Horror film relies on Blackmagic Design for collaboration across editing, grading and visual effects.
Fremont, CA, USA – Monday, October 21, 2024 – Blackmagic Design today announced that the team behind the new horror film “Curse of the Sin Eater” used a collaborative approach for post production, relying on Blackmagic Cloud and DaVinci Resolve Studio to edit, color grade and create visual effects (VFX) simultaneously while spread across the US. DP Robert Patrick Stern also used a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K digital film camera for the film’s intense dream and car sequences.
“Curse of the Sin Eater” follows the tormented fate of a poor construction worker who makes a deal with a dying billionaire to inherit his fortunes, only to discover that he’s also been cursed by the man’s terrifying sins.
According to Director Justin Denton, DaVinci Resolve Studio was the backbone of the film’s workflow, being used for everything from editing storyboards to creating animatics in preproduction and LUTs on set during production, to editing, color grading and VFX in post.
“Resolve was our hub for the film. We used the same Resolve project across all the major stages of production. After we got through editing storyboards and testing our lens packages with various LUTs and power grades, we used the same Resolve project to start ingesting dailies to test out challenging scenes during the shoot. It was then shared with our Editor Valerian Zamel who began cutting before we wrapped principal photography. As a director turned VFX supervisor, I was able to seamlessly add post vis for the shots to help Val make decisions in the edit. Finally, instead of exporting an EDL/XML to post, I was able to hand off the project and .drt file directly to our Colorist Ryan Croft,” Denton explained. “I’ve been in the film industry for over 20 years on major television productions and $200M+ features, and this was the best overall pipeline I’ve ever worked within. Not bad for a $1M indie film.”
While “Curse of the Sin Eater” was the first film Zamel edited with DaVinci Resolve Studio, he quickly took to the new approach. “I was initially dreading the learning curve and thought it would slow me down significantly, but I was pleasantly surprised at how customizable Resolve ended up being. My first objective was to set up a feature editing workflow as fast as possible, without an assistant, and in that sense, DaVinci Resolve and its many features became my assistant for that process. I was able to quickly organize the dailies into scene timelines, set up my bins, sequence settings, auto sync audio, and name all our dailies with scenes and take numbers, and really hit the ground running with editing,” said Zamel. “However, Resolve’s collaboration features are what really made it so crucial to our process. Justin and I had to work simultaneously, with me editing in Los Angeles and him testing looks and early concepts for VFX in Chicago. DaVinci Resolve and Blackmagic Cloud made that seamless.”
Zamel added, “Resolve’s Open FX toolbox was mind blowing. ‘Curse of the Sin Eater’ has many nightmarish sequences, so it was important that we mocked up a look early on, and I relied on Resolve’s many customizable FX filters for dialing in our look and style.
“Additionally, Resolve’s incredible AI based voice isolation feature became available halfway through our editorial process, and it became a game changer for me when creating a smooth listening experience for our focus groups and various viewers. The amount of tools Resolve has to dial in a great look, mock up VFX, and smooth audio was extremely helpful when we were sharing progress versions of the film and receiving notes.”
According to Croft, who is a colorist at Periscope, “We wanted the image to feel beaten and rough around the edges, mimicking the world of our characters. We really took inspiration from films shot on 16mm, mirroring the grain profiles, lens aberrations, and saturation limitations with our colors feeling more dense than poppy, to pull away from digital cleanliness. DaVinci Resolve made it easy to dial in our overall look, and then slowly push the intensity over the course of the film as we follow the main character’s descent into a sort of hellish nightmare.
“Justin really wanted a heavy grain, so we looked at many grain options, various real scans and different plugins, but I ended up using the built in Resolve grain tools due to the speed and control that can be achieved. Specifically, I used a channel splitter with different grain profiles on each RGB node as this gave the most embedded feeling to the grain, rather than a simple overlay feel. The halation was also done using the built in Resolve OFX, which gave me control to dial in per shot. For the lens aberrations, just about every scene has a variation of edge blur and vignette that we ramped up and down at selective moments. This was achieved with the camera lens blur OFX, lens distortion OFX, and two circular Power Window nodes dropping the gamma.”
“The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K came in clutch during many interesting circumstances while filming,” said Stern. “For example, we were shooting in downtown Chicago and kept losing signal communication with the follow cars and all the tech involved with controlling the iris on a hot summer day. The camera was able to hold the wild array of highlights bouncing off the skyscrapers back into the vehicle. It’s form factor alone allowed us to accomplish more physically than we would have otherwise. Coming in as a crash camera, it left the hero.”
“Our approach to the film was very docu style, while needing to anchor ourselves to the character at a consistent distance so that it would not feel like a documentary,” continued Stern. “This idea was rather tricky, especially when entering tight spaces and needing the latitude to handle both the shadows and highlights. For example, when the main character jumps into a Bentley coupe for a getaway or for an intimate shot in the back of a Rolls-Royce Ghost sedan where we couldn’t fit a full cinema package. The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K’s size and its ability to give us a healthy negative to play with later made it perfect. Not to mention how Blackmagic RAW created a seamless transition into post.”
“Since 99 percent of our film was shoulder cam, this translated to all effects needing tracking,” concluded Denton. “Luckily the tracking in Fusion is just so good. While we created some ghostly effects for ‘Curse of the Sin Eater,’ my goal was to use VFX in a more utilitarian way for the majority of the film. When first reading the script, the story felt very grounded to me. This translated to going with a shoulder cam verité style of shooting. So, there are a lot of invisible VFX at play where we painted out reflections, equipment, or added walls back in. These aren’t the wild VFX shots that people want to hear about, but they are the kinds of shots that bring a film to life.”
Press Photography
Product photos of Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, DaVinci Resolve Studio and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images
About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com
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Curse of the Sin Eater Used DaVinci Resolve Studio and Blackmagic Cloud for End to End Post Production
