there have been plenty of Batman films and series over the years, both animated and live-action, all of which taking cue from the very dark and cold aesthetic that Tim Burton gave his in 1989. Since then, every iteration, animated or not, has leaned into that brooding tone. The main differences from one film to the other have been their color cast. For example, in Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever from 1995, you have this fluorescent green hue that's very present in the lighting throughout the film. Then in Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises from 2012, we have a solid cyan in the shadows and blacks, while the highlights are much warmer. Or from Snyder's Batman vs Superman in 2016, it's a slightly greenish turquoise that we find in the lowlights. Or from the Justice League, his version, there is no other version. Then we of course have the latest version which just came out, The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves, cinematography by Greg Frazier, and

graded by David Cole from Photocam Film Lab and post-production studio based in California. This film is very contrasty and atmospheric, and there's a few things here that we can analyze. First, the image is globally desaturated, and in general, when you increase the contrast of an image, you also increase its saturation. There is a method to increase the contrast while reducing the saturation, which is called bleach bypass. It was initially a chemical treatment during the development process of actual film. We find the bleach bypass process in films like Seven, Saving Private Ryan, and Minority Report. It's characterized by strong contrast, low saturation, and a color cast for ambience. In The Batman, red-orange is the primary color, then you have turquoise added subtly into the shadows and a slight green in the mid-tones. The bleach bypass and grainy look of The Batman was built out by Photochem Studio by printing the digital image on a 35-millimeter film print, then scanning it in to work with in post-production. This is what's called a

positive intermediate. It allows you to have the rendering of film with the flexibility of digital. But now, let's see how we can replicate this look as faithfully as possible in DaVinci Resolve. For this first scene, we have a clip shot in log with an Arri Alexa Mini, a scene that goes from very light to very dark. And here we have our reference image that has the look that we're going to try to recreate. First, we need to configure our workspace. We will use the Rec.709 color space with a gamma of 2.4, a standard model for broadcasting on YouTube, for example. Now, we'll create a series of nodes: the first node for noise reduction, the second which will be used for primary corrections, then I will reproduce the bleach bypass effect with two layer nodes, a node to give a film print look with FilmConvert, and then three nodes for effects. Since this was shot in log, I could use the color space transform effect to convert my log image to Rec.709, but we prefer to do this manually in order to choose the details.

that we want to keep in the low lights on our primary corrections node. We'll use the RGB curve to adjust the image and increase the saturation a bit. The orange tones are a little aggressive, so we'll reduce the color boost slightly. Our image is a bit noisy too, so we'll drop in some noise reduction on our dedicated node here. Now with that done, we'll recreate the bleach bypass effect. To do this, we have to overlay the color image on the black and white image, then play with blending modes with layer nodes. The bottom node takes precedence over the above node, so we'll temporarily disable the second layered node to see what we're doing. Now we have to desaturate the image. We could simply reduce the saturation to zero, but here we are going to use a technique that gives us more flexibility. We'll go into the RGB mixer, we'll pass our image in monochrome, then we'll play with three RGB levels to bring out certain areas. On the layer mixer, we're going to switch the composite mode to soft light. We can

also use overlay or hard light, depending on what you're looking for. Our image is also very dark, so we're going to use the RGB curves to raise the low lights a bit on the top node, and just like that, again on the bottom one. Then add a new serial node to increase the color saturation a bit, just after the bleach bypass. In the Batman, we noticed some turquoise in the shadows. To add this, we're going to use a color warper in chroma-luma mode. The grid represents our highlights at the top and our shadows at the bottom. We'll adjust the axis angle to about -15 in order to operate on turquoise, and now we push the bottom points to the left to increase the saturation of the turquoise in the low lights. And we can see the effect that this is having by toggling it on and off to give us a before and after. Next up, we're going to use FilmConvert to give our image a film print look. This step is very helpful to harmonize the scene as a whole to give

