Cullen Kelly
Los Angeles, California
Selected Skills
What I Do
Cullen Kelly is a Los Angeles-based senior colorist with credits spanning film, television, and commercials, for clients and outlets, including Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Microsoft, American Airlines, and Apple. With a background in image science and the arts, he’s passionate about the intersection of the creative and technical and its role in great visual storytelling.
In addition to his grading work, Cullen teaches and writes about color for Blackmagic Design, Frame.io, and several universities in the LA area. He’s also the creator of Colloid, a custom suite of Resolve plug-ins for working colorists.
Tutorials by Cullen Kelly
54 tutorials found.
Color Management With Log, The Elusive "Filmic" Look, & Clients
Mixing Light's panel of Colorists answers questions on color management with log footage, the "filmic" look, and choosing your clients.
Upgrade Your Toolkit By Creating A Subtractive Color Balance Tool
Colorist Cullen Kelly teaches you to create a subtractive color balance tool for more pleasing color washes & looks in DaVinci Resolve.
Upgrade Your Toolkit: Get Better Hue vs Lum Results
Enhance your color grading toolkit in Part 2 of this series. Learn to affect color density with greater consistency using Hue vs Lum curves.
Upgrade Your Toolkit: Create Custom Highlight & Shadow Controls
Learn how to create a custom highlight roller tools tailored to your creative needs inside DaVinci Resolve.
Office Hours LIVE! HDR White, Saturation Controls, New Displays
Mixing Light's professional colorists answer questions on graphic white points in HDR, crafting meaty saturation and the limitations of AI.
Creatively Manipulating Node-Based ColorSpace and Gamma Tags
Learn colorist Cullen Kelly’s favorite uses for node-based Color Space and Gamma context menus available within individual nodes in Resolve.
‘Smearing Shadows’ For More Pleasing High-Contrast Looks
Colorist Cullen Kelly explores a technique for sculpting rich, soft, and filmic shadows on high-contrast looks for a more pleasing effect.
Learn How To Build Your Custom Film Print ODT
Cullen Kelly shows you how to build a custom transform by combining a film print LUT with basic color science - to add style to images.
How To Install And Evaluate The Upcoming ACES 2.0 ODT
Cullen Kelly shows how you can explore the candidate ACES 2.0 output transforms. Learn the differences compared to the current ACES release.
Substituting ACES ADX for Cineon Film Log With Film Looks LUTs
Explore how to get better results from Resolve’s Film Looks LUTs by leveraging the ACES ADX standard — even if you're not grading in ACES!
The Do’s And Don’ts of Color Correcting with Hue-vs-Sat Curves
Colorist Cullen Kelly explores his favorite uses of the Sat vs Lum curve in Resolve and best practices for consistently great results.
Comparing ARRI’s LogC4 LUTs To Resolve Color Management
Learn to customize the built-in color management workflow of Resolve with quality external LUTs. This series begins with ARRI's LogC4 LUT.
Using Custom Curves To Emulate Fill-Light Adjustments
Sometimes you want to 'open up' the shadows as if you added a bounce card or fill light to the scene. Custom curves make this easy.
Learning to Color Balance More Quickly With Fewer Adjustments
In the final episode of his 'Flexing Fundamentals' series, Cullen Kelly shows how to color balance more efficiently by thinking differently.
How do ‘Motivated Vignettes’ improve your color grading?
Colorist Cullen Kelly explores vignettes: What they do, when they’re appropriate, & how to deploy them in a motivated and photographic manner?
The Care And Feeding Of A Post Production YouTube Channel
Why do professionals create and maintain a YouTube channel? How do they use it to support their business, and what is the payoff?
Contrast Adjustments: Which Is The Right Tool For You?
In Part 3 of Cullen Kelly's 'Flexing Fundamentals' series, learn how to think about organizing contrast adjustments to improve your results.
How To Upgrade Your Contrast, Pivot, Lift, and Gain Adjustments
Learn why colorist Cullen Kelly loves Contrast-Pivot for his contrast adjustments - and how you can upgrade them for more nuanced control.
Flexing Fundamentals: The Hidden Power of the Offset Wheel
In a new series on Primary color corrections, Cullen Kelly explores the hidden strength of the Offset Wheel - when working color-managed.
Charting Gamma Curves, REC-709a, Premiere 2022 Color Management
Team Mixing Light, and members, discuss Log Gamma curves, revisit Rec-709a, Premiere Pro 2022's color management, and declining job offers.
How To Build Your Own ‘RGB Crosstalk Curves’ Node Matrix
In Part 7 of Cullen Kelly's 'Visual Math' series, rebuild Resolve’s RGB Mixer with splitter/combiner nodes to control with Custom Curves.
Streaming Dolby Vision, REC-709a, And Consumer OLED Displays
Team Mixing Light, and members, discuss streaming Dolby Vision mp4s; Rec. 709a (what is to be done); and consumer displays for grading.
How To ‘Trace’ a LUT’s Contrast Curve By Hand
Learn how to use Layer Mixer nodes to recreate a LUT's contrast curve for further creative manipulation in Part 6 of the Visual Math series.
Talking Professional Reference Displays with Bram Desmet of FSI
Flanders Scientific's CEO visits with Mixing Light members answering questions in this Office Hours conference call.
How Do You Succeed Running A Color Grading Business?
