From Training to AI Upscaling: A Cup with Colorist & Trainer Daria Fissoun

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I'm starting to hear this distinction between AI versus AI, utility tools that help us versus just things that are trying to replace us, things like the new denoise tool in DaVinci, resolve Magic Mask.

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None of those things are going to replace us because they're tools that need to still be used.

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In that sense, I am very hopeful.

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I used AI to write a bit of code for me once.

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I just didn't know how to run it properly.

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I still needed to learn how to like run it properly, like I still needed to learn how to like QC it, you know, and how to write like the right headers for it.

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And you still need developers to do all that stuff.

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Not just me, but many people before me have said that AI is just about wielding the tool correctly, and you can wield it well or you can, you know, wield it poorly.

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So it really comes down to the user.

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Welcome to Color and Coffee, a podcast that's focused on the craft of color and the artist behind it.

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I'm your host, jason Bowdach, and each episode we'll sit down with some of the most talented artists in the industry and have a casual chat from one artist to another.

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We'll share their stories, their insights, their tips and, of course, their beverage of choice.

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Whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting started, join us for some great color discussion.

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Sit back, grab your mug.

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You're listening to Color and Coffee.

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Welcome to Color and Coffee.

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Today, I have a really special guest.

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It is Daria Fissoun.

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She is a color, she is a compositor and she is a certified DaVinci Resolve trainer.

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Welcome to the show, Daria.

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Thank you for having me, Jason.

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So, first and most importantly, what are you drinking today?

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I am drinking instant coffee from my best auntie's mug.

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As I proceed to spill coffee on myself out of partial shock, tell me about this instant coffee mix of yours.

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I think you may be one of the first guests on the show to do instant coffee.

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I don't have what you would call a sophisticated palate.

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I genuinely cannot tell instant from the best of the best, so I figure why not go for the more affordable option?

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I only started drinking coffee when I visited the us.

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Actually, I was strictly a tea drinker up until then really, when was the first time you visited the us?

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uh?

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it was actually only a few years ago because it was when I wrote the first like colorist guide for black magic and we started running like these uh, beta workshops, you know, to test, like to qc it basically, and that's where I met like Mark Wheelage and all those guys and I was at the Black Magic Burbank office.

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So that was like my first trip was probably like 2000.

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I want to say 18, something like that.

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I understand the need for coffee writing, writing the colorist guide, that would absolutely inspire the desire to start drinking coffee.

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So that makes sense.

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Just getting into the coffee palette, getting into instant coffee, totally understand.

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This morning I'm drinking a new mix of vanilla.

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I'm drinking a vanilla latte made with breezy or beans.

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I'm trying to expand my palate a little bit.

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I'll admit my coffee palette is a little bit basic myself.

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That's what we're going to be driving our conversation with today.

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So, we're going to jump into our conversation, having our conversation with today, so we're going to jump into our conversation.

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Daria, first and foremost, I need to tell you that your manuals and the colorist guide live in my Dropbox.

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I have every single version of them because they are such important guides and I reference them on a regular basis.

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So I usually start with how did you get into this?

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But, to be honest, you're a little bit different.

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So I want to ask, like, what got you into writing the DaVinci Resolve manual?

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Like, being a colorist is niche, but writing the manual is the niche of niche.

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Yeah, it was like a really weird entry point, you know, and I feel almost like I got hoodwinked into it because I didn't realize I was doing it until I was probably like four chapters in.

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So I'll explain.

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I pretty much have to go back to like why I learned DaVinci Resolve in the first place, because I started off color grading and I think I was using probably Final Cut 7.

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I did an entire feature in Final Cut 7, believe it or not.

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After that I think it was like Adobe and I'm doing this more and more, like more people are hiring me like less for compositing and more For coloring exclusively.

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So I started looking into like dedicated Applications.

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I went through like Apple color and a speed grade and eventually found DaVinci Resolve, loved it.

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I was like wow, why is no one talking about this?

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This is like nowhere.

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Yeah, this would have been about version 11, I think.

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So there's like they had just introduced like the edit page, for example.

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It was like a really early iteration of it.

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So pre-Fairlight, pre-fusion, everything.

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As I was doing that and working professionally, I was also doing like training at a media college in London.

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Every time students had post-production questions in the Adobe suite, it was pretty easy to just like find a link on YouTube and go like here, watch this video.

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That's the process that you need to know.

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But for DaVinci Resolve, there was like nothing.

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So I eventually just started recording like these five minute little mini tutorials, just so that you know I would save myself time responding to like student inquiries.

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People just like started finding the videos and subscribing and after about a year, after I'd done like around a hundred videos, uh, black magic reached out.

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And that was really surprising because it was not something I had anticipated and they were super nice.

