USA – Blackmagic Design today announced that the 2026 Oscar nominated short film “Two People Exchanging Saliva” relied on DaVinci Resolve Studio from previsualization through post production, with editing, color grading, VFX and more taking place within the software.
Nominated for Best Live Action Short at the 2026 Academy Awards, “Two People Exchanging Saliva” comes from filmmakers Alexandre Singh, who was also responsible for the film’s online edit and VFX, and Natalie Musteata. “It’s an absurdist fable set in an alternate Paris where kissing is outlawed and purchases are made with slaps to the face. It tells the story of two women who meet in a luxury department store and begin to fall in love, despite the danger such a relationship entails,” noted Singh.
“The film was shot mostly overnight in the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris. It’s in black and white, so we were lighting and composing based on LUTs that Cinematographer Alexandra de Saint Blanquat had prepared in DaVinci Resolve Studio,” he added. “When we began the project, we already knew we would grade in DaVinci Resolve Studio. As filmmakers, we like to maintain control over the project’s workflow, and we knew Resolve had evolved into an editing system robust enough for a narrative film.”
Deciding early on to use DaVinci Resolve Studio for the entire workflow, Singh and Musteata began by editing their previsualization videos in the platform, working on different timelines and using Blackmagic Cloud to pass them back and forth seamlessly.
“With dailies produced in DaVinci Resolve Studio by our Parisian lab, IKE NO KOI, we ended up working in a slightly unconventional way by placing each take in a nested timeline, with the RAW footage on a layer beneath the LUT burned proxies,” explained Singh.
“The online process was seamless,” noted Singh. “It saved a huge amount of time not having to translate our speed retimings, reframings and crops from another platform into Resolve. It also allowed us to continue making creative adjustments long after the project might otherwise have been considered locked.”
According to Singh, given the project was a short film, there were many elements they couldn’t fully control on set and had to fix in post; from painting out boom shadows, to repairing the bashed in side of a van, to adding a second banner in the store lobby to create a more symmetrical composition.
“There’s so much that’s excellent in DaVinci Resolve Studio, but for us, the seamless integration of Fusion is the standout feature,” he said. “As we approached picture lock, we were able to begin VFX paint out work directly in Resolve’s Fusion tab. We could Decompose in Place our takes and access both the proxy and original RAW footage immediately, with the correct in and out points and spatial transforms already in place. Working in Fusion for the first time was a real revelation.”
Singh added that there were some complex paint outs in the film. “One of the vans was in very poor condition and had a sign painted on the side. We were able to ‘repair’ the van entirely within Fusion,” he said. “The title card appears to show the film’s title painted onto a wood floor with the paint integrating with and reacting to the grain of the floor. This was created by printing out the title onto paper, tracing it onto real wood, carving that wood, scanning the carving and passing the scan into Fusion. It was one of the most complicated node trees for the entire film to create this effect of a silvery paint roughly applied to the existing wooden floor.”
Editor Hanna Park shared that after reading the script and watching Singh and Musteata’s first short film, she knew she had to work with them. “I could see how talented they are and that this would be no ordinary short,” she said. “Resolve supported the project’s workflow, as Alex wanted to do any quick VFX fixes while we were editing. I think Resolve is a very powerful tool, especially for independent creators who want a one stop shop for all their post production needs.”
With the grade handled by Colorist Nat Jencks of PostWorks New York in DaVinci Resolve Studio, Singh noted that for VFX work completed after the first grade, he could easily switch between the RAW and graded footage to ensure the effects integrated properly. “That flexibility was invaluable,” he concluded.
