Colour Grading for Digital Cinema
1-day masterclass
Organized & presented by
Charles Poynton, independent researcher, Toronto
and Laurens Orij, colourist, Amsterdam
registration €275/place (CAD 450.00)
unscheduled; available for presentation
presented in Scottsdale, 2022-10 (CIC30)
presented in Paris, 2023-10 (CIC31)
presented in Montréal, 2024‑10 (CIC32)
Digital cinema is a demanding application of colour image science; colour grading is a central aspect of the motion picture industry. A digital cinema image/colour scientist and an accomplished colorist team up to describe cinema colour grading, and show you by example why cinema colour grading involves much more than a “scene-to-screen” transfer. We describe camera technology and camera image coding. We describe the “pipeline” of post-production and mastering, including the important scene rendering transform; we describe how and where art is introduced, with examples. We detail the radiometric (linear-light) internals of modern grading systems such as Baselight and Resolve. We describe colour coding for distribution – the DCI X’Y’Z’ scheme, with its standard DCI P3 primaries, and commercialized HDR distribution schemes including HDR10, HLG, and ICtCp-based Dolby Vision.
Course benefits:
- understand colour signal processing in a demanding application
- understand colour image transforms, especially display rendering
- understand scene-referred and display-referred image data
- understand why “scene-to-screen” is not a goal
- gain an appreciation of colour in cinema
keywords: colour grading; digital cinema; log coding; appearance transforms; DCP; DCI P3
The workshop is preferably (and is typically) held in a motion picture cinema, screening room, or grading suite.
Charles Poynton is an independent researcher and image/colour scientist based in Toronto. He wrote the book Digital Video and HD Algorithms and Interfaces, now in its second edition. Thirty years ago, he chose 1080 image rows for HD standards, by which “square pixels” were established for HD and digital cinema. He earned his PhD in 2018 from Simon Fraser University with a dissertation entitled Colour Appearance Issues in Digital Video, HD/UHD, and D‑cinema. ∎