How to achieve cinematic film look by colour grading in DaVinci Resolve

Colour grading has enabled cinematographers to more accurately convey their visions to audiences since colour film was invented. Colour can manipu-late the emotions of an audience on both the conscience and subconscious levels. The purpose of this thesis was to establish whether professional colour results could be achieved by using widely available consumer equipment. Having an accurately calibrated monitor is essential for colour work and has the potential to introduce serious problems if such a monitor is not available to the filmmaker, as a non-calibrated screen cannot be trusted to display colours correctly. Three colour graded videos were experiments based on the author’s own re-search, two of which had styles sourced from Hollywood films renowned for their distinctive colour styles, the third was in the author’s own style. Research were tested out by applying different colour grades to a video to af-fect its appearance. The different video examples were processed by following the Hollywood standard colour grading system in order to discover how easy the original source material was to replicate. The objective was to create three cinematic, visually appealing and high-production-quality videos by using col-our grading as the main tool. It was found that consumer cameras combined with free software give results that are on par with commercially released films, thus allowing filmmakers with low funds to compete with big-budget produc-tions in terms of the quality and look of the finished product. Colour grading can be seen as a passive means of storytelling and audiences are generally not aware of colour effects in a film, even though it has an influ-ence upon them, and as such it can be a useful tool to manipulate their emo-tions. The processes and differences between colour grading and colour correction, as well as the practicalities behind them, are explained with the aid of pictures. DaVinci Resolve's colour grading tools and general features are also ex-plained thoroughly