DaVinci Resolve for Beginners

Learn the essentials of color correcting and color grading video footage with this powerful post-production software

• Why Do We Colour Grade?
• Opening Davinci Resolve for the First Time
• Exporting Your Film from Premiere
• Importing Footage with XML or Flattened QT
• Finding Still Images as References
• Log and Raw Terminology
• Exploring Nodes
• Playback Speed and Creating Caches
• Practice: Preparing Our Media for Grading
• Primary Controls
• Learning to Use Scopes
• First Correction - Changing Levels
• Second Correction - Changing Colour
• Matching Colour and Contrast between Shots
• Giving Your Film a Feel
• Practice: Balancing Then Giving Shots Feeling
• Meaning of Secondaries and Using the Qualifier
• Power Windows and Drawing Shapes
• Tracking with Power Windows
• Curves as Secondaries
• Parallel vs Serial Nodes, and Alpha Channels
• Using Keyframes
• Practice: Keys, Trackers, and Keyframes
• Luts
• Easy Teal and Orange Split Tone Look
• Bleach Bypass Look
• Cross Processed Look
• Low Contrast Vintage Film Look
• Assessing and Recreating Looks from TV
• Using Colour Theory in Your Work
• Practice: Experimenting with Creative Looks
• Remote Grades, Groups, and Colourtrace
• Organizing the Node Tree
• Useful Terms
• Grading Control Surfaces
• Practice: Being More Efficient
• Delivery Interface and Exporting
• Exporting with Handles to Return to Premiere
• Export Colours and Why They Change
• Databases and Project Archiving
• Practice: Exporting Our Work

As a professional colorist, Alex Berry’s job is to help capture a viewer’s attention by enhancing the mood and emotion of a film. What used to be a luxury reserved for only the most high-budget film projects has now become a necessity for any professional project in the audiovisual industry.

In this 6-course Domestika Basics, Alex Berry shows you how to add balance and stylize your video footage with the basic and advanced features offered in the free post-production software DaVinci Resolve.

Get started by meeting your instructor and learning about the concepts and purpose of color grading. Explore the interface of DaVinci Resolve and learn how to prepare your video footage for coloring.

Then, learn the different tools needed to start balancing and correcting color. Discover how to measure and compare adjustments using scopes and levels to match footage between different shots.

See how to make precise adjustments to color with secondary controls like keys, power windows, curves, and keyframes. Discover the Qualifier tool and learn how to make adjustments to specific areas of an image.

Learn Alex’s favorite techniques for giving your film a unique stylized look. Explore LUTs and see how to use scopes to deconstruct and emulate looks you find in the real world.

Maximize your productivity and learn how to be more efficient with your color grading work. See how Alex organizes his workflow with remote grades and node trees.

Finally, learn how to export your video footage and share it with your clients. See the best way to backup a project and database in DaVinci Resolve, and the problems you may encounter with third-party software.

Technical Requirements

To take this course, you will need a computer with DaVinci Resolve installed (free download available online). A basic understanding of video formats and non-linear editing software is nice to have, but is not essential.