At NAB2017 (booth SL3828, Las Vegas Convention Center, 24–27 April), FilmLight will demonstrate its version 5.0 advanced colour tools. Users will benefit from the same powerful toolkit, and a consistent and familiar user experience, from the flagship Baselight colour grading and finishing system, through Baselight Editions, to Daylight and the new on-set application, Prelight.
“We are delivering 5.0 everywhere, bringing a new level of colour control and creative possibilities from the very start of a production right to the final deliverables,” said Wolfgang Lempp, CEO of FilmLight. “And, importantly, colour and artistic intent is accompanying all deliverables precisely and with minimum effort, be it for HDR and SDR or even 360 VR grading.”
Version 5.0 introduces a modern way of handling colour, with the new Base Grade that accurately mimics the way the eye sees colour to yield a more natural feel, with smooth, consistent changes in the controls. 5.0 also blurs the line between traditional colour correction and VFX with new features such as paint, perspective tracking, warping, depth keying, relighting and more.
Base Grade
NAB visitors can explore the new functionality in a number of demonstration areas, including on Baselight ONE, the compact system designed for any size of colour suite, Baselight TWO, the all-around solution, and Baselight X, which provides ultra-high bandwidth for the most demanding projects.
Sam Chynoweth, Colourist at Animal Logic, recently graded The LEGO Batman Movie on Baselight 5.0. “When grading the latest feature in the LEGO® movie franchise, we were able to get all those colours from the big-screen version into the 709 deliverable with minimal compromise. Baselight’s gamut compression tool just revolutionises the way you do it.
“We are very excited by many of the new tools in Baselight 5.0, such as the world-space matte feature and GL shaders, which will save us a lot of time and allow us to write specific tools for production,” he added. “Baselight has allowed us to push the grading process right back to become a key part of production, and not just post.”
Bringing colour control and the FilmLight BLG (Baselight Linked Grade) metadata system to the shoot is the new Prelight ON-SET, a macOS app for preview and grading. A key feature on display will be the ARRI Alexa SXT and Panasonic Varicam integration, with both cameras supporting BLG or grade metadata so that video assist and editorial outputs automatically have the preferred look. Additionally, Daylight 5.0, the powerful dailies platform for shot management and high-performance transcoding, will be demonstrated.
Version 5.0 also reaches Baselight Editions, the plugins for Avid and NUKE. While Baselight for Avid and NUKE 5.0 both enjoy the benefits of the Base Grade as well as colour tools such as midtone contrast and filters for denoise and deflicker, Baselight for NUKE harnesses the boosted functionality in the version 5.0 BLG. This allows Baselight to act as a multi-input node in NUKE so that BLG files can refer to multiple input images and OpenEXR channels.
FilmLight products will also be featured at other booths during NAB. Sony and Dolby, long-term clients and technology partners of FilmLight, have implemented Baselight across their facilities worldwide to deploy high-resolution, high-bit depth HDR grading and finishing. At booth SU1702, Dolby’s colourists and colour scientists will present the Dolby Vision content creation workflow and process using the Baselight toolset. On booth C11001 Sony and FilmLight experts will demonstrate their joint solutions for delivering HDR and Ultra HD 4K content, from Prelight ON-SET, through the Daylight dailies platform, to the Baselight final grade with X-OCN/RAW F5 and F55 footage.
ARRI specialists on booth C7925 will show an on-set HDR monitoring setup with the ALEXA SXT and Prelight, displayed on the new Canon DP-V2420 HDR 1000nit monitor.
New partner Black Box (booth SL9321) will present Baselight with the FilmLight Slate control surface, working in conjunction with their Black Box KVM. This new solution allows customers to increase the distance between operators and their Baselight systems in line with their operational, IT or security requirements.