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You know they wrote and they were like yeah, do you want to come to like this beta, like workshop that we're running in like London next week?

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And I was like cool, yeah.

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And you're based out of London, correct?

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I am based in London.

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Yeah, patty Mentesian was there.

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She was running the training department at the time.

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I did like a sort of a demo presentation at the end of class, like had a lot of fun.

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Rowan said like can you contribute a chapter to like the beginner's guide that we're currently developing?

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And I was like oh my God, I was like really flustered and all that, but like yeah, Pressure's on right.

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Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah for sure, because I've never been like associated with a company like of that size.

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So yeah, I wrote a chapter and it seemed to go quite well.

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They were pleased.

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So then they were like hey, we're also going to be doing specialist books as well.

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You know, for all the other pages, I think you could maybe like cover like just the intro, so I just write one chapter and then they're like can you like you know, we're gonna do like a three part series in the book, like can you just do like maybe round up the first part and like, no joke, like I was pretty much on like chapter four, but the time had dawned on me.

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I'm like I think they basically are getting me to write the book.

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I'm just doing the intro chapter, no biggie, you know.

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And then the book actually took about two years, because after I realized it was the whole thing, I went back and restructured it because I'm like, well, if I had known about it as a bigger project, I would have made it more cohesive in this way.

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So it's actually quite good.

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It was a lot of like trial and communication with like top industry colorists really led the way as well.

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And it's worth mentioning that you can download this book for free on Blackmagic's website.

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Correct, oh, definitely yeah.

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And we'll have that link in the show notes as well.

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It's a really, really useful guide.

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Now, I think that's pretty interesting.

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A lot of people talk about writing a book and sort of spin their wheels on that forever.

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You went about this sort of the opposite way, where you're sort of writing piecemeal of it and then, while you're sort of halfway pregnant with it, you went back and did sort of a reorganization of it, which actually I think is probably the best way of going about it, almost an nvp way about it.

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I want to take one moment to acknowledge something that I think is interesting when you tell me the story about it, because I'm hearing you describe what is clearly an instance of scope creep in this project.

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But in terms of color grading, that may be a negative thing, but in terms of writing a technical manual, this may be a positive way of going about it because of the overwhelm.

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Oh, I agree.

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It's an interesting term, actually, scope creep.

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So I assume you're describing like a project that you don't anticipate will be as big as it eventually becomes.

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Yeah, I mean, this is not just limited to our industry.

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This concept of you it could be an app development, it could be a software development, it could be in color grading, in terms of it starts off as one type of project and all of a sudden you have another part of the project creeping in.

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All of a sudden delivery creeps in.

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Sudden delivery creeps in.

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All of a sudden you need a DCP and it's just all of a sudden.

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It started as project A and now it's a project Z and that's the idea of scope creep.

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Yeah, no, it's a really interesting term.

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I'm glad to know the name for it now, because I feel it happens to me a lot.

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Yeah, I think it happens all the time.

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But what's interesting and one of the questions I want to ask you is what did you feel once you found out about like okay, I'm going to go and do the whole manual what were some of your thoughts and what were some of your goals, because, honestly, as a colorist, that's an overwhelming thing and what is some of the main takeaways that you wanted colorists to walk away with after reading that guide?

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One of the biggest challenges is like understanding the audience that's going through the manual, right, because you're going to have people who just found out what color grading is as a job, like two days ago, and then you're going to have people who have been working at like with telecines, you know, and they've come from like broadcast.

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So how do you satisfy both camps?

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So that's part of the reason why I rewrote the book is because I was like I need to pretty much like every part of the book has to be a different starting point as you progress professionally, which is why the first, you know, part one is just like it's not self-contained but it's an archive project which is the easiest thing to open.

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It's already color managed, so it is like display referred basically, uh, and I'm like this is pretty good for a beginner because that's what you're going to be doing.

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If you're just uploading stuff off your phone and you're playing around with colors a bit, it's a good time to understand the fundamentals, know.

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And then the second one is the more like industry approach with XMLs, you know, and that you started like that, and then it finishes with even more advanced concept, more affecting the image, like optics and things like that.

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In the end, like when we run the workshops live and we get those opinion polls at the end.

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Usually the result is like 90% are happy with the overall class and then there's about 5% that say that it was too basic and about 5% that say that it was too advanced.

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And that's kind of where we want to be like, get like the overall majority satisfied, but you're never gonna get 100%.

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So you know, try your best.

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Yeah, that almost suggests that those I call those outliers.

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Those outliers needed to either go for a more basic class or a more advanced class.

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You offer those, then you're essentially giving them a place to go.

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I want to take a slight detour and talk about your YouTube channel, a Goat's Eye, which some people may be familiar with but recently renamed to DaVinci Master Key.

