Ridley Scott and Company 3 Reveal the Real Robin Hood with DaVinci Resolve
For a proper retelling of the legend of Robin Hood, it was never going to be merry! A lifetime of hardship, war in the Crusades and oppression certainly doesn't equal that type of story. Legend tells that Robin Hood was a hardened archer and brutal soldier. He and his handpicked band of mercenaries were part of a tough, cruel and lethal time in British history.
Director Ridley Scott couldn't change Hollywood's previous takes on the band of "merry men," but he would cast his new movie in the proper sense…creating a tough and brutal world that was the 13th century. That's just what he did in Universal Pictures' epic action-adventure "Robin Hood," starring Oscar® winners Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, directed by Ridley Scott and produced by Oscar® winner Brian Grazer.
Scott had a very specific vision in mind for the look of "Robin Hood." He needed a classic grim, English look and feel and he wanted the battle scenes to have a powerful intensity. Scott took the film to Santa Monica-based Company 3 (www.company3.com) and colorist Stephen Nakamura to help him establish the desired look during the DI coloring process.
Nakamura is one of Hollywood's most experienced color artists and has worked on a number of top films, including the James Bond thriller Quantum of Solace, Spiderman 3 and important indies such as the Davis Guggenheim documentary Waiting For Superman. Nakamura did all his work on Robin Hood using the Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve and DaVinci 2K systems running on Linux systems.
"The Resolve gave us the power and feature set that we needed to meet Ridley's vision," Nakamura said.
"[He] was looking for an overcast, Old English feel for the movie and that would only work if every shot maintained that vision. It went beyond just the weather and every item in the movie had to fit into the vision of a gritty, realistic historical time period. This meant that every link in a suit of chain mail had to be fine tuned and every sword need to be sharpened and made to give it just a bit more of a menacing feel," the colorist added.
Sunny Days and Bright Nights
One of the first tasks Nakamura faced was the fact that the film was shot during a particularly sunny and rain-free time in England. Far from the rain-driven and mud splattered image that Ridley had, many of the shots looked extremely pleasant. Many of the shots also needed to be changed from day to night – a fairly serious task for a colorist when the actors were basking in the sunlight.
To make the adjustments, Nakamura developed a number of custom based chroma and luminance keys. This gave him the ability to easily jump from shot to shot and grade each one while reusing edits already made with previous keys.
Using the high performance and speeds of the Resolve system with the customer based keys, in conjunction with the Resolve's other real-time color processing capabilities, which included PowerWindows for multilayered area isolations; Vector Plus for precise hue, saturation, and luminance qualifying and Custom Curves for independent adjustment of RGB, he was able to smoothly and quickly adjust each shot's background and environment.
Nakamura combined these with the Resolve's powerful color trace tool. This allowed him to track color grades as EDL's are revised (a common occurrence on a project the size of Robin Hood.)
"I literally had to fix each and every shadow and turn day into night. This was beyond a simple color correction task and it required a great deal of power and advanced workflow features. The Resolve's ability to let me quickly build as many chroma and luminance keys as needed, when combined with the color trace feature is something that is unique to the system and really sets it apart," he continued.
Getting Down to Details
No self-respecting Merry Man would be caught dead without the proper armor and weapons. That meant thousands of links in chainmail required color grading to get that perfect menacing and used look. Every arrowhead and sword needed to be graded to razor sharpness. Even the water splashing during battle scenes on a beach had to be made to look like shards of glass.
Nakamura armed himself with a number of Resolve features to properly arm and armor all of the film's characters. In particular, Resolve's sharpening/aperture correction grading tools were able to make grading these elements possible, which included a number of large, intricate battle scenes and hundreds of grading tasks.
With aperture correction, Nakamura was able to give each items surface a very specific edge and highlight that against other objects on the screen. The end result is a greater focus on each object's desired use within the shot and a greater feel for the action and danger taking place. And with tasks such as making water drops look like shards of glass, the Resolve's ability to handle multiple corrections quickly due to the system's high speeds was invaluable in handling the huge amounts of changes in each frame.
"Quite simply, the Resolve system is the only technology available that could have handled this task. The Resolve is the fastest system out there, and that speed let me grade in the unique ways required by Ridley," said Nakamura.
About Company 3
Company 3 is a comprehensive post production facility for features, commercials and music videos. Known for our creative color artistry, pioneering technology and global reach, Company 3 is trusted to deliver a quality product every time.
Company 3's incredible talent roster includes John Bonta, Sean Coleman, Siggy Ferstl, Billy Gabor, Dave Hussey, Tim Masick, Victor Mulholland, Stephen Nakamura, Mike Pethel, Tom Poole, Rob Sciarratta, Stefan Sonnenfeld and Matt Turner. Recent commercial projects are campaigns for Apple, Audi, BMW, Heineken, Nike, and others. Recent feature film credits include "Alice in Wonderland," "Robin Hood," "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," "The Hurt Locker," "A Single Man," "Public Enemies" and "Star Trek." Company 3 www.company3.com is an Ascent Media www.ascentmedia.com company.
