In 2017 Michael McCool from Hill Air Force Base in Utah joined my AbelCine class in Burbank. He had lots of production experience but wanted to see how Resolve could help their post team be more efficient.
He loved my sessions and expressed an interest in me running a 5 day workshop for the whole production team at HAFB.
Jump to 2023 and we finally made it happen. HAFB is situated just north of Salt Lake City. At 7,000 acres it’s the second largest base in the US and home to the AFPAA 2d Audio Vision squadron. 16 students, 50% airmen and women and 50% civilians working together to produce all types of content for the US Airforce.
I started the workshop at a 101 level as some of the students hadn’t used Resolve before. Everybody had the class media so making it easy to follow along. The great thing about running a workshop for an established team is that they are all comfortable with each other, so questions flow, both ‘how to’ and creative.
By day 3 the 101 students were comfortable moving to a more 201 level. This is where we started to mix in HAFB footage for the students to work with.
Day 5 was all about ‘Looks’ and timed pressure test sessions, where the students got to color a small sequence in a set time. I would then review and mark the effort.
I really enjoyed my 5 days at Hill. Even got to play 9 holes at their own golf course!
What the students said.
Going into training, I was still fairly new to DaVinci Resolve. I had years of experience with Adobe Premiere and even Final Cut Pro X, but hadn’t reached that level of understanding in Resolve just yet. Node-based control was still a bit of a mystery to me despite going through BlackMagic’s tutorials. Through the course of the week, I became much more comfortable working with Resolve, and more importantly, started to understand why Resolve works the way it does. I feel like my color grading ability has improved quite a bit, and I better understand what’s possible. I knew Resolve had exceptional color grading tools, but now I feel like I’m actually leveraging its potential, rather than skimming its surface. I can work quickly and effectively, and know how to problem solve when issues arise.
Samuel Morse
Look out for iColorist classes at AbelCine in Brooklyn and Burbank in the Fall of 2023 or inquire about a private class.
