Friday, June 20, 2014

"Man From Reno" wins Jury Award for best Narrative Film at the LA Film Festival

Earlier this year I had the privilege of working on the Japanese/American murder/mystery film "Man From Reno" directed by Dave Boyle, and shot by DP Richard Wong. This film was a favorite of mine as Dave and Richard had a strong vision for the film coming in to the grading session. They wanted a desaturated/low-con look with "silky" blacks and "creamy pastel" tones. Using the Sony F5 and a very unique style of exposing for the Slog2 gamma profile on set, Richard and Dave had developed a very solid image to start with that didn't take a lot of "goosing" in post so to speak to get it into this dark, yet extremely "creamy and soft" world. Our biggest challenge was getting things DARK, while still keeping detail and information in the shadows. Using some luma keys and a lot of soft clipping and rolling off of the bottom end allowed us to keep things dark, yet still retain all that wonderful shadow detail that was inherently there in the footage.

It was a pleasure to work on this film, and the jury at the LA Film Festival awarded Man From Reno with its jury prize for Best Narrative Film. A short clip from the film is above, and be sure to be on the lookout for Man from Reno in theaters very soon as well!