Adapted from Charles Forsman’s graphic novel, the episodic television series follows two awkward teenagers who start up an unlikely romance on a road trip to escape their unhappy home lives.

With just ten days to grade eight episodes, CHEAT’s Toby Tomkins needed to develop a rich, Americana look that would not only complement the dark narrative but would also work across a range of locations and timescales. “Our references were films such as Revolutionary Road and No Country for Old Men, which have richness and denseness to them, with skin tones almost a leathery red, adding some warmth to the characters. To complement the darkly comic nature of the story, we used that as a starting point to create an Americana look, with a distinctive print feel," he begins.

CHEAT had to conform more than 50 days worth of rushes and 100 TBs of 7K and 8K RAW material spread across 40 drives, a process which was completed by Caroline Morin using DaVinci Resolve's media management tools. The Linux workstation used during the DI relied on dual Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 processors to debayer the R3D RAW files while the realtime DI workload was supported by four Nvidia GTX 1080Ti GPUs attached to the workstation via a Cubix Expander.

Using the DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel, Tomkins created a complex mix of parallel, serial and layer nodes to establish the base look and then blend LUTs in and out to produce the distinctions required for each scene in the series. ”With so much of the series taking place on the road, nearly every new scene was a new location and lighting set up. With the base look applied, I'd then use lift, gamma and gain to refine the look, depending on the lighting ratios and mood of any given scene," Toby explains.

"Resolve’s grouping tools were also beneficial. I was able to compound nodes within a pre-built tree, allowing me to keep the complex structure logical and organized throughout. I could even ripple changes through the nodes across a whole series of shots, which saved a lot of time."

The tight post-production schedule meant that CHEAT did not have a lot of time for keyframing, and as such, relied heavily on DaVinci Resolve's tracker. "Knowing that I could trust Resolve to handle the heavy lifting when it came to tracking power windows, enabled me to concentrate on more complex, isolated work such as getting skin tones right before diving into the secondaries.

“Our ability to now conform, grade and deliver in one application is amazing," concludes Tomkins. “DaVinci Resolve is an incredibly flexible offering for post production that has allowed us to build and develop a workflow that revolves around our preferred way of working."

The End of the F•••ing World is exclusively available to view now on All 4 in the UK and will be available globally in early 2018.

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Product photos of 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.