Producer and Post Production Specialist Chris Sobchack of Wraptastic Productions used DaVinci Resolve Studio, along with a DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel, a Blackmagic eGPU and UltraStudio 4K capture and playback device, for editing, grading and audio post on the remote shoot. Captured in Elton John’s own driveway using a camcorder, tablet and smartphone on a Movo handheld rig, with post completed at Sobchack’s Los Angeles home, it was important to maintain high quality visuals and pristine sound worthy of Elton John and the global event despite the unique production circumstances.    

“This was obviously unknown territory,” explained Sobchack. “To keep exposure to a minimum, one trusted crew member was onsite during the shoot, along with David Furnish, Elton’s husband and CEO of Rocket Entertainment. David directed and shot Elton’s performance in just two takes. The three video tracks and individual direct vocal and piano recordings were sent to me immediately after the shoot.”    

Sobchack ingested the elements into DaVinci Resolve Studio’s media pool, and since he had no timecode or slate to rely on, he used the edit page’s audio waveforms, fine tuning within the Fairlight page to manually sync all three video tracks with their onboard audio. Once complete, he brought in the raw WAV audio files, repeating the process to sync the piano and vocal tracks to the master video.    

Sobchack and his wife Nicole Sobchack then partnered on the edit. “I love the ability to resize the video and audio tracks separately depending on what I am doing,” he said. “I needed to use the waveforms to manually sync the assets, and the simple, quick keys to zoom in and out and snap back to a full project timeline view made it a breeze.”    

DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fairlight page was used for all audio processing and to fine tune the manual sync of the assets. “I love the scrub feature, and being able to see the GUIs for all the plugins, such as iZotope‘s RX 7 and Waves, gives you a real visual feel for what’s going on,” added Sobchack.    

Sobchack then began grading, which according him was a little challenging given the camcorder’s color science was more Log, while the tablet and smartphone were vibrant Rec. 709. “I had to meet somewhere in the middle for continuity,” he said. “As always, I used DaVinci Resolve Studio’s stills gallery and wipes to fine tune. I also had to keyframe the color on the motion shots due to the cameras’ changing color in different light. We went for great skin tones and realistic color that popped and would show well on broadcast, regardless of what the show’s overall colorist did on top of our grade.”    

“You really have to wear a lot of hats as a top to tails producer, especially when turning around a project so quickly,” concluded Sobchack. “DaVinci Resolve Studio’s pages helped keep me on point within the workflow, taking care of things in a very orderly and efficient way. Additionally, having an all in one solution instead of having to move the project from program to program and then reassemble it all, was invaluable. All of this helped us quickly create a product worthy of Sir Elton John.”    

Press Photography  

Product photos of DaVinci Resolve Studio, DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel, Blackmagic eGPU, UltraStudio 4K, as well as 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 Emmyâ„¢ 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.