HDMI? I'll pass. SDI to USB could potentially be useful in some workflows, but that's not this unit.
On FCPX the Lumberjack Systems app does the same thing (real time metadata logging) with much more control and functionality. It's nice to see something similar for Premiere Pro. Adobe used to have a time of day timecode based logging tool as part of a their now discontinued OnLocation app, but they never added that function to Prelude (which also looks as if it may be on its way out as today's pre-NAB update announcements didn't mention Prelude once).
$10K as a total budget to produce, shoot, edit, score, mix, grade, and finish Encounters at the End of the World? I call B.S. He's got some good films but he's so full of crap it's hard to take.
Take your selects timeline, right click on it to make it into a compound clip and then right click on the compound clip and choose load into source monitor. Not identical to pancake timelines in Premiere, but it's as close you'll get and is similar to working from selects sequences in Avid. In any case, the biggest limitation to editing in Resolve 12 is cutting interviews or dialogue -- if you have to cut things tight, grab individual words or breaths and create frankenquotes, you can forget about using Resolve. It simply can't handle the 1-2 frame audio crossfades with enough finese so the results sound terrible, even on export. Despite the new code in version 12, the audio side still isn't there to make it a viable editing option for most narrative or documentary work compared to the big three A's.
The extra warmth you're seeing is IR pollution, not botched color science. Make sure you've got decent IR cut in front of your glass with the Blackmagic cams, especially when using ND. I've had good results from Firecrest IRND.
Yes, there is definitely a difference. Not only does FilmConvert add basic contrast and saturation to the image, many of the modeled film stock choices also add color contrast to the image. When properly dialed in, it can make skin tones pop in a way that's impossible to mimic with only simple lift gamma gain adjustments. It also rolls off saturation in the highlights in the same way as film. To accomplish that kind of roll off without FilmConvert requires either an inflexible LUT or the kind of luma v sat control that only exists in dedicated color software like Lustre, Baselight or Resolve.
Another way to think of the benefit of FilmConvert is this: digital video has only been around for a few decades and until very recently has mostly been engineered to meet the needs of television, in comparison color film stocks were continuously developed over nearly a century to meet the specific needs of cinema. By modeling film stocks for digital video FilmConvert is allowing you to access the aesthetics and color engineering wisdom of Kodak and Fuji.