Kraken is a Norwegian sci-fi thriller that moves between majestic fjord landscapes, industrial fish farms, studio interiors, LED-volume stages and CG-heavy underwater sequences. From a grading perspective, the main challenge was maintaining visual continuity while allowing each environment to retain its own identity.

The main priority for senior colourist Dylan Hopkin was establishing a strong, consistent foundational look across the film. “A good grade always serves the story and characters first,” he says. “What I do should be almost invisible. My colouring shouldn’t draw attention to itself.” Before the main grade began, Hopkin worked on teasers and the main trailer, a process that helped the team prepare for the actual movie, he explains. “But teasers and trailers are commercials for the film. The looks don’t always translate directly once you see scenes in their full context.”

Hopkin walks through a selection of scenes from the film, explaining how he approached colour, contrast and continuity, and how DaVinci Resolve was used to solve specific creative and technical challenges.

A bit about Kraken

Kraken (2026) is a Norwegian monster action feature directed by Pål Øie and produced by Nordisk Film Production AS, with Handmade Films in Norwegian Woods also credited on IMDb. It was shot on location around the Sognefjord and included studio work in Finland.

The story follows marine biologist Johanne, sent to investigate a salmon farm near Vangsnes after two teenagers die and strange phenomena suggest something huge is moving in the fjord depths.

Establishing a foundational look for Kraken

The main weight of the grade was creating a robust foundational look, which effectively became a bespoke show LUT implemented as a fixed node tree. From there, I focused on what each image already had to offer. I looked at dominant hues, how practical light flowed through the frame, what the most important part of the image was, and what the director and DP wanted the audience to feel. From that analysis, I usually get a gut feeling for how to adapt the image.

I try to be as respectful as possible towards the cinematography. What’s captured in front of the lens creates the DNA of the look. Creating appropriate tonal contrast so images sit right is a big part of grading. I do that using custom curves, DCTLs or different DRTs in Resolve, depending on the material. Shaping light is also critical. I rely heavily on windows, tracking and Magic Mask [more on which later] to guide the audience’s eye, in much the same way as dodge-and-burn techniques in still photography.

Maintaining continuity across scenes

This is one of the most challenging aspects of grading. I prefer to choose as few reference images as possible per scene and match everything else against them.

It’s also important to commit to a consistent set of tools. I often use colour-space-aware tools for exposure and white balance, such as Resolve’s HDR Grade tool, because the maths is very clean and respects the source material. Another approach I use is working in linear gamma with gain for exposure and white balance. The key is consistency.

Once shot-by-shot balancing is done, I use the Group Post-Clip node tree for scene-wide corrections. On Kraken, colour management was handled manually in a DaVinci YRGB project using nodes and input DCTLs. For animated features, I usually prefer ACEScct, but for live action, I still like a more hands-on approach.

Fjord landscapes

For the fjord exteriors, the goal was to keep foliage and skies natural but present. I relied heavily on the Tetra2 DCTL by Juanjo L. Salazar to tweak foliage hues, with very clean results. I also used the ColorSlice tool to add subtle density to greens without flattening highlights. Cloud texture in the skies was preserved through contrast control rather than saturation.

Kraken is the first Scandinavian feature film to be graded in Dolby Vision for theatrical release! For this additional version, Hopkin graded two days on Resolve with an advanced panel in Dolby’s reference theatre in London’s Soho. “It was an amazing experience: next level cinema,” says Hopkin.

Fish farm control room

The fish farm control room needed to feel grimy and industrial, in contrast to the high-tech control screens. It was shot in a studio with exterior views created using an LED volume, allowing precise control of time-of-day lighting while maintaining accurate reflections.

After establishing the base look, I added a subtle amount of green using primary offsets, similar to printer lights. That small adjustment added grit and helped sell the environment.

Fish farm exteriors: day and night

The fish farm exteriors had a weathered, oily quality with plenty of patina. Daylight scenes were graded with softer contrast and a colder Nordic feel.

At night, sodium vapour lighting dominated. I pushed the blacks deeper to add more bite and reinforce the industrial mood.

Kraken Underwater sequences and transitions

Underwater shots varied significantly, combining live action, CG, day-for-night and fully stylised sequences. Most daylight underwater scenes leaned green-cyan, while nighttime scenes moved more towards blue.

There were exceptions. During the nighttime kraken attack, surface lighting mixed strong sodium vapour with cooler sources. When submerged and looking up, I pushed highlights towards orange to connect the underwater shots to the surface action.

For shots moving between above and below the surface, I used keyframed grades in dynamic nodes to animate colour transitions. The HDR Grade tool, offset controls and hue-vs-hue curves were central here.