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Yeah, so it was Goat's Eye View originally and I thought, like about a year ago, I was like, oh, I think I have more time again to make videos, you know.

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So I was like I'll do a rebrand, make it more flashy.

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And I did like about one video and I've been busy since.

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I've not been able to come back.

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You are not the only one that has had that thought.

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I'm sure myself and many others have tried to to make a little bit more of an effort for YouTube and has had the thought but not put the actual work in.

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So no problem, but I'm sure we'll be seeing more videos from that soon.

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One question I wanted to ask you, and I'm sure many have had this question when did a goat's eye view come from that that title?

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At the time I just thought it was a bit funny, but it's kind of two film references in one.

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If you look at the eye of a goat, their pupils are horizontal.

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I was always kind of like tickled by the idea that they're always seeing in cinemascope or cinescope because they have, like for evolutionary purposes, like extra wide visions, you know, so they could protect themselves.

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But then the other half of it is uh, you know, we were learning like framing techniques in film school and I was just like, oh so, like you know, you have bird's eye view from the top and you have worm's eye view from the bottom.

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So I guess gotai would be like somewhere around mid-level that's so funny I can up with a name and I was just like, well, that's, that's funny, that's like a few references to film, and then everybody just asks like what does this even mean?

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I was like, but whatever, it's kind of cutesy anyway now you have it.

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You have it officially documented on this podcast and if anybody asks, you can just push them right here and it's officially right on here.

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You can say this is where I've told exactly where this title came from and I think it's a fantastic title, now that I know where it came from, and that's the the history of it.

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Now it's da vinci master key, which perfectly explains what it is and what you're going to learn there yeah, it's a bit of an alliteration, you know, just kind of rhymes I think those type of of names for communities are pretty funny, in the sense of not knowing what it is and then, uh, obviously finding the background of it.

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I think that's a really, really sort of unique and funny reference to it.

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Plus, it's highly memorable.

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I don't think there's any other channels that I've ever confused yours with.

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Yeah.

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I want to ask a little bit more about your in person training, because you are one of the more well known black magic certified trainers, and I want to ask about the in-person training and the sort of online training.

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If I wanted to learn a little bit more about DaVinci Resolve and I wanted to sign up for your courses, where can I like learn more about that?

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I know you do on black magic, I know you do on mixing light, but they don't repeat, and I think one of my interesting questions is is there is there a reason for that?

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Is that a decision that was chosen purposefully, like why they don't repeat?

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And I think one of my interesting questions is is there is there a reason for that?

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Is that a decision that was chosen purposefully, like why they don't host them on youtube, for instance, after they do the live trainings?

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oh, that's a really good question.

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I think it, the answer, might be like a bit corporate, because that, like one of the stipulations is like yeah, what you have to understand about the training team with black magic, it's like they are like a ragtag team, it's like it's a pretty small outfit and it's pretty much driven by like passion and enthusiasm by the trainers and they kind of let us get away with like a lot of things, you know.

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So like developing the training materials, you know we have a lot of control over that, like us, the authors.

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That really surprised me when I first came around, you know, when they asked me to write like a chapter or develop the book eventually, I assumed that there would be a table of contents that I would have to follow, or that a list of topics I'd have to cover.

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There was nothing.

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There was not even the slightest specific direction or specification.

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Like I was just by myself and the head trainer at the time was just like or the head of the department was like you're the expert, you tell us what the book should be about, and I was like well, you know, I can say that for the other trainers, for the other authors as well.

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So with the classes as well, like they're really fun and very fluid.

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We just run them.

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You know we're very casual.

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There's no, like, again, any communication or direction from corporate.

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One thing that we've kind of maybe gleamed from the head of the training department is that, because there's this like lack of, maybe, corporate control or official language, they maybe don't want it to exist as a recorded entity.

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That could end up being like quoted or miscommunicate something about marketing.

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I assume that's why they're live only.

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It also means that they get to be a bit more fluid.

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So, as you know, there's like a new build of resolve like every 21 days or something crazy like that.

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So I could be in the middle of teaching.

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You know I'll be presenting a topic and I'll be like, okay, well, click in the options to find this tool and then I'll realize it's not there anymore and I'm like, okay, well, where is it?

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You know and I have to which you know, if you're watching recordings they're going to be obsolete within six months or probably less.

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I could see how that makes sense.

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I'm based in LA, you're based in London.

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These are both sort of major posts, centers or arteries.

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I've heard feedback from a lot of people that live in sort of smaller areas that that's difficult to try and learn when you live outside of these cities, because if you are not able to see these live or find a mentor or attend these live in-person sessions, it can be hard to get training and a lot of people that live outside of these major cities rely on the recorded training.

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But I can totally understand the official versus.

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I can't record this for communication reasons.

