Help a Resolve newbie do a good job?

[Bryan Cass]

I had GammaRayDigical.com scan some early 1960s 8mm home movies for me.  Perry did an excellent job and has been very helpful.  He recommended Davinci Resolve to color-correct and crop the scans, which I can then save and import into my NLE to make Blu-rays for my family.  I have experience with Photoshop for color correction (14,000 family photos scanned and corrected!) and Cyberlink PowerDirector (74 home video DVDs created from VHS and DV sources).  But no experience yet with Resolve.  I've gone through BlackMagic's tutorial on Color Correction and am ready to start.

The 800' of film was all shot with a Kodak Brownie 8 8mm movie camera at 16fps.  The scan files are flat scan ProRes SDR 444 2K Full Aperture (2048x1556).  I used Scene Detection and split up the reels into scenes/clips whenever the camera was turned on/off.  I attached a screen shot of my first clip I'm working on.

I could use some help setting up a workflow - my end result will be individual, 4:3 aspect cropped and color graded files that I can then load into PowerDirector for production.  You can see I have some nodes set up, but not sure this is appropriate or if I'm skipping steps in how a pro would do it?

A few questions:

Can I set the sprocket holes as my highest luma and the black between frames as my lowest luma value?  I assume that would bracket all densities in between and I would not get any clipping.  

Once I am satisfied with the first clip, I assume I can apply that grading to all other clips for that reel of film and it should be OK?

Perry mentioned it was hard to do grading without an external monitor.  I don't have a calibrated monitor -- can I set up the project settings to get the best result with my GUI monitor?  Should I find out what the Dell monitor colorspace is for this model?

 

Thanks!
Bryan