us a nice overall look, a bit like a creative LUT that we would apply as a final touch. We can choose Kodak Vision 3 5207 and adjust the color temperature and saturation. I don't want grain on the specific node; we're going to add that later, so we're going to set that to zero here. We'll make some minor adjustments on the shadows and midtones as well. If you haven't used FilmConvert, definitely jump into the notes and give it a test drive. It's easily one of my favorite image correction tools. Yes, they are a partner on this episode, but a FilmConvert plugin has found its way into every bit of corrected image that I've done in basically the last six years, at least. It's crazy simple to use and gives a great filmic quality too. Like we'll see in a minute, it has some of the best grain out there. I'll also often use just this plugin to grade the entirety of my footage in Premiere without needing anything else. So again, check out the

notes for more on that to give it a shot for yourself. But now, as we play through, you'll notice that the skin tones on the face are too dark and saturated compared to what we see in the Batman reference. So, we'll create a power window with the pen tool to outline the face. Then, we'll launch the tracking and let DaVinci Resolve do its double magic work. At the end of the scene here, the actor's face is no longer visible, so we'll just use keyframes to make the power window disappear right at the right time. We'll also remove any unnecessary tracking points, and in my keyframes window, I will enable automatic keyframing on Corrector 9, as I am currently working on the 9th node. Here, we'll add a dynamic keyframe and reduce the opacity of my power window to 0. And then, a keyframe is added automatically, and now we have our mask disappearing right where we need it to at the end. Now, go to the color warper and reduce the saturation of the skin.

tones, and we can also increase it in luminance here and take a look at our before and after. Now, the Batman was shot on anamorphic lenses, which generates aberrations and distortions, which you can see here. The edges are blurred a bit and stretched, and we can try to replicate that effect here too. We'll add a new serial node and throw on a radial blur effect, then reduce its intensity a bit to limit the radial blur to the right and left edges of the image. We're going to use a power window again, adjust it to get the area that you need, and then invert that mask. The grayed-out sections represent the areas that will not be affected, and once again, we can look at our before and after. For vignetting, we'll add a new serial node again in advanced mode. I adjust the intensity of the effect, then switch its composite type to soft light. This helps to accentuate the contrast of the shades that pass under the vignetted area, and finally, we'll add some sexy grain again.

we are trying to match the Batman, and with Film Convert, we can add very realistic grain. So, we'll drop film chroma and luma to zero, then the 35 millimeter three perf at around 50, and a size around 10. And there you go, crazy easy, and we have some gorgeous gray. Another example is with this clip shot on red. My file is in red raw, so in DaVinci Resolve, go to camera raw and simply adjust the color space. Then adjust white balance to have a relatively neutral working base. For the first node, we're going to have our primary corrections. We'll adjust our RGB curve here until we have a better exposure to what we're looking for, and our image contains only a few shades. So, we're going to boost the orange and turquoise tones in the low lights, but the color warper. We'll put our axis on about -45, lock in the center point, then increase the saturation on both hues. And this is giving us some depth to our image, which again we can see in the

before and after. Above that, I need to increase the warmth of the image compared to our reference still frames. So, we'll create a new node and increase the temperature. But now, our skin tones are a bit too orange, so create a new node and use the qualifier to isolate the skin tones. Then, use the matte finesse setting in order to have a smooth selection. And with the color warper, reduce the saturation of the skin and slightly push its tint toward a yellow to get it more consistent with the mood and tone of the Batman. Our image is a little too bright, though, so go back to our first node and modify the RGB curve to darken the whole thing until it hits the look that we're after. I would also like to bring out the mask of the character, so in a new node, we'll draw a power window with the pen tool and put a 10 in softness. Then, start tracking to make the mask stand out. We'll increase the shadows a bit, say around 30 in the shadows. Once again, we'll take a look at our before and

after to see what we've done. Now, we'll add some glow to get a hazy look. Here, the idea is to have a glow with a low gain but a strong gamma to really have a diffused glow effect. We'll adjust gain and gamma and saturation, and we'll put an orange tint as the color filter. Then, change the composite type to screen to avoid clipping in the highlights. For the final touches, we'll add lens blur, vignetting, and some grain using film convert again, and we're done. And that's it, how we replicated the look of the Batman. If you're looking to get solid looks quickly, again, check out film convert in the notes below. And of course, we have a bunch of high-quality film LUTs on our store at tryingdigital.com. And if you want the LUT that we created to match the Batman, we're giving that away for free at the link below. And as always, don't forget to write, shoot, edit, repeat. You

Recreating the Look of The Batman

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