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I do think that's really awesome that they are constantly doing live training while they're updating.

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I do see a ton of companies pushing out software updates but not necessarily keeping up the training.

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They may do one or two minute software videos but they're not necessarily doing training.

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And I think that's somewhere where Blackmagic is doing an amazing job, where they are keeping the training up with their software, that software development and how quickly it moves On that Mark a new version of DaVinci Resolve just dropped last night, if I'm not mistaken.

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One of the things that I wanted to ask you about outside of your training work is some of your professional work.

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So you're a colorist, you're a compositor.

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Tell me about a project that you've really had fun working on recently.

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So, yeah, I'd say about 50-50.

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Like, I split my time between training and doing practical work.

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Maybe some years it's more like 60-40, you know, more towards training because obviously the book does take a long time.

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Every version.

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I have a pretty wide like cast of clients and project types, which I really like because it means it's quite varied.

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I do a lot of consultation work so people will talk about, like you know, setting up pipelines in their studios so I help make sure that's all running correctly or just like project workflow advising.

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So, again, you know, they'll tell me like what they're shooting on, what software they're using, what their vendors are using, and then I could advise like the formats that they should be using and workflows and all that which I really like, you know, because it feels like you're sort of housekeeping for them, like tidying up their workflow before it starts, maybe.

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Like some of the biggest things I was involved with was with Disney Plus.

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I worked on a few feature films that they were producing.

00:16:32.379 --> 00:16:38.513
So I was kind of like back to back between 2019 and maybe 21, 22, something like that.

00:16:38.653 --> 00:16:45.758
So I kind of started specializing in like American sports movies, which I didn't think I would, but yeah, it was the producer I was working for.

00:16:45.798 --> 00:16:46.679
That was his specialty.

00:16:47.100 --> 00:16:54.206
I noticed that actually, and I was going to ask you one how you got involved with that and what your role was on those.

00:16:55.196 --> 00:16:58.346
Yeah, so I'm credited as a post-tech engineer.

00:16:58.937 --> 00:16:59.423
Real quick.

00:16:59.443 --> 00:17:00.234
Which movies were these?

00:17:00.696 --> 00:17:03.490
These were movies Safety and Rise.

00:17:04.253 --> 00:17:04.335
Okay.

00:17:04.955 --> 00:17:07.880
Yeah, and these are both biopics, right, so based on true stories.

00:17:08.394 --> 00:17:09.480
All on Disney+, by the way.

00:17:10.215 --> 00:17:10.978
All on Disney+.

00:17:11.117 --> 00:17:16.315
Yeah, produced by Doug Jones, not the actor, by the producer we've got the same name.

00:17:16.394 --> 00:17:27.823
So with Safety, they wanted to do like a completely like all around DaVinci Resolve pipeline workflow right, and this had not been attempted by a production of that size before right.

00:17:27.843 --> 00:17:38.222
So they wanted everything from dailies and ingestion to obviously editing right, assistant editing and then even like temp VFX and audio up to final deliverables.

00:17:39.115 --> 00:17:46.202
And Doug Jones very strongly believed in the Vintage Resolve as the software of the future, the one that's going to pull off entire features.

00:17:46.895 --> 00:17:54.901
So this was kind of like a proof of concept and this was actually around about the time that collaborative mode had first been introduced, at least on a server level.

00:17:55.596 --> 00:18:05.238
So we got to really try it out for real and found like where you know, we sort of encountered like bottlenecks, all those sort of things, like actually seeing it in action.

00:18:05.358 --> 00:18:15.400
I think I was on the phone with Singapore like every single day and night, rather, for like two weeks straight, you know, just reporting back to them, going like, okay, well, we need to, like you know, optimize this and we need to do that.

00:18:16.080 --> 00:18:23.780
But it was really great eventually led to a lot of the changes in davinci, resolve 17, you know, and then also the ones that we see nowadays with, like the cloud workflow as well.

00:18:23.861 --> 00:18:34.700
And then what's great about the next film, rise, is that not only did we have the same workflow right end to end, but then, on top of that, the cameras were all black magic as well, and that was done with a blind test.

00:18:34.779 --> 00:18:44.501
Right, they did a, did a whole bunch of test shots of the actor's costumes, and then the director chose the Blackmagic footage just based on With no producer input, he chose a blind.

00:18:44.582 --> 00:18:46.435
He has a blind test, wow.

00:18:46.576 --> 00:18:47.118
That's a lot.

00:18:48.815 --> 00:18:49.258
Yeah, yeah.

00:18:49.278 --> 00:18:51.934
So then it was truly like a Blackmagic production all around.

00:18:52.234 --> 00:18:53.497
So how was that second production?

