Film emulation in DaVinci Resolve: full Lab Class Tools walkthrough

00:00Intro

Thanks for downloading and installing Lab Class Tools. This is a run-through of what the tools can do.

It's eight plug-ins for DaVinci Resolve that make your digital footage behave like it was shot on film. Not look a bit like it: actually behave like it.

The difference between Lab Class Tools and what else is out there is our starting point. We needed to identify the ingredients that make an image look like film, from the grain to the highlight roll-off, the curves, the bloom and the halation. But rather than stopping there and trying to copy that, we went back to the chemistry.

Over six years we shot test after test on real stock, scanned everything and measured what actually happens: the light hitting the negative, the chemical reaction in development, the negative being printed onto another stock to make it positive. Every plug-in in Lab Class Tools is built from that data. We're not guessing at the look; we're rebuilding the process that creates it.

01:28What you get

You get eight plug-ins, and each one is a stage of that photochemical chain. You also get a PDF that explains what each plug-in is doing and shows you the pipeline order.

It's built for both Windows and Mac, with GPU acceleration on Windows through CUDA and on Mac through Metal.

I've also included test cards. Some of them help you check the amount of grain and halation, and those are built into the plug-ins as well.

02:10Install

Open the installer, put in your licence key and install.

This installs all of the plug-ins, but it also installs our grain scans, which we shot on film. We extracted the textures, and they're part of the algorithm. Once it's finished, hit Finish and close everything.

02:35Setting up in Resolve

Now open DaVinci Resolve. I've got a selection of different types of shots in here to show you.

The first thing to do is go to Workspace > Scripts > Lab Class Tools and install the Lab Class Master PowerGrade. Click that, and the PowerGrade is created.

If you go into your Effects library you'll see all the plug-ins are there, but you can just drag in the PowerGrade. It brings in all of the plug-ins in the correct order of the photochemical pipeline.

The first node is a Color Space Transform; this is ARRI footage. The second is where you'd make any camera adjustments, such as white balance, and do your initial grade, for example if you want to adjust shadows and highlights. Next is the first plug-in in the chain: Lab Log Shoulder.

03:43Lab Log Shoulder

When you shot film, anything that was overexposed (the highlights and the whites) didn't clip. In digital footage, they clip.

If you looked at the scopes on film, even where it was overexposed, the top end would still be rounded off. So if you've got bright parts in your shot, Lab Log Shoulder smooths out those very bright areas of the image. It's doing what film does.

04:31Lab Film Neg

Next is Lab Film Neg, which turns the image into negative space. If I turn the other nodes off and turn this one on its own, you can see we're turning the image into a negative.

You've got three stocks: 50D daylight, 250D and 500T tungsten. There's also a daylight filter. If you imagine you were shooting on film, you'd be locked to the white balance of the stock, depending on what you're shooting and what your colour space is.

There's also an exposure trim. With everything back on, you can see 500T there and 250D there, and the difference between them. These are all scientifically accurate, from all of our testing.

Here's 500T with a daylight filter, then the exposure trim. If I bring it right down and you look at the scopes, it's never going to clip. In the blacks it never clips, and the highlights never clip. It's always rounded.

06:16The other plug-ins

Then we've got halation. It's fully modelled, and I'll show you that later.

Then Lab Grain Pro, which is where most of the features are.

Then Lab Film Print, which turns the negative image into the positive. Once you've developed your neg, it's in negative space; you then expose new stock, which becomes the print: the positive image. If I turn everything else off and turn on just the neg and the print, you can see it makes a positive image.

Then Skin Lab Pro. After all of your film emulation, it gives you the ability to select skin and tweak it.

Lab Match Pro is a cool one. Say you're working multicam, or with different cameras across one shoot. You've got your master shot, you're happy with the grade, you've done your colour space transform, and it's still not quite there. I was working on a film that was multicam, with two different types of ARRI camera, and it was driving us insane; we couldn't get it to match. So we built this tool: you choose a reference frame and it makes the shot match. You can also take stills from somewhere like ShotDeck and apply those looks.

Then Lab Frame Pro. You can choose different aspect ratios, make custom aspect ratios and add guides. If you open Lab Frame Setup, you can duplicate your current timeline and it creates a new timeline with settings based on the aspect ratio you've chosen.

09:02Grading with the tools

That's all of the tools as a quick overview. Now I'm going to quickly go through how I'd use them, grading these shots.

In practice they're all on and you're flicking from one to another, adjusting the image with everything on. You wouldn't isolate things.

First, in Lab Film Neg, let's use daylight here and bring this up. I've also added push/pull. If you overexposed while shooting, you'd change the development timings, and that gives you different results. So we've built that in: you can underexpose or overexpose.

The best way is to get in and start playing. If you understand photography and shooting film, this will make sense.

As with film, the shadows and highlights are more desaturated and the mids carry more saturation, and we give you more control over that. There's colour temperature here, and it all plays back in real time.

11:20Bloom and diffusion

Then bloom and diffusion. Again, this is very subtle. A lot of people overcook it. For us it's not about making a film-like image; it was always about understanding what happens when the film gets developed.

Turn on Show Bloom Mask and turn these down so we can see what we're doing. Put the bloom intensity up, then set the threshold and bloom size. Turn the mask off and bring it right back down. You can see it's very subtle. You don't want to overcook it.

Shooting digital, images are often very sharp. So we've got emulsion diffusion and emulsion softener. Diffusion works in combination with the bloom, and the emulsion softener softens the image as well. I'll probably bring that down a bit.

13:06Grain

A tremendous amount of work went into the grain. We've got 35mm, 16mm and 65mm, and then the different stocks.

This is just texture. It isn't going to affect the colour in any way. It's about the texture: how much grain there is and where it sits across the image, from the shadows through the mids to the highlights.

