Advanced Digital Cinema: LUTs

Advanced Digital Cinema: LUTs

Advanced Digital Cinema is our new series that teaches the key building blocks of technical knowledge needed to advance your career in the Camera Department. This series combines on-demand (asynchronous) materials and live classes delivered on the Smashcut virtual learning environment. (Learn more about Smashcut below.)

This class covers Look Up Tables (LUTs) and is comprised of 5 chapters covering over 6 hours of content. Each section of the class builds upon the previous ones, so we recommend reviewing each section in succession. 

Chapters in this series include: 

A full description of each section is outlined below. 

Understanding Scopes

This section covers the use of waveforms and vectorscopes on set and demonstrates the use of many other tools used by modern digital cinematographers, including false color, zebra lines, and histograms. 

Understanding Scopes is designed to give both a technical and practical knowledge of how these tools are used. 

Topics include:

• Understanding the waveform
• Reading the waveform
• Sweep, display modes, calibration
• Live examples
• Understanding the vectorscope
• Gain and calibration
• Live examples
• Other video analysis tools
• Off color / cine zones / false color
• Zebras
• Histograms

Color & Gamma

Color Science is an often discussed topic today and something that every modern cinematographer and editor should understand. This section goes into the theory and reality of color, including how color and brightness are created both in our eyes and in the digital world. You will learn about color space, color gamut, sub sampling, bit depth, luminance, brightness, and gamma curves. Special attention is paid to the color systems and gamma modes used in the latest cameras. 

Topics include: 

• Color in our head
• Rods and cones
• Intensity vs brightness
• Color space
• Color gamut
• XYZ color space
• Rec709 and wide gamuts
• Color model
• Color reductions
• Subsampling
• Bit depth
• Understanding luminance
• Y matters
• Contrast and gamma
• Gamma and log
• Conversions between standards
• Color in camera
• ARRI, Sony, Canon, and Rec709 cameras

Intro to LUTs

Many of the latest camera systems offer either Log or Raw recording modes that give us the most possible information out of the camera. These features are great at keeping the original camera 'negative' as clean as possible, but at the same time they can leave your image on set looking very flat and boring. This is where the use of Look Up Tables (LUT) comes in, which are offsets that allow you to manipulate your image and create a look without affecting the camera originals. 

LUTs 101: Introduction to LUTs

Participants will learn the types and structure of LUTs used in the industry. Particular emphasis is placed on how LUTs are constructed. Course is part presentation and part hands on exercises using DaVinci Resolve. Software and hardware options for making LUTs on set and in post will be isussed and demonstrated, with particular emphasis is placed on how to properly construct a LUT and how to evaluate them for performance. 

Topics include: 

• 1D LUTs
• 3D LUTs
• Tetrahedral mapping
• 33 Point interpolation
• DeLog LUTs
• Primary grades
• Show LUTs
• ASC CDL's
• Lift, gamma, gain
• LUT layering
• LiveGrade Pro
• LUT boxes
• DaVinci Resolve 

LUTs 201: From Set to Post

Participants will be expected to have a basic understanding of DaVinci Resolve (available as a free download) for this class. 

In this workshop, attendees will work through the common scenario of being given footage from set with the assignment to create a Show LUT based on the director's notes. Attendees will create their LUTs using sample footage they are provided with. These show LUTs will then be sent back to the (hypothetical) set, and they will receive a CDL (Color Decision List) back. They will use this CDL to output timed proxies for editorial. 

This workshop will teach participants how to: 

• Create a show LUT
• Import ASC-CDL's into Resolve
• Node priority
• Applying ASC-CDLs
• Outputting dailies from Resolve: 
• YouTube for client
• Adobe Premiere
• EDL / XML files
• Exporting LUTs from Resolve
• Importing LUTs
• ARRI ALEXA cameras
• RED DSMC2 cameras
• Sony VENICE
• SmallHD monitors

Class Details

This class includes all on-demand and live instruction described above and delivered on the Smashcut platform. Smashcut is an online learning environment, designed especially for media education, that offers robust collaborative instruction with media sharing capabilities, contextual feedback on student work, and broadcast-quality asychronous video lectures. Once students have registered for this course, they will be granted access to Smashcut where they can watch on-demand lessons and the live instruction.

***BUNDLE DISCOUNT: We are currently offering a special bundle price of $595 for all four of our live stream Advanced Digital Cinema workshops. If you plan to take all four live stream classes, please contact [email protected] to purchase at the discounted rate.***