Fun in the Snow With Polaris' 2015 Lineup

In an honor of the "dumping" of snow received by the brave residents of Western New York last week, I thought I'd post a fun piece form this past year that I colored for clients "The Factory" and Polaris. Directed by Adam Brummond this piece features the new Polaris 2015 snowmobile lineup amidst some fantastic mountain backdrops captured with both the Phantom Flex and Red Epic cameras in some "oh-so smooth" slow motion photography. Western New Yorkers could've used a few of these bad boys last week battling the elements!

The grade for this was inspired by the product line of the snowmobiles themselves. Our color scheme: black, white, and red, with a hint of blue in the shadows to contrast with the saturated red tones of the snowmobiles. Simple in concept, this color scheme is always difficult to pull off well, as mother nature always give you a much broader palette to work with in location photography (ie greens in foliage, browns in the terrain, blues in the sky, etc). We controlled things with secondary keys and plenty of power windows to try and hold the palette for most of our shots. But occasionally we let some others shine through when they just looked to good to kill (hey, sometimes you gotta roll with the punches and let a concept or color scheme "evolve" a little bit to prevent monotony from taking hold). My favorite part about this look... notice how things aren't quite totally black and white with the bold reds? The slight shift towards a deep blue in the shadows and mids gives things some extra "color contrast" to play against the reds. This was an evolution of a similar concept that I used a few years ago for a Yokohama Tire Commercial I did with Bandito Brothers in Culver City.

But with that look, we left things mainly black and white. For the Polaris look, I wanted to push the color contrast a bit further and so I went with the blue/black/white look which contrasts the Reds of the snowmobile even further than just black and white (remember, look at the color wheel, black and white resides in the center with no chroma, while the color blue lies opposite red on the wheel, thereby creating a larger inherent color contrast for the viewer). I was really pleased with how this project came out. This is what can happen when a production executes on a concept soundly from pre-production all the way through post, and then has the guts to to push it even further when it comes down to finishing time. You'd be surprised at how many people "wimp out" at this point and go conservative with a look. Kudos to Adam and his team for going aggressive all the way to the finish line!

"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!

The Mad Hatter

Here's a spot that I graded a few months ago with Director Bruno Miotto for Hogan Rebel's "Dream, Believe, and Create" instadiary series. Shot by DP Benjamin Kitchens, on the Red Epic, the piece is a poetic and whimsical look at hatter Nick Fouquet and his process in creating custom hats in Venice California. Part fashion showcase, part doc, part music video, this piece was a true joy to color as it is all about pure visual poetry. The look we created in the grading suite can best be described as "vintage, low-con, fashion" (or at least that's what I call it). I found myself creating false flares, and reducing contrast wherever possible to better accentuate the vintage feel of the piece and the overall softness of the original photography. I also found myself using a few different selective keys to pump a bit of blue into the shadows, some magenta into the mids, and some dull yellow in the highlights to give everything a clear and consistent color tonality while keeping overall saturation relatively low. What evolved was a look that is full of soft pastels, silky smooth skin tones, and very soft blacks. I love it when directors want to push the envelope and embrace a strong look. In this particular case the original photography lent itself purposefully to this direction and the subject matter fit perfectly with the visual tone. What more could a colorist ask for?

Grading "Anita" - Sundance 2013

Earlier this year, I got the chance to work with the team at Bandito Brothers and Oscar winning documentary director Freida Lee Mock on her latest documentary entitled "Anita" destined for its Sundance 2013 premiere! The film takes a retrospective look at the story of Anita Hill more than 12 years after her testimony at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, regarding the sexual harassment allegations aimed at the soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice during her years working under him. This is Freida's 12th film, and her strength and passion for the subject is as strong as ever (Freida won the Oscar for her 1995 documentary "Maya Lin: A strong Clear Vision").

From a color grading perspective, the film offered some unique challenges as it combined recent interview footage of Anita and other subjects shot on Panasonic cameras, as well as numerous amounts of archival material pulled from every imaginable analog format from the early 90's. The footage ranged from Betacam SP broadcast tapes to master-less VHS grabs from the time. From a visual continuity standpoint there was a lack of cohesion in the original un-color corrected cut. Working with Freida, we decided to bring the dull and colorless archival footage too life, by giving it a gamma curve and color palette that more matched the feel of the modern interview footage. While each and every format took a different technique to get there, we were able to greatly enhance the older news footage to give it a "more filmic" contrast along with "punchier," "more saturated", colors that brought it more to life. What we found that there was actually an incredible amount of information available in these old analog formats and we were really able to make shots that had seemed so lifeless on C-SPAN and other news outlets, really come to life with a vibrancy that I think surprised me more than anyone else!