Submerged luxury restaurant

The submerged luxury restaurant was shot in a studio using an LED volume. I compressed the colour palette slightly using hue-vs-hue, managed saturated skin tones with hue-vs-sat, and controlled saturation depth with ColorSlice. The aim was restraint, keeping the environment immersive without overpowering performance.

In the restaurant, some wide shots suffered from LED moiré. I analysed which colour channels were affected and used a splitter-combiner node structure with Color Compressor, Debanding OFX and subtle directional blur, applied via qualifiers and masks.

Fish farm attack and fog

During the early evening fish farm attack, the Scandinavian light was at its best. I added subtle warmth along horizon lines and introduced fog behind Johanne using Cinematic Haze OFX.

I used Resolve’s masking tools and planar tracker to lock haze masks in place, excluding mountain silhouettes with HSL qualifiers. In total, I added fog and haze to around 40 shots.

In one canoe sequence, several shots lacked fog entirely. I tested Cinematic Haze, showed the results to the director, DP and producers, and ended up completing the remaining shots.

I like the control Cinematic Haze offers: finding the right depth-map sweet spot first, then adjusting airlight, density and resolution loss.

Laboratory bioluminescence

In the lab scenes, a green bioluminescent liquid needed to feel more prominent. I qualified the bioluminescence, added Add Flicker OFX for a smooth pulse, and used ColorSlice to push subtractive saturation into the green hue.

Red alert and the nighttime finale of Kraken

The red-alert sequence marked a deliberate escalation. This was the first nighttime attack on the fish farm, and the images needed to feel crisper and more aggressive than earlier scenes. Saturation increased due to intense red warning lights, but it was important to keep those colours under control. I relied on the Sat-vs-Sat curve to keep the reds vivid without tipping into a digital look, with gamut-mapping used where appropriate.

In the nighttime finale, Johanne leaves the fish farm by boat before the sequence cuts to day-for-night material. From that point on, the scene had to be transformed into a believable nighttime environment with a softer Scandinavian summer-night feel. I used Resolve’s HDR Grade tool for most of the heavy lifting and introduced a warm sodium-vapour tone to maintain a visual link to the fish farm. Tracked masks and Magic Mask helped preserve detail in Johanne’s performance while keeping the environment dark and moody.

Magic Mask and selective grading

Magic Mask has changed the way I work. Tasks like face relighting used to rely on tracked windows or rotoscoping, which could easily introduce halos. Magic Mask can select faces, clothing, vehicles and more with minimal setup. It’s not perfect every time, but with some tweaking, it solves complex selections efficiently. On Kraken, I used it extensively for relighting faces, isolating creatures and excluding actors from background colour manipulations, often in combination with keyers and windows.

Camera shake and lightweight VFX

In several action scenes, the DP Sjur Aarthun, wanted additional camera shake to increase impact. Solving this during the grade is far quicker than sending shots back to VFX. I used Camera Shake OFX for constant vibrations, and custom Fusion setups with damped-spring expressions for impact shakes, always with motion blur enabled. Working in Resolve allowed real-time review and better control over the scene’s flow.

Dylan Hopkin (IMDB | LinkedIn | Website) is a senior colourist based at one of Europe’s leading post-production facilities, Nordisk Film ShortCut Oslo, with more than a decade of experience specialising in high-end creative colour grading for feature films, TV dramas and commercials. He originally trained as a motion graphics designer before transitioning into finishing and online work.

Hopkin’s credits span award-winning cinema and television projects showcased internationally at festivals such as Sundance, Cannes Series, Tribeca and the Oscars circuit. He is also a certified DaVinci Resolve trainer, has created masterclasses on grading strategies and teaches at film schools across Europe.

The post Grading Kraken: insights from the colour grade first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

DaVinci Resolve (DR for short) had the Magic Mask function on board for quite a while, and some voiced their disappointment when it didn’t conjure up what greenscreen keying does. Well, Blackmagic Design (BM for short) never claimed it does, by concept it was rather aiming at secondary colour grading. While its capabilities are quite impressive, Magic Mask has some problems with backgrounds that are too close in colour and contrast to the foreground, or subjects with motion blur. And then, it needs very capable hardware and there are still quite a few reports of limited reliability of Magic Mask 2 in DR, caching in particular. While version 20.3.2 should have some improvements in that area, we wouldn’t bet the house (or the company) on it yet.