00:18:53.517 --> 00:19:04.682
Because honestly, I've done quite a bit of reporting on the first software workflow test for Adobe Premiere when it was done for David Fincher's productions and I mean they're all disasters.

00:19:04.902 --> 00:19:07.230
It's always very rough the first time.

00:19:07.510 --> 00:19:09.016
But how is that second feature?

00:19:09.115 --> 00:19:10.700
Because that's the real test.

00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:19.025
Well, so for the second feature, I wasn't around as long, so I was only there for a couple of weeks as consultation, whereas the first feature was about like 11 months.

00:19:19.265 --> 00:19:28.265
It was kind of funny actually and I'm not sure if you want to include this in the podcast because one of the assistant editors was like very anti DaVinci Resolve and it was.

00:19:28.384 --> 00:19:36.640
It was kind of like a lot of pushback from them and he was basically announced that you know, they were going to switch to Avid as like pretty much as soon as I was gone, and I think they eventually did.

00:19:36.700 --> 00:19:40.884
I think it was finished in Avid, Even though they did so much of it in Resolve, which is just a shame.

00:19:40.923 --> 00:19:41.984
But yeah, what are you going to do?

00:19:42.085 --> 00:19:45.268
Right, Like you kind of do need to go on board.

00:19:45.347 --> 00:19:55.942
It's interesting to know and that is the way that a lot of productions work that you can try to have as much input as you can, and obviously we work in a very Avid-centric world.

00:19:55.961 --> 00:20:08.926
That's how most productions we do work is they are cut and offline and Avid very occasionally premiere and then we finish them in Resolve and that's the way that assistant editors and editors they've been trained for decades.

00:20:08.974 --> 00:20:10.058
So it doesn't surprise me.

00:20:10.180 --> 00:20:10.863
Change is hard.

00:20:11.214 --> 00:20:35.922
It is very, very difficult to move an entire production over to DaVinci Resolve, to move an entire production over to DaVinci Resolve and it is very appetizing for producers but very difficult for the actual production to do, because it looks good on paper and it looks good on the spreadsheets but it actually in practice requires significantly more work from the people that are working, potentially requiring more money.

00:20:36.075 --> 00:20:38.842
So it really is that first production is a test.

00:20:38.942 --> 00:20:43.482
Both for the test and is it going to on the dollars work out to be okay.

00:20:43.835 --> 00:20:51.321
In the second production it's clear that the producers and the editors weren't on the same team and so there was some conflict here.

00:20:51.655 --> 00:20:57.528
To have production do a transition over this, I believe it requires complete buy-in on both teams.

00:21:03.315 --> 00:21:04.500
And if you don't, you are going to have conflict.

00:21:04.539 --> 00:21:08.698
I completely agree about like there has to be a buy-in from everyone involved, especially like when it comes to transitioning, like to a different application.

00:21:08.718 --> 00:21:10.566
That's going to be super uncomfortable for some people.

00:21:10.827 --> 00:21:18.915
We had complete buy-in from, yeah, the producer and even the, the lead editor, so it was the assistant editor who pretty much derailed it at the end.

00:21:18.955 --> 00:21:25.442
But you know, since then, like there have been more productions done, you know in DaVinci, resolve, so I know it is just onwards and upwards.

00:21:25.461 --> 00:21:27.096
You know we've learned a lot from both of those.

00:21:27.377 --> 00:21:28.664
I think it is on the training front.

00:21:28.704 --> 00:21:34.942
I think you're doing an excellent job on everything that can be provided to help make it a easier starting ground.

00:21:35.143 --> 00:21:47.286
But I think that's an excellent, excellent example of what happens quite a bit when you try and push the entire production into DaVinci, Resolve and don't quite expect that let's move on to another project.

00:21:47.326 --> 00:21:49.394
Tell me about another project that you've worked on.

00:21:49.494 --> 00:21:56.445
Last year I had a director reach out to me about a film that he produced in the early 90s.

00:21:56.527 --> 00:21:58.970
I think it was about, I want to say, 91, 92.

00:21:59.194 --> 00:22:01.182
This was made for broadcasts.

00:22:01.301 --> 00:22:05.965
It was in Hawaii and he wanted to sort of preserve it for posterity, right.

00:22:05.994 --> 00:22:09.625
So he wanted to submit it to like the Hawaiian University, like into their archives.

00:22:10.536 --> 00:22:11.740
He wanted to upscale it to 4K.

00:22:12.194 --> 00:22:14.143
I really enjoy restoration projects, you know.

00:22:14.194 --> 00:22:17.164
But he was really interested in like the AI aspect of it as well.

00:22:17.766 --> 00:22:19.446
You know, but he was really interested in like the AI aspect of it as well.

00:22:19.467 --> 00:22:20.007
You know, like AI upscaling.

