DAVINCI RESOLVE USED FOR GLOBAL COLLABORATION ON TONY FOSTER
DOCUMENTARY

  DaVinci Resolve Studio and Blackmagic Cloud   help post team complete edit while across the world.

Fremont, CA, USA - Friday, May 29, 2026 - Blackmagic Design today announced that the new documentary “Tony Foster: Painting at the Edge” was completed using DaVinci Resolve Studio, with the post team leveraging its remote collaboration capabilities alongside Blackmagic Cloud to complete the film’s edit, color grading and visual effects (VFX) while located across the United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

“Tony Foster: Painting at the Edge” follows English artist Tony Foster as he travels the world by foot, raft and canoe, painting landscapes in remote areas to bring awareness to climate change. The film was led by Director, Producer and Cinematographer David C. Schendel who was based in San Francisco, CA, along with Colorist, VFX Artist and Producer Joe Pavlo in London and Editor Francisco Rivera in Mexico City.

“From the get go we knew we had an international production on our hands and needed to find a post workflow that would support that. We had previously tried other cloud based editing platforms but were never really satisfied, so when we found DaVinci Resolve Studio, we knew right away it was the right solution for us,” Schendel noted. “DaVinci Resolve Studio allowed us to work in three different countries on two different continents as if we were in the same room together.”

“When I hired Francisco as our editor, it was a huge decision, especially since I was based in San Francisco and he was in Mexico City. Editing in Blackmagic Cloud with DaVinci Resolve Studio allowed me to hire the editor I trusted and wanted, even though he lived in a different country,” Schendel detailed. “As an artist, it’s critical that I can collaborate with other artists I admire and want to work with, regardless of our locations.

“Without DaVinci Resolve Studio and Blackmagic Cloud, we might have decided not to bring Francisco onto the project, as it would have been too difficult to collaborate in real time, and the lag time would have killed our workflow; the project truly would have suffered. Blackmagic Design changed all of that. Being able to split the responsibilities of editing across the three of us and check in on each other’s progress in real time was absolutely crucial to how beautiful the film turned out.”

During production, the team shot with a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro digital film camera in Blackmagic RAW.

“The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro was the obvious choice for me. I loved using it, and the results are beautiful,” noted Pavlo. “We primarily used it to capture interviews and footage following Tony as he painted in the wilderness at Green River State Park. We shot lots of sweeping, majestic landscapes and plenty of tighter shots and close ups of Tony painting. With the camera’s compact design, I was able to be very mobile and more adventurous with finding unusual and interesting shots.”

“The Pocket has all the bells and whistles of any professional level camera, but its interface is by far my favorite feature. The Blackmagic OS in the most intuitive and simple menu system I’ve ever used,” Pavlo continued.

The team then continued the Blackmagic RAW workflow in post, using the Blackmagic Proxy Generator app to accelerate their editing workflow. “The proxy workflow was amazing considering we were adding and deleting motion graphics files and new footage right up until the locked edit,” said Schendel.

The documentary used archival footage that spanned 30 years of Foster’s life, resulting in an enormous amount of footage to log. According to Rivera, approximately 28TB of material was used, so the team heavily relied on DaVinci Resolve Studio’s smart bins and AI driven transcription tools to organize and edit the footage. “Resolve’s text based editing tools were very important while cutting and locating content between the different interviews,” he noted.

Schendel added, “Resolve’s smart bins helped us organize the footage into thematic sections which we could easily access to locate certain quotes. We also used the transcription features for all the interviews in the film, which saved us hours when we were searching for certain quotes. I love how you can highlight a quote, click insert, and it’s in the timeline ready to go.”

While Schendel and Rivera tackled the edit, Pavlo handled the film’s color grading and VFX, using a DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel as part of his workflow. “Since we were all in the same project, it made staying in sync a lot easier,” Pavlo noted. “I loved when David would ask if I could fix something, and while still on the call with him, I would say ‘refresh the timeline now,’ and he could see what I had done practically in real time.”

“There’s just nothing else that compares to the color page in DaVinci Resolve. I wouldn’t even dream of grading an entire feature film in anything else,” Pavlo added, noting that he relied heavily on Magic Mask, Color Warper, face refinement, HDR Color Wheels and AI noise reduction tools while grading.

Pavlo also used DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fusion page for graphics and animation throughout the film, with the planar tracker and Magic Mask being big timesavers. “There were several shots where we removed distractions in the background, and the Fusion paint, tracking and roto tools were excellent for this,” Pavlo explained. “We’d tackle the shots by creating a clean plate, tracking it in and using polygons or Magic Mask to roto things in front. The coolest thing about doing this in the Fusion page was that David and Francisco could see the results immediately within their DaVinci Resolve timelines without having to upload rendered shots to them.”

“Due to shooting in such remote, rustic landscapes, there were some dust and dirt artifacts that created dark, fixed spots on some of the footage. Fusion’s Object Removal tool was amazing for quickly and almost automatically removing these spots in a lot of the cases. For other more complex clean up where using object removal wasn’t appropriate, Fusion had all the tools necessary to tackle them. I even made my own macro just for cleaning up the spots when they appeared over water,” Pavlo noted.

Schendel concluded, “Being able to color grade or create new VFX and have the new look show up in real time on screens in three different countries was mind blowing and such a game changer. We were able to see what a sequence was going to look like before we made the final decision to keep it or change it. It ultimately gave us more freedom in deciding how we wanted the film to look. If we had to wait until the picture was locked, we would have ended up with a very different, and in my opinion not as beautiful, finished film.”

“Tony Foster: Painting at the Edge” recently had its North American premiere at the Doc’n Roll New York Film Festival.

PRESS PHOTOGRAPHY

Product photos of DaVinci Resolve Studio, Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images

ABOUT BLACKMAGIC DESIGN

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com

