Ricardo Battaglia’s career as a digital imaging technician (DIT) has taken off since he undertook ScreenSkills’ DaVinci Resolve training course. Most recently working on shows at both BBC and ITV.
Before taking the course, Ricardo had undertaken a lot of editing and colour-grading at university and set up his own small non-broadcast company on graduation.
But he said: “I quickly realised that I was missing key skills to move myself on in my career in broadcasting. I was missing experience, including in trainee positions. I had a couple of jobs where I quickly realised that I was out of my depth – and I got some helpful, if challenging, feedback. I was particularly missing some really important information and experience related to post-production.
“The courses I needed to address the gaps in my skills and experience were expensive and way out of my budget – so, when I saw the DaVinci Resolve training course advertised on ScreenSkills' website, I leapt at the chance.”
DaVinci Resolve from Blackmagic Design is a software tool that combines editing, colour correction, visual effects, motion graphics and audio post-production.
Ricardo, who is based in Manchester, was very positive about the DaVinci Resolve training delivered free-of-charge by Physical Fok for six days over six weeks via Zoom. "I was blown away by the quality of the people on the course – including really established professionals working in broadcast. I developed lots of technical skills, including about colour correction, metadata, conforming offline edits to online edits and what a standard workflow looks like.
“I also found about how to handle the industry etiquette, language and landscape. I understand roles, responsibilities and how departments interact. I know what people are talking about, and I feel informed.”
Ricardo acknowledges that he also learned about these on set attributes from doing the ScreenSkills Film and TV boot camp course.
Feeling more confident, he ventured into the film and TV world, initially as a runner and driver to get a feel for and understanding of how things are done on set, before moving on to working as a production assistant. But it was DIT work that he was most interested in.
He secured a trainee role on production of Carole Morley’s forthcoming film drama, Typist Artist Pirate King through ScreenSkills’ Film Trainee Finder programme which helped his transition to becoming a DIT. “I joined as a video assistant and was guided by the film’s DIT, Villing Chong, who was hugely helpful”.
He was schooled in the art of being a DIT, which involves taking the footage from the camera and then offloading it to all the separate hard drives used for edit and back up or turned into LTO tapes (archive tapes), which last longer than a hard drive.
As he began taking on DIT roles himself on projects like Hope Valley, Uncensored and Project Skylight, his additional responsibilities included thinking about sound and balancing the footage, so making sure all the shots look like they were filmed in the same place at the same time. “This is because obviously you’ll film part of a scene one day and another part a different day, but you need the shots to match the lighting,” says Ricardo. “I’m also the direct contact between the director of photography and post-production, so sometimes I get technical questions thrown my way.”
He might also be suddenly thrown a curve ball. As happened on the ITV murder mystery series Vera. “The DoP wanted high quality rushes put onto her iPad. So, essentially, I had to not only send out the footage to people that needed it, but also copies to her that were high resolution and sound synchronised, and then load them all for her on an easy filing system.”
Fortunately, whereas in his early days he might’ve panicked, now he takes everything in his stride, and has realised that everyone is really learning as they go along and then gradually get better.
“I no longer feel like an imposter. People now come to me for technical advice and I can do it,” he says. “Undoubtedly, it was the DaVinci Resolve and ScrenSkills courses that helped give me this confidence and set me on a strong career path.”
Ricardo is now working on the CBBC series Danny and Mick as a DIT but is also looking to branch out to other creative projects. His employers, Notorious DIT, are on the look-out for him, including a potential reality show in South Africa.
“Michael Pentney, director of Notorious DIT, wants to build me up and give more challenging projects as they come. He’s not going to throw me on a Game of Thrones type project just yet, but maybe in the future,” concludes Ricardo.