In this masterclass, Lynette Duensing invites you into the renowned trailer company “Instinctual” in Hollywood and her color grading suite to study theatrical trailer grading. She has created cutting edge looks for numerous iconic productions. Her trailer projects for Sony Picture Animation, Columbia Pictures and TriStar include “Spider Man: Into the Spider-verse”, “Hotel Transylvania”, “Where the Crawdads Sing”, The Woman King”, and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”, among many others.
There is a ton of valuable insight in this masterclass for every colorist regardless of skill level. Watch today and get an exclusive look into the art of theatrical color grading in Hollywood!
Lynette Duensing is a Senior Colorist at Instinctual LLC in Hollywood. She has over 30 years of color grading experience using multiple finishing platforms including DaVinci Resolve and Baselight and Lustre. She’s worked in Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Shanghai, grading feature film DI’s, TVC’s, episodic television, music videos and restoration/preservation projects. At Instinctual, she grades theatrical trailers for Sony Pictures Entertainment and oversees color for final DCP delivery. Lynette is a mentor for the HPA Young Entertainment Professionals, Colorist Society Fellow, and member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
Introduction to trailer grading
Lynette walks through the basics of her ACES workflow when working with trailers for Sony Animation feature films. Also touches on the importance of paying attention to the whitepoint designated by the studio or post production facility that hosts the project.
In this lesson, Lynette talks about how shots in features films and their trailers need separate treatment. She continues to talk about how EXRs and embedded mattes are used to separate parts of the shots, and demoing how to combine mattes to create new mattes for more detailed control.
Lynette breaks down her parallel node tree from scratch, connects mattes to the nodes and hue shifts some elements in a shot. Discusses the benefits of using parallel nodes instead of serial nodes, and the power of working with various node setups.
Demonstrating the disadvantage of using manual transforms, and discussing the colorists role in the big picture.
Lynette presents the trailer of a vampire movie that uses a YRGB workflow in DaVinci Resolve. Talks about collaborative workflows and remote solutions.
In this lesson, Lynette talks about how to conduct a session, get along with collaborators and having the client come back time after time.
Going through different scenarios with pre- and post grade placements of transforms and show luts. Continues to explain the process of rec709 to DCI transforms, and in-depth explanations of white point adaptions.
In this lesson, Lynette walks through the process of adding transforms and trims in groups.
Talks about home setups and alternative ways to work post pandemic.
Discussing when a task should be handled by anyone else than the colorist.
Trailers are rated for suitability to various kinds of audiences, and Lynette talks about what it requires to meet the requirements and shows her node setup for blood removal.
2 Comments
Justinian Buckley
Thanks Lynette for the clear insight into trailer grading.
The importance of: Workflow, using the right tools for the job and working with clients can be applied to all forms of colour grading.
Thomas Singh
Thank you Lynette for letting us into your color grading suite, I learned a lot from this class.