what Marvel wanted, what the show was supposed to look like. Steven DeKnight [the showrunner for Season 1] had a vision of what he wanted and he discussed with Matt and then Matt involved me, saying 'This is how I'm going to shoot this and I'm going to give you a little more negative, so make sure it looks dark.' He was basically trying to leave a little more latitude for me so we could go dark, but not get screwed and not be able to dig anything out. That was kind of a challenge, to make sure the show stayed consistently moody. "The bottom line is, for my job, was to talk to Matt and get the vision. He came up with this heavy, stylized look and then he sent me the dailies to copy the look. It's still kind of pretty sloppy at that stage — it's kind of an overall broad stroke. That's when I went in with shapes, which I use the DaVinci Resolve for, and with the Resolve I have an unlimited amount of layers. With every layer that I had, I was able to do a different thing. Like key dial in the highlights to bring back detail when detail may have been lost out a window or something, because they wanted this really high-contrast look, but still subtle. They didn't want it blasted looking but more like a comic book, where you can see detail on every page sort of thing. And so in doing that I used a layer or two to isolate just the highlights in the background; just to bring those back down to normal, but still have the faces and everything in the room pop — like high contrast. "And then additional layers, making all the backgrounds, like the walls, a deep green color. So every one of those layers I'm doing is opening up faces, opening up eyeballs, because it was so dark, [I] wanted to make sure they can see the expression and reaction of the actors. We wanted to be sure to get those little subtle nuances." How much of that look was due to how it was shot compared to what you're doing in post? "We needed to make sure the scenes stayed consistent. Some scenes Matt just nailed and other ones he needed some help. Then I'll look at what we've done previously and usually then I'll do some shapes, take ceilings down a little, walls down, stuff like that to get it moodier. Sometimes [the production team] will get stuck if they're on location — they might be limited because the lights were on that day and they couldn't switch something out they wanted to switch GRADING AND MASTERING THE NETFLIX/ MARVEL HIT DAREDEVIL IN 4K ENCORE'S TONY D'AMORE DISCUSSES HOW DAVINCI RESOLVE FITS INTO THE WORKFLOW BY LINDA ROMANELLO M Encore's Tony D'Amore handles Daredevil's grading.