Hideaki Anno's hit film, 'Shin Kamen Rider', graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio

The chromatic adjustments for 'Shin Kamen Rider', Hideaki Anno's hit film, were carried out with DaVinci Resolve Studio (Blackmagic Design) and a DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel device.

Seiji Saito, colorist and digital intermediate producer at DI Factory (Toho Studios), was responsible for this process.

The film was produced to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Kamen Rider, the superhero television series that has been on the air since 1971. The film premiered in March and has become the highest-grossing of all the feature films in this series. It was written and directed by Hideaki Anno, anime creator and big fan of the original series, and stars Sousuke Ikematsu, Minami Hamabe and Yu Emoto.

The feature film was graded in DI Factory, a post-production company located within the facilities of That Studios in Tokyo that has screening rooms and an exclusive space dedicated to services for television and online streaming platforms. These places include equipment with the program DaVinci Resolve Studioas well as devices DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel y DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel.

"At DI Factory, we take care of all audiovisual processes, not just editing or grading. The fact that we are located in the Toei recording studio allows us to verify test shots and advise on the colors of makeup and costumes. We are also involved in the production of feature films from the beginning. I started my professional career in a conventional post-production company, but I always wanted to be closer to the set. I would say that the way I work today is almost ideal," says Saito, who has collaborated with Hideaki Anno on the various films in the series, including Shin Godzilla y Shin Ultraman, new versions of said television programs with special effects, as well as in the animated feature film Shin Evangelion (Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time)”.

On the other hand, Saito adds that "Anno-san never gives in when it comes to his creations. For example, he brought the helmets of Rider 1 and Rider 2 and asked me to reproduce the colors exactly. He is also a big fan of the original series, so I tried to achieve that feeling of nostalgia. The show was filmed on 16 mm film, and the sensitivity of celluloid at that time was low, so the night scenes were dark and "They were scary. Also, many shots included bloody images, despite it being a children's television series. Since the film paid homage to this series, my goal was to recreate that gloomy look."

Both in this feature film and in the previous ones in the series Shin Various types of cameras were used. "The film was shot entirely with the various units available in the studio. In addition, we captured particular angles that are only achieved with small cameras. Even when production had already started, additional material continued to be received. This was not a feature film created in a conventional way," says Saito.

Unify the color

On the other hand, he adds that "the advantage of using DaVinci Resolve in this project was that I was able to unify the color of the material recorded with the different cameras. Despite having used different models, thanks to the transformation of the color space I was able to use the settings of the main camera as a reference. In this way, it was only necessary to create a conversion table. When I worked on Shin Godzilla y Shin Ultraman, I had to match the colors by eye, which turned out to be extremely difficult.”

Likewise, Saito highlighted the DaVinci Resolve support for various codecs. “For me, the most important thing about a grading tool is that it supports the use of the most recent versions of RAW files,” he says. "DaVinci Resolve is always quick to support new formats. If you can't import footage from the camera, converting it takes a lot of time and effort and doubles the data volume, which means more storage space. At the same time, the ability to use images captured with newer cameras makes the grading process more efficient."

"In my opinion, in order to improve the quality of a film, all creative processes, such as shooting, editing and sound mixing, must be carried out in a coordinated manner. Grading is one of them. As part of Toho Studios, I like to not only contribute as a colorist, but also interact with the various technologies used in the production of a feature film, in order to achieve higher quality. Originally, DaVinci Resolve was a color grading program, but it has evolved over the years, incorporating functions to edit, generate visual effects and adjust audio. It has been surprising for those of us who have been using it for a long time, but Blackmagic Design does not stick to pre-established concepts and has managed to bring together several tools in the same application, which is why the program is so successful around the world. We as users can take advantage of these technologies being aware of their evolution beyond the current paradigm. With the development of artificial intelligence, there will be more possibilities to optimize work dynamics, and for this reason. For this reason, I think it will be essential to diversify our skills in the future,” he concludes.