00:22:20.027 --> 00:22:26.878
At first I actually said no a couple of times because I was like well, you know, I've not worked with AI before and like here's an application that you could possibly use.

00:22:26.919 --> 00:22:34.821
It was like Topaz, it's pretty good, and I was like this sounds like a really great project, but unfortunately I just I like the skills or the skill set to do this.

00:22:34.982 --> 00:22:41.016
He kind of wrote back and he didn't take a no for an answer and he's like well, all right, what if you take the time to learn it, you know?

00:22:41.036 --> 00:22:51.115
And like he offered to buy the software, he offered to give me time to do trial and error, which is like the best thing you could possibly ask for as a creative, you know it's just to not have to pretend to know something you don't, not to be rushed.

00:22:51.356 --> 00:23:07.567
You know figure out a lot of things along the way, which is really exciting, you know, because then you produce something that's just really clean, that you're really proud of.

00:23:07.888 --> 00:23:15.297
So one thing that I never got to work with was color bars, but like on the receiving end, because those were baked right into the tape.

00:23:15.576 --> 00:23:17.280
Oh yeah, this is a inner.

00:23:17.641 --> 00:23:19.064
This is what I assume is.

00:23:19.104 --> 00:23:22.036
It was a film or like interlaced SD interlaced?

00:23:22.156 --> 00:23:22.979
Yeah, NTSC.

00:23:23.378 --> 00:23:27.347
I suspect it was actually capture in beta cam and then it got digitized to DV cam.

00:23:27.515 --> 00:23:36.970
And yeah, so I was just looking at these color bars and I'm like huh, like well, I could just adjust the color bars and match what audiences in the 90s would have seen on their television sets.

00:23:37.134 --> 00:23:50.146
So that was a really good starting point, you know, because you got to do again like display referred color management, but then I got to kind of work on the footage on top of that and like zhuzh it up a bit, you know, and correct like for overexposure that kind of stuff, you know, bring out details in the shadows.

00:23:50.347 --> 00:23:54.612
So it was a really satisfying project to work on and, you know, completely different from anything I'd ever done.

00:23:58.335 --> 00:23:59.256
Just to confirm some of the details.

00:23:59.276 --> 00:24:01.178
So this was a SD interlaced project you ran it through Topaz correct.

00:24:01.198 --> 00:24:03.339
Yeah, and then you color correct it in DaVinci Resolve.

00:24:04.019 --> 00:24:04.200
Yeah.

00:24:05.020 --> 00:24:05.320
Awesome.

00:24:05.741 --> 00:24:10.445
Yeah, topaz is for those who are unfamiliar is a really, really impressive program.

00:24:10.465 --> 00:24:13.628
They just came out with a professional version for those who are unfamiliar.

00:24:13.648 --> 00:24:16.171
A little bit expensive but really, really powerful program.

00:24:16.191 --> 00:24:28.046
If you take the time to learn it you can get some amazing results, especially if you pipe the result back into DaVinci Resolve, like Daria did, and continue your color correction.

00:24:28.066 --> 00:24:31.497
So don't just try and throw it into Topaz and hit one button and expect it to be finished, but tell me a little bit more about this.

00:24:31.557 --> 00:24:41.047
So you essentially created like a one pass correction based off the color bars and then you did additional color correction on a clip by clip basis.

00:24:41.548 --> 00:24:42.170
Yeah, yeah.

00:24:42.932 --> 00:24:46.000
So node, one was just a color bar adjustment.

00:24:46.040 --> 00:24:48.646
yeah, yeah so what were you using topaz for?

00:24:48.755 --> 00:24:53.112
I assume for upscaling and interlacing uh, I think I did that in resolve.

00:24:53.152 --> 00:24:54.015
It was just for upscaling.

00:24:54.095 --> 00:25:06.071
No, actually, no, I would have been doing the interlacing, because obviously topaz builds detail, just scaling it up from what would have been like 480 by 576 something like that, but, yeah, scaled it up to 4k, which is a pretty massive factor.

00:25:06.354 --> 00:25:19.936
You know, the funny thing is, though, when I first, like, I sent the test shots to the director and I said this is what it's going to look like at 4k, I think it really took him aback how detailed everything became, you know, and especially, I think, like the wrinkles on people's faces really like knocked him back a bit.

00:25:19.977 --> 00:25:24.403
So he wrote back and he's like well, can we maybe soften it so it looks a little more like the original footage.

00:25:24.825 --> 00:25:30.374
So I ended up having to sort of create like a 50-50 blend of the original footage with the Topaz upscaling.

00:25:30.714 --> 00:25:31.615
I was going to ask you.

00:25:31.977 --> 00:25:42.210
I frequently had that issue where, in its attempt to add detail, it can add a little bit more detail what was your method of sort of mixing it?

