Foliascope edits stop motion film ‘The Inventor’ with DaVinci Resolve

Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve was the software of choice for production company Foliascope to edit and color grade ‘The Inventor’, a stop motion film about the life of Leonardo da Vinci.

Written and directed by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jim Capobianco, The Inventor is a film that combines volume and traditional animation techniques. To realize this film, which draws on his deep admiration for Leonardo da Vinci, Capobianco approached Foliascope, an independent animation studio in France: “From the outset, we wanted to depict Leonardo da Vinci’s world as handcrafted and drawn, not CG generated. This, to me, felt very da Vinci. However, to use stop motion on our small budget, I had to conceive it in a more economical but still charming and engaging way,” explained Capobianco.

The Foliascope CEO, Ilan Urroz, and his team undertook rigorous research in order to recreate da Vinci’s legacy. When recreating the artist’s studios, machinery and props, they turned to archives and the artist’s own drawings. It was not an easy project, as Urroz explains: “Films of this scale and complexity represent a massive investment in both time and money, with some projects lasting upwards of 24 months, during which multiple stages of production and post are undertaken simultaneously, mixing both offline and online formats. And all that requires us to distribute the work amongst multiple collaborators.”

After careful consideration of the approach to this production, Foliascope chose DaVinci Resolve Studio to handle all aspects of animation editing. This gave Foliascope the ability to continue editing, applying visual, color and sound effects, and exporting files during production, resulting in a more streamlined and efficient workflow: “DaVinci Resolve played a big part in crafting the edit. Our ambition was to bring stop motion and cartoon animation together, so we had to draw up a schedule integrating the two shooting techniques and their interdependence,” says Nicolas Flory, art director and editor at Foliascope.

Foliascope employed a floating point workflow based on openEXR and ACES color management, an approach that simplified the conversion of studio footage from source to DaVinci Resolve Studio and Fusion Studio compatible formats, while providing greater flexibility in post production. Foliascope also expanded its processes to include audio mixing and mastering using the Fusion module in DaVinci Resolve Studio. This included dialogue, room effects and the film’s original soundtrack, composed by Alex Mandel.

Other articles on Blackmagic [INT], Foliascope [INT]