For the interviews we employed a number of techniques to enhance the interview lighting to really flatter the subjects even more. Using power windows, highlight retention techniques, and even a subtle "post pro-mist" filter or two, we were really able to give all the interviews a much softer feel than was achievable on set at the time of production. Overall, I have to say this project was one of my favorite projects of 2012/2013. Working with Freida the post team at Bandito was an absolute joy, and being able to work on a film that I believe contains major relevance to our cultural and social perceptions today was truly a gratifying experience.

Black and White for Eboost

I really enjoy getting the chance to work in black and white every once in a while, and I got the opportunity to do so a few months ago on a commercial project with Malibu based photographer Jack Guy www.jackguy.com. Jack has been one of my favorite clients to work with over the past year as he has a fabulous eye, and always bring incredibly strong images into the grading suite on every project. Amongst his vast array of work, Jack has a knack for the human form and capturing vibrant and dramatic portraiture, and I'm always excited to see what he's brought in because, quite literally, every shot will stand on its own two feet as an incredibly strong image. Jack's projects are always immensly enjoyable in the color suite as we can really "tweak" and "maximize" the image instead of wasting time trying to correct "mistakes" or just "balance it". Jack's images are always so strong and striking to begin with that we really just end up adding additional "punch" and "enhancement" to what he's already started withe lighting and composition. In this spot, we added some heavy contrast, a bit of grit, and some deep blacks to create a very dynamic look for this energy drink spot. Check it out, and enjoy!

Free Samples

Earlier this year I had the privilege of working with director Jay Gammill and cinematographer Reed Morano (Frozen River) on the indie feature "Free Samples" that recently made its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival. The films stars, actress Jess Weixler (who made a name for herself with the indie feature "Teeth" a few years ago), Jesse Eisenberg (Social Network), Jason Ritter (NBC's parenthood), Halley Feiffer, and veteran actress Tippi Hedron (yes, THE TIPPI HEDRON from Hitchcock's classic "The Birds"). The film takes place over the course of one day, in a hot frozen yogurt truck in central LA. Check out the trailer below!

The Prototype - Trailer

So a few months ago I had the privilege of working on a trailer and short film pitch for writer/director Andrew Will for his feature "The Prototype" which is currently in development with Cantina Creative, Bandito Brothers, and Variant Films. Its a sci-fi thriller with plenty of action, some amazing visual effects (courtesy of Cantina Creative) and features an appearance by one of my favorite on screen personalities, actor Neal McDonough. The principal photography on this was shot by DP Bridger Nelson on the Arri Alexa, and was an absolute treat to grade. The look we came up with plays off of a few key hues (mainly the greens, cyans, and blues) and deep rich blacks to give this world an "eerie/unsettling/futuristic-urban feel" (hows that for a description?). Check out the trailer above and hopefully you'll be seeing this in movie theaters in the not too distant future!

Keith Urban's "For You"

Well here it is, in all its explosive promotional glory: Keith Urban's "For You", which I had the privilege to color corrected last month at Bandito Brothers with DP Shane Hurlbut and director Scott Waugh. The video features some great practical explosion effects, a fantastic performance by Keith (and yes I'll admit, I'm a fan), some really great visuals out in the California desert, and some selected clips from the film "Act of Valor" (some of which you can't see in the theater...).



The project was shot on multiple formats including Arri Alexa, Canon C300, and the Canon 5D Mk II to name a few. Balancing multiple formats was a bit tricky at first, but eventually they all fell in to line (multiple formats was a staple on the film Act of Valor as well, so the music video stayed true to form and gave its colorist a bit to sweat over!). The Alexa especially shone beautifully as it captured a vast amount of shadow and highlight detail that I pulled directly from the Log-C material to really enhance the sky, the desert, and most importantly, Keith himself. Shane and Scott were looking for a punchy warm look so we pushed the contrast to the edge of blowing out, and really focused on working the highlights as much as we could to make everything feel really vibrant and sunlit (even when it wasn't, ahh daytime exteriors...). Obviously talent is important in a project like this, and Keith's performance is really strong, so we needed to make sure that he looked as good as he sounded, and the Alexa gave us amazing flexibility to reshape lighting across his face when we needed to, and even add a light glow to the highlights on his skin for an extra pop when the weather wasn't behaving.