FxFactory to the rescue

So, good old greenscreen has not yet been obsoleted by AI, at least if you don’t shoot the whole scene in a virtual studio anyway. The authors, Rob Mackintosh and Gabriele de Simone, have obviously thought about facilitating boring tasks by blending in some AI with ‘classic’ greenscreening. They are the masterminds behind the Hawaiki Keyer (HK for short, even if not from China), which is supported and distributed by FxFactory. Version 5 of that keyer adds tracking by a neural engine, including face or object recognition. They also ported it to DR, while older versions were only available for Adobe’s video software and Final Cut Pro. Reason enough to have a closer look?

Test scenes

We have tested it with critical footage, like a too well-lit background lacking saturation, and another one with good saturation, but lighting issues. The latter one was even in ‘small’ HD out of a DVCPro camera (from Hollywood Camera Works). Of course, a perfectly lit greenscreen in 12K from a modern digital camera would hardly stress any of the keyers included by BM, like the 3D Keyer in DR Studio, or Cryptomatte and Delta Keyer in Fusion. HK rather aims at those fighting with not so perfect shots.

Tracking instead of boring

After watching the older tutorial you may be wondering about the shape of the window coming up for the secondary keyer, which is now rectangular. You can round it off if needed with its “Roundness” slider. This is now in its own menu under “Shape”, where you also define the tracking area. The secondary key is controlled by this adjustable shape, and this is where tracking comes into play. You can have it follow the initial content like any good tracker.

Or you can activate “AI Track” and let it follow faces or objects, even multiple targets up to six. In our tests it was tracking very reliably, only some of the wildly shaken strains of blonde hair with high motion blur in one example were overshooting and needed minor adjustment. Such tracking capabilities are not only taking a lot of manual work out of garbage matting for scenes with a moving camera, but allow you to apply the secondary key to critical areas, like hair. A detailed tutorial is here.

Two for the price of one

Actually, even four, counting the extras. At first view, most of HK’s functions are set to “Auto” or quite decent presets, but all can be fine-tuned manually, if not to say infinitely. There is even a separate version for bluescreen, in case anybody, not even knowing where the heck that name originated, is confronted with optochemical footage. Now, either version is actually two keyers in one. If you have some experience with chroma keying, you will already know that one single key is often not enough to handle both delicate semi-transparencies and an uneven background at once. HK offers a primary and a secondary key, which both can be enabled and fine-tuned individually, as explained here. Most of the YouTube tutorials for HK were made by Simon Ubsdell, a very experienced compositing artist who also produced hundreds of other tutorials.

Clean the edges

“Denoise” is not exactly what you may assume. General denoising, if needed, should rather be done before using your incoming footage with HK. We would suggest NeatVideo for such tasks, which is still king in the lower price range. That function in HK is rather aiming at critical edges from weaker sources, like 4:2:2 subsampling, which can lead to stairstepping or even crawly contours. While it can’t perfectly cure our poor sample from DVCPro, it did a pretty good job improving it, considerably better than simply blurring the edges. There is a whole set of settings to improve the edges under “Edge Tool”, you can find that part of a tutorial by Simon here.

Clean your screen

And then there is “Screen Clean”, explained here. It does a better job than the standard sliders of other keyers at identifying and cleaning areas of uneven lighting of the background and preserving semi-transparent foreground areas at the same time. Screen Clean has a pretty decent “Auto” default, but can be fine-tuned and excluded from an active shape if needed. Of course, there’s “Despill”, which will not only base its effect on the keying color, but can accomodate the background image if you wish.

Grading included

HK even integrates a whole range of color grading functions. This may have you wondering why, if you are working inside one of the best grading applications on the planet. But anybody with some decent compositing experience will know how helpful it can be to do some corrections right in the keyer. Of course, you can also choose appropriate color space and gamma here. Most of these parameters were added in version 5, BTW. Like all the rest, those values can be animated.

If you have never used this keyer before, have a look at the tutorials for HK 4 and 4.5, they contain valuable explanations of the earlier improvements. Not all material is yet adapted to DR, but this tutorial is going over the use of the keyer in DR in general. In particular the use of the background for functions like the “Edge Tools”, e. g. light wrap. These can be a bit tricky in Resolve and will be easier with the help of a simple Fusion composition, clearly explained in that video.

Help is just a mouse-click away for all of the Hawaiki tools, both in the Inspector or the Open FX Overlay. The manual will show up in a separate window, which you can place on a second screen or next to DR on a superwide one, if DR is not set to full-frame.

DR with Fusion not enough?

Now, if seasoned Fusion specialists may claim that they could do most of what HK does with the tools already on board, that may be true to some degree. But that’s not easy for the average users of DR, who will probably see HK’s all-in-one concept as a godsend. They can discover a highly-specialised set of tools coming clearly from practical experience and not found anywhere else. And then, HK works in the free version of DR too, while many of the more advanced tools in DR don’t.