The team is joined by our newest Contributor, Zeb Chadfield, answering business-related questions on being a colorist and getting paid.
Evaluating Skin Tones, Working With Drone Footage, Grading On Laptops
Team Mixing Light helps our members work through confidence problems color grading skin tones, drones, and laptop displays in a live call.
Building Custom 'Lum vs Sat' Curves In HSL Using Resolve's Node Tree
In Part 5 of our 'Visual Math' series, learn how 'vs. Curves' work from within Resolve's node graph by building your own in HSL space.
Extracting Only The Hue Or Saturation of a LUT using DaVinci Resolve
Learn how to extract the hue and/or saturation shifts of a 3D LUT, without getting stuck with the LUT's accompanying contrast adjustment.
The HDR Palette One Year Later & Selling Your Project Files: Good Ideas?
Team Mixing Light, in a live conference call, takes member questions on Resolve's HDR palette and the practice of handing over project files.
NAS, Security, Archival Footage, and HDR - An Office Hours Discussion
Team Mixing Light discusses member questions including: TrueNAS storage, archival footage artifacts, budget HDR monitoring, and security.
How To Extract A LUT's Split-Tone Component Using DaVinci Resolve
Learn how to isolate the color impact of a LUT from its luma component to craft the image to your preferences, all within DaVinci Resolve.
Build Your Own Qualifier In HSL Color Space Using Curves (In Resolve)
Learn an alternate method for creating masks limiting adjustments to particular luminance regions, using Curves and Splitter/Combiner nodes.
Building A Subtractive Saturation Node Tree In DaVinci Resolve
'Subtractive saturation' is a hot topic with colorists. Learn how to manually build this tool in DaVinci Resolve for more natural results.
Office Hours Live Stream - Color Management (and much more)
This is our first Office Hours Livestream. Four Mixing Light Contributors take and answer questions from members in a livestream.
Live Call - Coding DCTLs Wrap-Up Discussion with Cullen Kelly
Cullen Kelly wraps his 10-part intro series about Coding DCTL. It's a live Q&A session answering questions, while Cullen learns something new!
Creative Coding with DCTL Part 9 – Adding A Visual Curve Overlay
Colorist Cullen Kelly finishes off coding a split-toning Resolve DCTL plugin with a visual overlay showing how the RGB channels are modified.
Creative Coding with DCTL Part 8 - Refining UI Parameters
Colorist Cullen Kelly finished defining his Davinci Resolve DCTL plugin. Learn how he tweaks the interface, eliminating 'dead zones.'
Creative Coding with DCTL Part 7 - Adding Split Toning
In Part 7, Colorist Cullen Kelly shows how to add split-toning into the custom DCTL. Then he debugs and commits it to the main GitHub branch.
Creative Coding With DCTL: Part 6
In part 6 of his ongoing series, Cullen Kelly explores how to combine two separate DCTLs for increased user functionality without adding complexity.
Creative Coding With DCTL: Part 5
In part 5 of his ongoing series on coding DCTLs, Cullen starts to get into the thick of the tool he's creating - exploring how to define and code contrast.
Creative Coding with DCTL: Part 4
In part four of his ongoing series on creating DCTLs, Cullen Kelly builds upon work done to create a static DCTL by adding user adjustable controls.
Creative Coding With DCTL: Part 3
In part 3 of this ongoing series, with foundational knowledge in place, start coding your first DCTL a colorist Cullen Kelly guides you step by step.
Creative Coding With DCTL: Part 2
In Part 2 of his series on coding DCTLs, Cullen Kelly covers some additional setup and tools you'll need to successfully build DCTLs
Creative Coding With DCTL: Part 1
Cullen Kelly kicks off a new exciting series about DCTL coding. Learn the vocabulary, syntax, and techniques to create DCTLs to aid your color grading.
Inside the Grade: The First Pass On A Feature Film
Watch over the shoulder of senior colorist Cullen Kelly as he works through his first pass on a feature film and shares his approach.
Look Development Part 3: Sweetening The Color Palette
In the last installment of his series on the essentials of look development, Cullen Kelly guides you through the concept of preferential color mapping.
Look Development Part 2: Dialing In The Contrast Curve
In Part 2 of his series, Cullen Kelly takes a look at dialing in the contrast curve for a look with the new HDR Zone tool in Davinci Resolve 17.
Look Development: Part 1
Learn how to establish good color management and clear definitions for your look development workflow.
Working With Reference Images Part 3: Building The Look
Cullen shows how to put the analysis of reference images + analysis of shots on the timeline together to create a cohesive, matching look.
Working With Reference Images: Evaluating Camera Source Footage
In Part 2 learn how you can evaluate the source footage on your timeline to answer: Is this footage a good match for our references?
Working With Reference Images: Part 1
In part 1 of a new series, learn the essentials of how to interpret and read references for contrast, tonality, and other key factors.
The 10-Minute Grade: Shot Balancing
In this installment of The 10-Minute Grade, Cullen Kelly walks you thru a few different techniques to quickly get shots balanced when time is of the essence
The 10-Minute Grade: Global Contrast
In the first installment of a new series, Cullen Kelly shares his strategies for quickly getting a grade on its feet by creating global contrast
Three Strategies for Increasing Color Separation in DaVinci Resolve
Do your images need to look more colorful? In this Insight, learn 3 color separation tools for increasing perceptual colorfulness.
