Blackmagic Design announced that DaVinci Resolve color correction was used by Manila based post production company WeLovePost for “EI Presidente,” a biopic film about General Emilio Aguinaldo, the first president of the Philippine Republic. The film tells the story of how the Philippines achieved independence and stars E.R. Ejercito in the lead role, with Cesar Montano, Christopher de Leon, Nora Aunor and Cristine Reyes in supporting roles.
As one of the leading post houses in Manila, WeLovePost approached the post production process with its core team: Post Producer Maia Yambao Lopez, Editor and Chief Technology Office Jason Cahapay, Editor Ryan Orduna and Colorist Jam Jimenez. With a post production infrastructure completely built around Blackmagic Design’s products, WeLovePost relied on DaVinci Resolve, as well as Blackmagic Design’s Studio Videohub router, DeckLink HD Extreme 3D capture and playback card, UltraScope waveform monitoring and various Mini Converters.
“The director wanted the look of the film to really stand out, so we went against the natural look of the material. The warm daylight scenes were graded to look cold and uninviting, almost as if they were set during winter. Most of the battle scenes were done this way because it made the fighting a little bit more unsettling,“ said Jam. “Nighttime provided a bit of refuge for the characters as this was the time for them to rest and plan their next move. These scenes were therefore graded to look warm and even soothing at times. The multitude of tools offered by DaVinci Resolve allowed me to really attack each shot and each sequence in different ways to achieve consistency, despite going directly against the tones that the camera captured.”
"DaVinci Resolve handles formats from various digital sources with ease and plugs right into our existing infrastructure. We think it’s the best color grading solution out there, and it keeps getting better and better,” said Jason. “When grading ‘El Presidente,’ we were allowed to play with different looks as long as they were unique, which meant we had a somewhat freehand in doing the final look for the movie.
“Every project that comes in our door brings different challenges, and it’s these challenges that make our job exciting. For this project, we had to tweak our workflow to accommodate terabytes of DPX files,” he continued. “File management was also a challenge, and Resolve was our primary tool for generating offline dailies and conforming back to the raw DPX timeline prior to grading. It was an improvised media management procedure, and we couldn’t have done it without Resolve.”
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