“The Genius of Beauty”
A DI film grade through the eyes of a freelance Colorist
I met film producer Ravi Vedant, at Singapore’s Broadcast Asia show in June 2009. I was demoing the Resolve for Media Village the DaVinci distributor.
Ravi and I sat and discussed RED footage, workflows and the looks that could be created with it. He obviously liked my demo as he came back the following day to ask more questions and to find out if I would be interested in grading his movie. I said I would love to, we exchanged cards and I thought I’ll never hear from him again…….
How wrong was I! In October Ravi e-mailed to see if I was still interested in grading the film called “The Genius of Beauty”. He wanted to finish the picture in Australia.
I agreed to help him get a deal with a digital intermediate post house in Australia, and in turn getting myself two weeks grading work. I initially got quotes from the major DI post houses, that included me as the Colorist. A potential problem here was Ravi could choose to work with a company that had a grading system I didn’t know very well. I figured if this turned out to be the case, it would be a great opportunity to get some training and to use the new system on a real job. This is often a problem for today’s freelance colorist.
There are over 12 different grading systems being used around the globe, trying to keep on top of each system, their new features and software can be very hard. The biggest mistake I see is that Colorists get professional training with a view to moving to a new grading platform but then do not utilise their new found skills straight away. It is a bit like learning a language, unless you go to the country and start using your new vocabulary you soon forget it!
I gathered the quotes for the DI and passed them on to Ravi and at the same time had my first chat with Bill Gentry the Executive producer and star of the “The Genius of Beauty”. I had by this time seen an early offline cut of the movie, this enabled me to flag any potential grading problems and to start to create some style frames. The film is a comedy set initially in Borneo which then moves to India. I wanted the film to have a strong comic look, saturated colors but at no time should the grade take anything away from the story. This was also the first time I had talked about my grading fee, up to this point I had been happy to find quotes, discuss options and grade style frames not knowing if anything more would come out of it. I quoted a day rate plus flights and hotel. Bill said he would have enough in his budget to bring me onboard for just 5 days, I was happy with this although the time was not long enough I figured a way of maximising my time on the film. It evolved using the in house Colorist at whichever post house we ended up using?
Ravi called me in December, the film was on hold. After an audience screening it was decided that a small re-shoot and re-edit was needed. Ravi was now looking at finishing in Mumbai due to budget restrictions. I again suggested my favoured houses in Mumbai. The offline got sucked into my laptop and in FCP I cut a little trailer of selected scenes and graded it in Apple “Color”.
I e-mailed the two minute movie to Bill and Ravi, and suggested a grading reference, the film that kept coming back into my head was “Something about Mary”. A comedy where the grade never creeps over the story.
In February I got an e-mail from Ravi saying the movie was now being re-cut and that he now wanted to grade and finish in Bangkok. I again told him of my two Post House preferences in Thailand.
He decided on Technicolor Bangkok and we locked down the dates, April 19th-23rd. Only five days for me to grade but at least Technicolor are very well calibrated and have a Resolve, so no steep learning curve for me there. I had arranged for Steve Calalang the senior grader at Technicolor, to oversee the transcoding of the Red files, conform and pre grade. I wanted him to balance the film using one layer so I could concentrate on the styles of the film and maximise my five days.
Monday 1230am
My day starts with a night flight out of Brisbane, a two hour stopover in Singapore then onto Bangkok.
1200 Noon
After a power nap and a shower, I am picked up and taken to Technicolor. First up, I had to check out the Resolve system, then the Look Up Table (LUT) being used and the projector line up. Technicolor were using their own Fuji Neg LUT that sits in their Barco DP100 projector, this would guarantee that the colors we saw in their DI room would be faithfully reproduced when projecting the print in a traditional movie theatre. We had no time or budget to do any film-out tests so I was relying on Technicolor’s calibration being spot on. Steve was still finishing the pre grade so I was able to see what he had been doing and could spin through the 6 reels. There was still lots of holes in the conform. These were mostly Visual Effects shots that were still being finished.
The r3d files had all been transcoded to DPX using Clipster. The color space used was Redspace and the gamma curve Redlog. The film was then conformed in Smoke. A number of wipes had been taken out and the temp VFX shots were left in place for grading and would be replaced at stages during the week.
I met Joan Wood the editor who had recut the film and who was now acting as the post supervisor. We flicked through the movie talking about what was needed and cross referencing things I had talked about with Bill.
