CASE STUDY

Commercial Post-Production: Edit, Grade, VFX, Deliver

End-to-end post-production for a 30-second commercial spot. Offline edit, DaVinci Resolve color grade, After Effects VFX cleanup, and 12 delivery formats across broadcast and digital. Completed in 10 business days.

KKirillFounder & Creative Director

:30

Spot Length

Cutdowns

Delivery Formats

10 days

Turnaround

Project Overview

Brand Context

(replace with actual brand name and details) A lifestyle hospitality brand was preparing to launch a new beachfront resort property on a quiet stretch of coastline. The campaign targeted millennial travelers across regional and international markets. The visual language called for warm, natural tones — golden light, ocean blues, and neutral interiors — consistent with the brand's existing photography guidelines.

Creative Brief

(replace with actual agency and brief details) The creative brief specified 4 mandatory elements: a resort exterior hero shot at 0:08, a pool-to-ocean reveal at 0:15, a tagline card at 0:26, and the brand's signature teal (#1A8C8E) as an accent color throughout. The spot was to air on national TV and YouTube pre-roll, with cutdown versions at :15, :06, and :03 for Instagram and Facebook. Key visual references: natural light, handheld movement, minimal grading. Typography set in the brand's licensed typeface.

Production Approach

Shoot Coordination

(replace with actual crew details) 2-day shoot on location at the resort property. BLKRIP provided on-set DIT services: real-time color preview via DaVinci Resolve on a calibrated field monitor, daily backup verification to two separate drives, and overnight dailies processing with a show LUT applied for client review.

Dailies & Selects

8.5 hours of footage ingested across 2 shoot days. Dailies processed with a custom show LUT based on the brand's photography color palette. Circle takes flagged in Frame.io with director annotations. First selects delivered within 18 hours of wrap on each shoot day.

Offline Edit

(replace with actual editor details) Cut in Premiere Pro 2025. Three assembly versions reviewed across 2 feedback rounds with the agency creative team. Picture lock achieved on day 4. The :30 hero cut was used as the base for all cutdowns.

Finishing Pipeline

Online conform, color grade, VFX, and audio post handled by BLKRIP in a unified DaVinci Resolve pipeline. The AAF roundtrip from Premiere Pro to Resolve was verified shot-by-shot. Final QC and delivery completed in 6 business days from picture lock.

Post-Production Workflow

Online conform at 4K DCI (4096x2160) in DaVinci Resolve Studio 19
Color grading: 2-session grade on a calibrated BenQ SW272U. Primary balance to align all shots, then a warm creative pass with lifted shadows (IRE 8 minimum), golden-hour tint in the midtones, and the brand teal (#1A8C8E) reinforced in the pool/ocean shots via HSL qualifier. 22 scene-referred corrections per the brand guidelines.
VFX: product beauty retouch on 4 hero shots (temporary pool furniture removed via patch-based reconstruction in After Effects), sky enhancement on 3 exterior shots via luma key with soft feather, and a 12-frame wire removal on the drone flyover. Composited in After Effects with Mocha AE for tracking.
Audio: ambient sound design with 6 SFX layers (ocean, pool, birds, lobby music bleed, footsteps, door close), licensed music bed from Artlist, and a local-language voiceover. Final mix to -24 LKFS for broadcast and -14 LUFS for digital.
QC: automated gamut/clipping check in Resolve, manual review on calibrated display, and a final check on iPhone and laptop screen to verify the grade reads on consumer devices.

Delivery & Formats

Broadcast master: XDCAM HD 50 Mbps MXF OP1a at 1920x1080 / 25fps, the standard Sony XDCAM HD422 broadcast deliverable (SMPTE 378M container), per broadcast spec. Digital master: H.265 Main10 at 35 Mbps for YouTube, mixed to -14 LUFS to match YouTube's loudness normalization target. Cutdowns at :15, :06, and :03 in both 16:9 (1920x1080) and 9:16 (1080x1920) for Instagram Stories and Reels. A 1:1 (1080x1080) variant for Facebook feed. All deliverables included closed captions in SRT format. Total of 12 files delivered via Frame.io on the scheduled launch date.

Commercial Post-Production Color Grading Services VFX & Compositing Social Media Content Case Study Discuss Your Project

Project Details

What was the total turnaround time?

10 business days from footage receipt to final delivery of all 12 format variants. Edit lock at day 4, finishing pipeline (grade + VFX + audio) at day 8, QC and format export at day 10.

How was the brand color consistency maintained?

A dedicated brand-color validation node in the DaVinci Resolve grade tree measured the teal accent (#1A8C8E) against a vectorscope reference. Pool and ocean shots were pulled toward this hue using an HSL qualifier with 20% hue softness. The remaining shots used a neutral warm baseline that did not compete with the accent.

Were there any revision rounds?

3 structured revision rounds: 2 during offline edit (story and pacing adjustments), 1 during color grade (a live remote session via Zoom with the agency creative director viewing a screen share of the calibrated monitor). No post-delivery revisions requested.

What file formats were required for broadcast?

XDCAM HD 50 Mbps MXF OP1a for the primary broadcaster. Additional ProRes 422 HQ masters at 4K and 1080p for archival and internal brand use.

How were cutdowns handled?

Each cutdown was re-edited from the locked timeline (not trimmed), re-graded to ensure the brand teal read correctly at shorter durations, and re-mixed independently. The :03 bumper used a different shot order than the :30 hero to maintain impact at the shorter runtime.

Want Similar Results?

From broadcast TV spots to multi-platform digital campaigns — BLKRIP handles the full post-production pipeline from offline edit through multi-format delivery.

Discuss Your Project