500T gives you more grain, 250D slightly less and 50D less again. 16mm makes the grain bigger; 65mm makes it really fine. I'll put it on 35mm for now.

In the shadows and darker parts there's more grain. In the mids there's still grain, but less than in the shadows. In the highlights there's almost no grain at all.

Under Grain View we can show you the response map. Remember we're working in negative space, so the darker parts of the image are actually the brightest parts of the negative, and vice versa. The map tells you where the grain is: there's more grain in the bright parts of the neg than in the darker parts.

Then there's response bias. If I take it all the way off, the full image is covered in grain. If I bring it down to something like this, the darkest parts of the image won't have grain. With Grain Only, you can see what's happening: there's still grain here, but not in the darkest parts of the image. I'm pretty proud of how we've done that.

Back on Composite, the grain is doing what would happen when shooting on film. We've also got grain focus: if you think the grain is too sharp, or not sharp enough, you can look at the scopes and see what it's doing.

16:42Mechanical

Under Mechanical we've got gate weave, which is on by default. As film runs through the camera at 24 frames a second there's an ever-so-slight movement in the gate, and that's what we're replicating. This is a locked-off shot, but you can see what it's doing. You can turn it off if you don't want it.

Then there's time shift, which is shutter speed and frame rate out of sync. I'll reset those.

Then lens vignette. That's grain: the main part of the plug-in.

18:01Film Print

Then Lab Film Print. Again, we give you more controls here. You've got three different print stocks, plus bleach bypass and black and white.

There's print contrast, dye saturation and black density. If we bring black density up a bit and look down here, it crushes the blacks, but you don't lose any detail at all.

Then we've got printer lights. Before there was any colour grading software, they'd give the print more blue or more red. If they wanted sepia, say, that's how they would grade. We've got the same kind of control, so you can give the print more of a colour. Again, these should be used very subtly.

19:31Halation

Now halation, and how we've done it. Halation really should only be on the brightest parts of the image, and I've seen lots of people overcook it completely.

As you probably know, halation is a defect in the film; it's what happens without the anti-halation layer. This is modelled on real tests: we removed the anti-halation layer and shot on that stock to get those really bright highlights.

Turn on Show Halation Matte. It identifies the brightest parts of the image, and the halation only affects those parts. You can push it right up, but obviously we don't want to do that. Something like this.

If we zoom in a bit, there's the anti-halation layer setting: reduced, or you can remove it completely. Let's turn the strength right up. This is the size of the halation: 8mm is obviously going to be a lot bigger, then 16mm, 35mm and 65mm. Again, it should be used really subtly.

We've also put in test cards so you can see exactly what the halation is doing. If I bring it back down to 16mm, you can see which part of the image it's affecting. Then turn the strength down: use it subtly.

21:54Applying the grade to other shots

That's a quick overview. Now, I think this one is ARRI as well, so apply the grade. It's looking pretty cool. This one: apply grade.

You can get in and tweak. If you wanted the halation really popping around here, you could open Show Halation Matte, push it up a bit and maybe change it to 35mm. Again, very subtle.

On the grain, look at the response map: on these black parts there's no grain at all, because that's the brightest part of the image. That's all correct.

Base colour adjustments you'd probably make in the camera node. But you can also grade from one tool to another; it's all responsive.

This is all ARRI. These look overcooked. Nine times out of ten everything looks good and you just drop it in, as long as the colour space is set, and then you get in and finesse things like the grain.

This one looks good. We've also added gamut compress in Lab Film Neg; if I turn it off, you can see what's happening there. I'd say the blacks on this are too much, so I'd reset that.

On this one, maybe bring the exposure down. Less in Lab Grain Pro. Push and pull, obviously: more contrast, more colour. Reset that, bring that down. That's just very quick.

For something like this one, I suppose you'd use 500T, and then in Lab Grain Pro bring in a bit of warmth again from that sun. That gives you an idea.

26:07Frame

Then Lab Frame Pro. This is Sony footage, so the colour space is Sony S-Gamut / S-Log3.

You can choose all these different formats, such as scope. I built this because we were working on a film within a film: we had mafia scenes, the writer who's making those mafia scenes, and a documentary. We were trying different formats, and also animating from one format to another. The documentary was like this.

You've also got custom, where you can do this, and for social you've got film corners and rounded corners.

Say we want 4:3. Open Lab Frame Setup, choose Duplicate, Apply, Timeline, Aspect. It creates a new timeline, duplicated at 4:3, which is useful if you're doing social.

28:14AI and Rec.709 footage

That's a quick overview. Now, what if you were working with AI footage? I thought it was quite funny how clean Barbie looked. Obviously it needed to look like that, and there's essentially zero texture, which is what they were going for. So I thought it would be fun to see what Barbie would look like if it had been shot on film.

You'd use the same technique for AI video made with Runway or similar. The only difference is that your colour space is Rec.709 / Gamma 2.4 at the start of the pipeline.

It holds up. This is literally an MP4 downloaded from YouTube, and it holds up quite nicely.

I'm going as quickly as I can; you don't have to watch all of this. You can see how good that bloom is. Emulsion softener: soften it a bit. For grain, let's go for 250D.

On the response map, the collar, her hair and the side of the face would have hardly any grain, so we bring the bias down, a bit more, until you can see it there.

Halation would be around these areas, so show the matte and bring it in. Again, it's subtle. So: Barbie, shot on film. Obviously you'd dial it in for each shot, but I thought it was a cool little exercise.

33:08Outro

So that is Lab Class Tools: eight plug-ins, one photochemical chain, built from real film.

Have a play, push it about and see what it does for your footage. If you get stuck, or you make something you're proud of, come and let us know. Have fun, and see you on the next one.