00:25:42.250 --> 00:25:47.642
Did you sort of mix it back within Topaz or did you sort of mix it back with the original footage within Resolve?

00:25:47.903 --> 00:25:54.864
I created two presets in Topaz because I realized that I was getting better results depending on the content and the motion within the shot.

00:25:55.365 --> 00:26:03.419
So it would deal better sometimes with fast moving objects or motion blur versus like dealing with human faces, you know, talking directly to camera.

00:26:03.558 --> 00:26:12.304
I pretty much created two versions of every clip and then I reassembled the timeline and then I sort of toggled between them and I'm like, okay, which is the better AI version, this or that, this or that, this or that?

00:26:12.545 --> 00:26:17.826
And then I combined those with the original footage that had been super scaled in DaVinci Resolve to 4k.

00:26:18.194 --> 00:26:22.622
Then you kind of end up, yeah, with a little like Frankenstein, and that was what he was most happy with.

00:26:22.662 --> 00:26:27.809
He's like, it still looks, it still has that feel of the original footage, but it has that extra kind of detail, that oomph.

00:26:28.095 --> 00:26:37.789
So this reminds me of almost of the criterion process, because they use a combination of neat video and they pick and choose parts of the scene where they want to de-noise.

00:26:38.115 --> 00:26:38.336
We don't.

00:26:38.355 --> 00:26:39.441
We want the original here.

00:26:39.535 --> 00:26:40.660
This sounds really similar.

00:26:40.994 --> 00:26:45.586
But one thing I have to ask you what speed computer do you have?

00:26:50.815 --> 00:26:55.152
Because, if I'm understanding this correctly, you have three different denoise versions for this.

00:26:55.172 --> 00:26:59.239
Yeah Well, I mean, I suppose after it's out of Topaz, it is rendered.

00:26:59.259 --> 00:27:01.384
Oh yeah, it's just clips, then It'll just be ProRes clips.

00:27:01.566 --> 00:27:04.364
I'm on a PC, I'm a 47 DTI graphics card and it runs the dream.

00:27:04.403 --> 00:27:04.906
Yeah, I complain on a PC.

00:27:04.946 --> 00:27:06.173
I'm a 47 DTI graphics card and it runs the dream.

00:27:06.333 --> 00:27:06.694
Yeah, I complain.

00:27:06.934 --> 00:27:12.838
Pretty quick, then, one of the things that I want to point out this was not an automated process in any way, shape or form.

00:27:12.878 --> 00:27:15.926
This required artists intervention on every single step.

00:27:16.674 --> 00:27:18.122
Oh, yeah, yeah, Every single shot.

00:27:18.435 --> 00:27:25.238
A lot of people are a little bit concerned about AI taking away their job or giving them less to do.

00:27:25.339 --> 00:27:28.278
What are your thoughts on that, having literally just completed a job?

00:27:28.420 --> 00:27:37.248
I feel like I'm starting to hear this distinction right Between AI versus AI, utility tools that help us versus just things that are trying to replace us.

00:27:37.528 --> 00:27:39.900
I'm very much pro utility AI, you know.

00:27:39.940 --> 00:27:43.955
So things like you know, the new denoise tool in DaVinci Resolve.

00:27:44.436 --> 00:27:46.241
Ultra noise reduction Ultra.

00:27:46.382 --> 00:27:47.084
NR, that's it.

00:27:47.124 --> 00:27:48.366
That's the one that's great.

00:27:48.815 --> 00:27:51.765
Intellitrack again, that's like AI driven Magic Mask.

00:27:51.954 --> 00:27:55.644
None of those things are going to replace us because they're tools that need to still be used.

00:27:55.875 --> 00:27:58.618
In that sense, I am very hopeful In my experience so far.

00:27:58.740 --> 00:28:02.478
Like seeing AI, you still have to know how to implement certain things.

00:28:02.617 --> 00:28:09.488
I used AI to like write a bit of code for me once, like a while ago, and I just didn't know how to like run it properly.

00:28:09.548 --> 00:28:18.258
Like I still needed to learn how to like QC it, you know, and how to write like the right headers for it, and you still need developers to do all that stuff.

00:28:18.278 --> 00:28:18.818
So I don't think it's fully.

00:28:18.858 --> 00:28:23.403
Yeah, I'm gonna ask what may be a call it a stupid question, but I think it just it's important for me to ask it.

00:28:23.763 --> 00:28:38.926
The job that you just did for this client with Topaz and super scaling do you think that this took you less time using all the AI tools, or more time if you had to just do everything manually using, let's say, upscaling it previously?

00:28:39.335 --> 00:28:44.750
Because I think, based off everything that I heard you, you spent more time using all the AI tools than if we did this a couple years ago.