The film looked very consistent, Steve had given me a good base allowing me to group a scene together then add a grade and apply it to the whole scene.
I started grading around 3pm with one of the hardest and most important scenes. I only had four and a half days so wanted to prioritize my time. The opening shot started on a beautiful sunbaked beach with our hero waiting with his surfboard looking out over crystal clear blue water, it cut straight to a dull rainy day as he entered the water! A tough grading challenge to start the movie with. I finished the opening scenes then wanted a change of scenery so switched to R4 and started working on one of the beauty contest sections. Feeling that my productivity was dropping off and feeling tired after an overnight flight we finished at 2030.
Tuesday
We shoot the screen and checked the foot lamberts (that means the brightness of the projector) and the correct LUT was still applied to the projector.
I was lucky that no other productions were sharing the room at Technicolor so everything was the same, but it was still very important to double check everything every morning. Never take anything for granted.
I started work on R3. In this reel we met lots of characters for the first time as the film swings to Mumbai, I found myself adding extra color and vibrancy to suit the Indian mood.
R3 had just been re-conformed and re-output with new VFX shots, fixed speed ramps, and zoomed shots so a new EDL needed to be used. I used the Resolve Colortrace to copy all my grades onto on to the new R3. I worked on a scene at a time, selected a wide shot, decided on a look, checked it on a close up, if I liked it I would then copy it to the scene. Joan would then check the “Master Look” before I matched the whole scene.
In every TV programme, music clip, commercial or Film, you have a product. It maybe a shampoo bottle, lead singer of a band, or an actress earning $3 million, the rules are the same, the product has to look fantastic at all times. So I was always asking myself “Have I done enough here, how does my product look?”
I continued to grade the key shots from each scene then Ravi and Joan would either lock them off or change them, when happy I would balance the rest of the scene. The grade was going well we were on course to finish in five days.
Wednesday
Joan and Ravi join me and we review reels 1 and 3. We watch the whole reel, making notes as we go, I then go back at the end and adjust shots if needed. I have misjudged the time of day in one scene so it all has to be re timed, but otherwise they are very pleased with the results.
The newly conformed R2 arrives and does not match the original cut so all my 200 grades have to be manually copied, Nu my assistant takes over….time for a coffee.
Slowly the film is taking shape as the finished VFX shots get added. I start on the last reel, no new looks, here I am just keeping the film consistent with the other reels.
Thursday
I continue with R4 and R5. The film has a number of beauty pageant scenes where the girls have to look very glamorous. These scenes are cut very quickly and this takes lots of time matching everything to make it all consistent. I flagged a potential problem when reviewing R1, my re-conformed reel R1 seemed to be three minutes shorter than the locked off cut! I remember the lead characters arriving at the airport in India….not on my newly conformed R1. We checked and It turned out that when we had loaded the new R1 reel into Resolve it had not finished rendering out from Smoke, so losing the final three minutes! I located the missing scenes added them to my R1 timeline then completed the colourful Indian arrival.
All six reels had now been graded, but I hadn’t done a polishing pass and hadn’t really checked everything1
10pm time to go home.
Friday
“The Genius of Beauty” was now graded, but by no means was it finished. On the second pass I started to add little shapes and vignettes to highlight the characters in the movie. This was when I spotted shots that did not quite match, or windows that had not track properly. I even totally re graded one scene, starting again.
After lunch Ravi, Joan and myself reviewed the whole film. Three out of the six reels needed little tweeks, but overall we were all very pleased with the results.
7pm finished.
The “Genius of Beauty” was a challenge to grade in five days but at the same time it was a pleasure to work with the professional team at Technicolor and Imagical Arts.
SHOT Red One Camera
LOCATION Indonesia India and Singapore
DIRECTOR Aarin Mehta
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Bijitesh de
PRODUCER Ravi Vedant
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Bill Gentry
POST SUPERVISOR Joan Wood
DIGITAL COLORIST Warren Eagles
DI POST FACILITY Technicolor Bangkok
GRADING MACHINE DaVinci Resolve
FILMOUT RECORDER Arrilaser
DIGITAL PROJECTOR Barco DP100
FILMOUT STOCK Fuji
Please check the Genius of Beauty website for more information www.thegeniusofbeauty.com.
Warren Eagles is a freelance colorist working out of Brisbane Australia. He is also the co-founder of the International Colorist Academy and balances his time between grading on his own system at home, coloring Commercials and Movies on a contact basis or training Colorists for the ICA.
Copyright Warren Eagles 2010