The footage speaks for itself, and the video has been climbing the CMT charts (currently at 12 at only week 2!, we'll see how high it can go). All in all, really proud of this piece; great song, great concept, great cinematography, great performance; not even a crazy hypercritical colorist could mess that up.

Act of Valor - Grading Real Navy Seals in Action

Happy 2012 to everyone! The New Year has come and I found myself dumbfounded that somehow another year has passed us by and a new one is beginning. A cliche' to be sure, but it never ceases to amaze me how fast time flies when your busy! And 2011 was a busy year for myself and Basher Films to be sure! Full of projects both big and small and clients old and new, 2011 turned out to be busiest year I've seen to date, which bodes well for a supposedly "recovering" economy!

As is always the case, many of the projects that were graded last year won't be released or seen until this year, so I've had to hold off on commenting on them on the blog. But the time is finally arriving (to brag a little of course)! One of the first projects in line to be released this year is the Bandito Brothers / Relativity Media Production of "Act of Valor" releasing nationwide in theaters in February. I had the privilege of serving as an additional colorist on this project, picking up where Company 3 lead colorist Stefan Sonennfeld left off on the initial grade early in 2011. I spent about two weeks late in the year tweaking and re-tweaking a number of sections of the film with Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut (Terminator Salvation, Drumline) updating some additional new scenes and building on the initial grade. The film is quite unique in that it was shot primarily with the Canon 5D Mk II camera as well as 35mm film and a few other HD cameras as well! Mixing formats and footage proved a unique challenge, that was resolved with specific color treatments on each format and the removal and addition of uniform film grain across the entire piece. Check out the trailer above to get a taste of some of the incredible visuals in the film... and see if you can tell what's 5D and what's film... you might be surprised!

Crashing Through Walls and Spinning Death Defying "Donuts" with BMW

Here's a fun spot that I colored a few months ago with Culver City based production/post-house Bandito Brothers for BMW Canada. The spot features the brand new BMW 1M sedan flying through concrete walls out in the desert. All I can say is... I want one... and in the snappy "Valencia Orange" option for that matter... that is one good lookin' car with some really good lookin' moves.



Here's another spot featuring the 1M circling on top of LA's highest man-made structure, with a beautiful "dusky-gold" look to it. I really enjoyed how pushing some gold tones into the mids and highlights to bring out the sunset really ended up played nicely with a bit of blue punching through in the shadows... and of course all playing second fiddle to that iconic orange and red of the 1M!

Yokohama Tires Duck Duck Goose Commercial

So this is a 30 second spot I graded at Bandito Brothers a few months ago for Yokohama Tires. The spot features off-road racing star Cameron Steele along with his wife and fellow off-road racer Heidi Steele in a spirited game of duck, duck, goose using some sleek transportation (all sporting yokohama tires of course).



This was a really exciting piece to work on from a color correction standpoint as the client was willing to go for a really aggressive look featuring bold saturated colors on the car with a high contrast black and white background around them. It makes for a really "punchy" look with the bright colors of the cars screaming around a stark monochramtic background. VFX rotoscoped the horizon and the skies and also gave me some really useful alpha mattes of the cars in each shot. From there I used a combination of power windowing, and selective chroma/luma keying to achieve the look (and of course do some enhancement work on product logos, tires, etc, its a commercial after all). This was by far one of my favorite color grades this year; its always a pleasure when clients want to push the envelope and really commit to and embrace a sylized look like this.

And if you'd like a little behind the scenes on the "on-set" production of the spot check out this great video:

Just for Fun - Hot Wheels!

So the past few months have been a whirlwind of commercial work. I really enjoy working on short form content as the visuals need to be Hight Impact and memorable if you've only got the viewers attention for 30 seconds. For a colorist that's like getting handed the keys to the kingdom to "go to town" and give everything a little bit of extra "pop". Here's a little teaser I did as part of a larger Hot Wheels campaign, the final piece culminated in a 22min special after the Indy 500, but this is a taste. This particular project involved a lot of mixed footage: 5D's, Super 16mm, little Go-Pro cameras, amongst other HD sources, and was shot at completely different times of day. Needless to say, visual continuity was not the main thrust here, instead, high impact compositions and heightened colors was the idea for a "child-like" visualization of a very real stunt!