DigitalFilm Tree (DFT) has brought color to the post-apocalyptic, sci-fi drama The 100 with a team that includes sr. colorist Dan Judy, and VP of post Chad Gunderson. Just prior to the premiere of its sixth season on April 30, The 100 was announced as renewed for a seventh season by The CW.
Crafting environments like ice worlds, desolate desert-scape cities, and acid cloud storms, Judy is enthused over the support he and DFT have seen from Grant Petty and Blackmagic Design. Judy gave a presentation on his approach to color correction utilizing Resolve at this year’s NAB. Blackmagic announced its latest version of the NLE software, DaVinci Resolve 16, during the convention.
“I worked with the fourth DaVinci machine ever built, and hand-in-hand with the people down at the facility that invented DaVinci back in the day,” he said.
During his talk, Judy referenced several advantages to the DaVinci Resolve software that have come in particularly useful for The 100, like OFX–Open FX plug-ins–advanced tools that expand the colorist’s ability to treat everything from beauty and Boris & Sapphire FX all the way to fixing damaged images and all available within Resolve Color. There are Unlimited Power Windows with amazing tracking abilities. Working clip-based allows proper access to the client’s camera original materials, maintained and managed via DFT’s object storage SAN. Judy has the freedom to use a LUT from production. He will use discretion to make certain it’s a benefit to the scene at hand. Again, working clip-based provides a nondestructive approach allowing Judy the full dynamic range to protect the show’s color design.
Shooting on the ARRI Alexa gives extra dynamic range when matching footage shot across different times of day and then leveraging that ability when matching to other cameras used in production–GoPro, Red and Canon. With The 100’s color design constantly evolving over locations and seasons, Resolve provides its evolving technology to help the DFT team meet these challenges. Resolve’s last iteration–version 15–incorporated the Fusion Platform, this allows Edit, Color and VFX to contribute to the project’s final outcome giving the client real-time reviews of these efforts, even remotely.
Co-executive producer and director, Tim Scanlan, Judy’s liaison on The 100, and his creative partner for more than two decades, can even monitor and provide feedback from the production offices for The 100, in Santa Monica, or from his home office, in Newport Beach utilizing DFT’s remote services. Judy, meanwhile, can be found on a dedicated Resolve workstation at DFT’s facilities in Hollywood. He has partnered with Scanlan for more than 20 years, and the duo’s lineage in color can be traced back to wildly popular shows in broadcast, including ABC’s Charlie’s Angels and the CW’s Smallville, the latter of which they collaborated on for more than a decade.
“Over the years, Tim has pushed me very hard to utilize my tools to their fullest,” Judy continued, adding his thanks to DP Michael C. Blundell for his contributions to The 100. “Michael has been a real feather in our cap helping us out throughout the past five seasons.” Judy also expressed appreciation for associate producer Emanuel “E” Fidalgo. Gunderson thanked post supervisor Mark Knoob, whom he communicates with on a daily basis, and sr. editor Thomas Galyon.
“Dan Judy has a massive skill set, and can bend this software, somehow, to do magical things,” added Gunderson, who joined the post team for The 100 four seasons ago. “I help facilitate everything that the production needs around here from the time it hits online to finish. As this show is being managed primarily in Resolve’s remote workflows, it’s imperative that you have a strong management team, strong editorial team, and a strong color team, all working simultaneously, to see all of this through.”