00:28:44.728 --> 00:28:46.838
Obviously we didn't have some of the technology we did, but I think you you spent more time using all the AI tools than if we did this a couple years ago.

00:28:47.279 --> 00:28:58.442
Obviously, we didn't have some of the technology we did, but I think you would have done faster a couple years ago, but now you're spending more time sort of micromanaging these different AI tasks, but you're getting a better result.

00:28:58.643 --> 00:28:59.806
That's exactly right what you've said.

00:28:59.974 --> 00:29:05.383
Like if I wasn't using Topaz, it absolutely would have taken a lot less time but produced a very different result.

00:29:05.644 --> 00:29:05.864
Yeah.

00:29:06.084 --> 00:29:22.483
That's what I'm hearing from a bunch of different people that are using AI, and the way that I'm hearing from you is the fact that we are spending a little bit more time, but when you're using it professionally, in a way that you can pick and choose the results, you can essentially art direct AI in a neat way.

00:29:22.894 --> 00:29:23.395
Absolutely.

00:29:23.717 --> 00:29:33.823
Not just me, but many people before me have said that AI is just about wielding the tool correctly, and you can wield it well or you can wield it poorly, so it really comes down to the user.

00:29:34.395 --> 00:29:46.124
And in this example that we just talked about, you clearly have wielded it very well and allowed yourself the control in there to choose do I want to use Topaz, do I want to use a specific aspect of Topaz, or do I want to use Topaz?

00:29:46.144 --> 00:29:49.645
Do I want to use a specific aspect of Topaz, or do I want to just go back and use the original footage with DaVinci Superscale?

00:29:50.166 --> 00:29:59.441
So that, to me, is a very masterful use of AI, while allowing yourself the control that you need to address your client's problem, which is this is too sharp or too soft.

00:29:59.520 --> 00:30:01.424
So masterful work right there.

00:30:02.066 --> 00:30:03.008
Yeah, thank you, thank you.

00:30:06.535 --> 00:30:13.837
As we are starting to get to the end of our podcast, I want to make sure that everybody listening can find you, if they haven't already online, and where they can learn more about you.

00:30:13.978 --> 00:30:19.617
So if we wanted to follow you online and learn more about you, where can we follow you?

00:30:19.878 --> 00:30:21.343
I'm not very good with social media.

00:30:21.624 --> 00:30:31.943
You need time to do those things and I'm often trying to keep up with deadlines as it is, but I have been thinking of like running my own workshop sometime in the near future.

00:30:32.084 --> 00:30:39.732
I've been doing a lot of stuff recently that I've been finding really, really exciting, but I've also been doing like a lot of historical research, like I was.

00:30:40.334 --> 00:30:45.204
I've been writing a thesis last couple of months about like the entomology of film terms.

00:30:45.244 --> 00:30:48.259
You know, like finding out why we call it lift gamma gain.

00:30:48.359 --> 00:30:49.182
You know that kind of stuff.

00:30:49.281 --> 00:30:56.361
I've always wanted to do a workshop that really focused on like film analysis, you know, just like watching movie scenes and talking about, you know, what we can learn from the colors.

00:30:56.762 --> 00:31:00.517
So I did sort of snippets of that, like on Casey Ferris' ResolveCon this year.

00:31:01.117 --> 00:31:05.625
So if you at all find that interesting I have a mailing list that's going around right now.

00:31:05.945 --> 00:31:10.890
I am on socials but I don't know how active I am, but you can find me on like Facebook and Instagram.

00:31:11.152 --> 00:31:11.775
Fantastic.

00:31:12.155 --> 00:31:19.628
Well, I'll make sure to share that list to your mailing list, along with your YouTube channel and the rest of your socials in our show notes.

00:31:20.015 --> 00:31:22.063
Daria, thank you so much for joining us.

00:31:22.154 --> 00:31:25.384
It's been a true pleasure to talk with you on the show.

00:31:26.875 --> 00:31:27.517
Thank you again for joining us.

00:31:27.537 --> 00:31:28.920
It's been a true pleasure to talk with you on the show.

00:31:28.940 --> 00:31:30.523
Thank you again for coming on and for this episode of Color and Coffee.

00:31:30.544 --> 00:31:35.782
I'm Jason Bowdach and until the next episode, have a great day and happy grading.

00:31:36.987 --> 00:31:37.729
And that's a wrap.

00:31:38.009 --> 00:31:48.176
Be sure to follow us on Instagram, YouTube and your podcast app of choice Search for at color and coffee or at color and coffee podcast, and join the conversation.

00:31:48.718 --> 00:31:52.385
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00:31:52.747 --> 00:31:56.301
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00:31:57.684 --> 00:31:58.768
Until the next episode.