Being fully optimized for Apple silicon, the keyer is very fast, even on a humble Mac mini M4. The intelligent pipeline contributes to this: if you first crop the picture in for garbage matting, the outside areas are not processed any further by the tracker and all the rest to avoid the load. And then, whatever can be done by the neural engine will not put any load on the GPU cores. Finally, on limited hardware in particular it’s considerably more stable than Magic Mask 2.

Commentary

There might be only one minor flaw to disappoint a few of our readers: all FxFactory filters are MacOS only, with no plans to change that any time soon. But for all those using DaVinci Resolve, even the free version, on a modern Apple computer and needing greenscreening regularly, Hawaiki Keyer’s all-in-one approach should be quite appealing. Many of the other offers by FxFactory are worth a look as well.

The post Hawaiki Keyer – for those who don’t trust all the magic of AI first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Uli Plank.

Blackmagic Design announced the public beta of DaVinci Resolve 20 during the currently running NAB Show 2025 in Las Vegas. BMD tells that the update brings over 100 new features across editing, grading, VFX, and audio—but as a beta version, it comes with the usual caveats. No new license tiers have been announced , and existing Resolve Studio users can test the beta at no additional cost. But, as always, production artists should run their own QA gauntlet before adopting bleeding-edge tools into real-world pipelines.

IntelliTrack AI: Tracking with Fewer Regrets

Resolve 20 introduces IntelliTrack AI, which automatically tracks people, limbs, faces, and objects across shots without manual keyframes. This engine powers tools like Magic Mask, audio ducking, Smart Reframe, and even auto-pan and zoom behavior. It’s fast, contextual, and usable across the Color, Fairlight, Edit, and Cut pages.

Magic Mask Grows Limbs

Magic Mask can now distinguish between facial features, arms, and legs, making object isolation far more usable for quick roto work. A new preview mode enhances visual feedback when drawing or refining the mask.

Chroma Warp: Perceptual Hue Sculpting

A new Chroma Warp tool allows colorists to push and pull hue and saturation with far more granularity than HSL curves, offering nonlinear control for advanced color shifts. Unlike traditional grading tools, Chroma Warp operates in a perceptual color space, unlocking new territory for beauty, fashion, and product grading.

Audio Ducking and Voice Isolation: AI Mixes for You

IntelliTrack Audio Ducking automatically detects when dialogue occurs and ducks background audio accordingly, removing the need for manual automation. Voice Isolation has also been enhanced, cleaning up spoken word in complex acoustic environments—all directly in the Fairlight page. On the Cut Page, a new voiceover recording palette is now available. Editors can lay down narration without leaving the timeline. Minor, but helpful, interface tweaks improve snapping, trimming, and navigation during fast editing sessions.

Smart Reframe 2.0: Edits That Hear You

Multicam workflows benefit from speaker-aware Smart Reframe, which detects the active speaker in a scene and reframes accordingly. Instead of centering based on face detection alone, the tool responds to actual speech, making it particularly useful for interviews and dialogue-driven content.

Animated Subtitles: Speech-Aligned, Motion-Ready

Resolve 20 can now generate animated subtitles with synced graphic transitions that follow the cadence of speech. This feature pulls from Resolve’s speech-to-text engine, allowing for better subtitle pacing and readability in fast-cut formats.

Fusion

The Enhanced Neural Engine now delivers increased precision in both Fusion and Colour workflows by leveraging deep learning for accurate object tracking and intelligent mask generation.

The Advanced HDR Colour Grading Suite offers refined tone mapping and dynamic range controls, empowering colourists to manipulate highlights and shadows with unprecedented precision in high dynamic range projects.

Fusion’s Multi-Layer Compositing Enhancements provide context-aware node controls and improved GPU acceleration, enabling VFX artists to assemble complex visual effects with smoother performance and greater flexibility.

The Upgraded 3D Particle Simulation in Fusion delivers realistic particle behavior with enhanced control over environmental interactions, pushing the limits of digital compositing and immersive effects.

Context-Aware Multi-Layer Compositing

Fusion gets smarter multi-layer compositing features, including expanded controls for context-aware masking, better multi-input management, and more granular layer stacking—useful for UI-style graphics and complex 3D composites.

Beta Now then Later

DaVinci Resolve 20 is available now as a public beta. No pricing changes or licensing updates were announced at the NAB reveal. While the feature set clearly targets speed, automation, and streamlined creative control, production teams should treat it like any beta: promising, but not yet fully baked. Stability in everyday work remains the final benchmark—especially in collaborative and deadline-driven environments.

The post DaVinci Resolve 20 Beta: AI Edits – so you can panic about something else first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.