Master Color Grading with Jason Bowdach

Addressing the numerous requests we have received in the past few months, we are starting this year with a 3-Day (9 Hour) Masterclass for beginners!  We do believe there is need for a class that our young scholars can look upto for confidence and review from time to time – a class that is information dense, builds the right foundation and is priced low to facilitate participation! 

Master Color Grading is TAC's first training series dedicated for beginners and the only one you will ever need. Build the right base and get confident with Resolve workflows with Hollywood colorist Jason Bowdach.

Meet your Instructor: Jason Bowdach is a senior colorist & trainer based in Los Angeles, California. He is also the founder & chief developer at PixelTools. 

Jason joined Disney in 2009, where he started within international mastering and QC, working on all matter of Disney branded content, every from a classic Mickey Mouse shorts to Pixar films. During his  tenure, he assisted the company migrate its massive content library of SD and HD tape-based assets over to the new Apple ProRes format and worked to establish a massive metadata library around this relatively new file format.

In 2014, Jason left Disney-ABC to freelance as a colorist around Los Angeles and remotely, working for companies such as Adobe, Google, and FotoKem. In 2020, Jason joined Fox Studios as a colorist and finishing artist. He helped develop the in-house DaVinci Resolve workflow for grading and finishing all online commercials, which previously was finished entirely in Flame. 

Outside of his grading and development work, Jason writes and teaches about color and post production workflow for companies such as TAC, Mixing Light, Lowepost, and Frame.io. He’s a proud member of the Colorist Society, a professional organization representing colorists around the globe, and NABET Local 53.

Questions

Who should take this class?

Independent filmmakers, editors, cinematographers, and of course, aspiring colorists overwhelmed by YouTube!

Basically, anyone who is just shifting from Adobe Premiere and/or starting out with Resolve and wants to get confident with the color tools, workflows & methodology!

Price: Late Admission is on and we have priced the three-day Masterclass at $79!

That’s still ~ $26/day! It’s a steal for anyone who is starting fresh or someone who wants to revisit the basics.

Session Overview

Day One ~3 Hours - Mar 10, 2023

Quick Walkthrough of DaVinci Resolve Pages

Multiple Applications in One, the entire Adobe Suite in one app!

UI & Feature Overwhelm are totally normal!

Introduction to Color Page and Discussion of tools

Why so many tools? Is there a “correct” tool for the job?

Discussion of Overall Color Grading Workflow

Exposure, Balance, Shot Matching, Secondary Grading, Creating a Look

Working in Multiple passes

Scopes

Waveform

Parade

Vectorscope

Skin Tone line

Nodes

Serial

Layer

Parallel

Node Key

Adjusting Exposure

Adjusting levels with LGG

Adjusting levels Contrast & Pivot (with a quick look at linear contrast in settings)

Adjusting levels with Curves

Intro to Giant Curves

Gang v Unganged (Y Only)

Adjusting levels with offset (for log footage only)

Adjusting exposure with HDR Panel

Adjusting exposure with PixelTools exposureTool DCTL

Questions

Day Two ~3 Hours - Mar 11, 2023

Adjusting Color Balance and White Balance

Adjusting via HDR Color Temp / Tint

Adjusting via Primary Panel Temp / Tint (plus tip when using control panels)

Adjusting via offset (for log footage)

Adjusting via Chromatic Adaptation FX (for specific corrections)

Adjusting Saturation

Many ways

Adjusting saturation of specific hues

Shot Matching

Introduction to comparing & matching shots

Split screen

Lightbox View

Stills

Flags & Groups

Secondary Corrections

Memory Colors - Skies, Skin, Grass, Stop Signs, Blood, etc

How we can utilize these

Adjusting skies with hue vs curves

Adjusting skin tone using hue vs curves

HSL Qualifiers and Power Windows (tracking)

Noise Reduction

• Temporal NR
• Spatial NR
• Highlight Modes

Questions

Day Three ~3 Hours - Mar 12, 2023

Setting up Basic Color Management in Resolve

Set up RCM DWG project with raw media

Secondary Correction & Isolations (Continued)

Color Warper - highly precise

Magic Mask

How AI can help us isolate complex objects

Important ResolveFX

Skin Smoothing via Face Refinement

Vignette

Look Creation

Split Tone

• Curves
• PixelTools splitTone

Bleach Bypass

• Y-Only Curves
• Layer Mixer

Warm and Cool (Teal and Orange)

• Printer Lights
• Curves
• Hue Shifting

Film Print Emulation

• Grade your own via matching
• Use the built-in 2383 LUT (Free PowerGrade available via PixelTools)
• Plug-ins & DCTLs