FilmLight’s much anticipated Baselight 6.0 is now in successful beta testing with customers around the world and a step closer to being utilised by the global colorist community. Baselight 6.0 is FilmLight’s latest version of the popular Baselight grading software, helping professional colorists to realize their creative vision.
Baselight 6.0 brings colorists multiple new features and tool upgrades. Amongst the ground-breaking new tools is an improved and modernised timeline, a new primary grading tool, X Grade, and a unique new look development tool, Chromogen. The new features, which are currently being put through their paces by several customers on live projects with complex workflows and creative requirements, are set to bring colorists multiple gains in productivity and creativity – expanding the boundaries of what they can achieve in and around the grading suite.
“Our team has been working tirelessly to bring our customers a release which really moves Baselight forward,” said Martin Tlaskal, lead developer at FilmLight. “We are continuously taking on board feedback from our customers and reviewing the way our community works in reality. We are proud to say that Baselight 6.0 has been shaped around this ongoing feedback and research, so it continues to support their unique and creative role as intuitively and effectively as possible.”
X Grade is a revolutionary new primary color correction tool which saves colorists valuable time when working on image reshaping. It allows colorists to make multiple localised and complex corrections in a single layer – without having to create a key or matte. X Grade works with images gently and sympathetically and, unlike other tools on the market, ensures that corrections do not result in folds in the color space, meaning they can be safely copied to shots with a completely different color palette.
Peter Doyle, supervising colorist, Postworks New York, has been part of the beta programme. “X Grade has refined the process of selective color work,” he said. “It has improved my productivity, as it offers a cleaner way of interacting with imagery without the convoluted process of color space conversions and controls that are not quite optimal.”
Sebastian Guest, freelance colorist, recently finished a Swedish feature film using Baselight 6.0. “X Grade was the star of the show,” said Guest. “It’s such an enjoyable and easy tool to use and is incredibly intuitive and organic. Once we started using it, we kept finding more and more ways to utilise it. We got so much value from it.”
Chromogen, FilmLight’s new look development tool, has been developed to provide colorists with more creative freedom when producing show looks with their cinematographer and director. Today, colorists often produce looks by blending and editing their existing film-based look up tables – limiting their ability to produce a unique vision. With Chromogen, colorists can now mimic classic cinematography looks and easily adapt and modify them to create entirely distinctive imagery. They can easily produce film-based looks from scratch, as well as any new looks outside the popular aesthetic of film.
Jack Jones, colorist and CTO at Roundtable Post, recently used Chromogen to build a new LUT for an upcoming Netflix documentary. “I ended up building the look completely from scratch based on a ‘70s aesthetic,” he explained. “I built it using 31 different layers within Chromogen. One of the key benefits is that it is almost impossible to ‘break’ the footage with the tool, and you can manipulate the look on a per scene basis if necessary. It’s the equivalent of being able to adjust and fix parts of a LUT. It’s incredibly unique and I believe we will look back on the release of Chromogen as a key moment in the evolution of DI – as the first true look development tool.”
Also with Baselight 6.0, colorists can find a completely re-envisioned Baselight timeline. While still retaining a familiar look and feel, the timeline now boosts a much cleaner and more modern user interface. It also integrates a host of handy new functionality, such as track support and a new ‘processing tree overlay’ to provide a clearer view on the underlying node tree that it represents, plus much more.
Paul Harrison, colorist and co-founder of Residence Pictures in the UK said, “My favorite feature is the improvements to the timeline, as it will have the biggest impact on my day-to-day work. The new UI is great, being able to collapse big timeline stacks is a really useful feature, and being able to lock grades to do trim passes is brilliant.”
FilmLight http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk