THE MASTERMIND / Director: Kelly Reichardt / DP: Christopher Blauvelt
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Worked extensively with Christopher Blauvelt in pre-production with test footage establishing our look and evaluating how much filtration should be applied practically on lens. Developed a pipeline where our look could be applied in camera and for dailies.
We didn’t want to explicitly desaturate the image and wanted healthy skin tones but wanted to avoid garish modern saturated colors and favor saturation when paired with density and richness.
Neutral axis, no print emulation. but leaning into texture.
IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU / Director: Mary Bronstein / DP: Chris Messina
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Shot on 3 perf 35mm for daytime and Alexa35 for night. We did extensive testing in pre-production including testing different scanners and different methodologies for scanning.
Also obviously matching the film and the Alexa35.
We wanted a filmic but clean look, not overtly stylized.
Scanned at 4K on Scanity. No print emulation, clean neutral gray axis.
COVER UP / Director: Laura Poitras / DP: Mia Cioffi Henry
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Although the bulk of the film is very straight forward (Sy sitting a desk), a great deal of attention was paid to detail. From restoration of archival elements to the treatments of stills, to the way that documents are presented (shot overhead as opposed to scanned), how images are cropped and placed on what backgrounds, these details were carefully considered and cumulatively have an impact in that they provide clarity and authenticity to the visual language of the film.
SHE RIDES SHOTGUN / Director: Nick Rowland / DP: Wyatt Garfield
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The goal here was to push the image to its limit and then maybe a little farther. Extreme contrast and grit. Very bleached. We attempted to not be afraid of breaking the image or rules, in many places adding flashing and pulsing light to the image.
Shot on Alexa35 and graded through custom FPE built in collaboration with Wyatt Garfield and Bill Feightner.
LATE FAME / Director: Kent Jones / DP: Wyatt Garfield
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Shot on 16mm film and graded through a strong custom print emulation developed in collaboration with Wyatt Garfield. Leaning into strong vibrant warmth and skin tones, cool grays and cyans.
Scanned on Scanity at 4K.
DEATH OF A UNICORN / Director: Alex Scharfman / DP: Larry Fong
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Death of A Unicorn is genre-blending, finding a unique tone that is part cheesy 90’s blockbuster, part John Carpenter homage, part gritty indie, and the look reflects the same slightly mashup aesthetic.
For obvious reasons, realism per se was not the goal, after all its about deadly man eating unicorns.
MY HERO BALTHAZAR / Director: Oscar Boyson / DP: Chris Messina
A DIFFERENT MAN / Director: Aaron Schimberg / DP: Wyatt Garfield
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Shot on 16mm, we built our look in preproduction after testing. Custom print emulation built with Wyatt Garfield.
During testing we compared ARRI scanner vs Scanity vs Spirit and found the ARRI best fit for these images.Leaning into mixed color temperatures, greens and cyans and rich skin tone.
Digital footage left intentionally horrible for comedic effect.
CADDO LAKE / Directors: Celine Held & Logan George / DP: Lowell Meyer
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Worked with Lowell Meyer in pre-production to dial in the primary look of the film, test exposure, and built our show LUTS to be loaded in camera during production. Filmic but clean and precise. Clean blacks, and naturalistic.
With this film we had the opportunity to push boundaries a bit as we traveled between past and present subtly tipping our hand to the fact that we are in a different time and space without explicitly telegraphing where or what was happening.
THE ACOLYTE / Director: Leslye Headland / DP: Chris Teague
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Worked extensively in pre-production with Chris Teague to build the look of the show. We worked with Lucasfilm color science’s library of film emulation as a starting point for the research on this film, chose a few stocks that we liked and worked form there. Ultimately we choose what worked best for skin tone and I build the other atributes we liked in by hand.
Some subtle split toning was done in our show LUT specifically desgined to help separate our actors in lower lighting and naturally lit scenes.
We also did significant testing to see how the camera sensor and show LUT would react to highly saturated bright colors. Blue lightsabers in particular were important.
We wanted everythign to land correctly both in SDR and HDR right out of the box so the extra preparation was important and paid off.
EILEEN / Director: William Oldroyd / DP: Ari Wegner
CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH / Director: Cooper Raiff Scharfman / DP: Cristina Dunlap
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The goal here was to have actors look great, but without feeling fake and maintain a level of authenticity.
PLAINCLOTHES / Director: Carmen Emmi / DP: Ethan Palmer
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Shot in 16mm mode on the Alexa35, with the goal o not jus emulating the lo o 16mm but the field of view achieved with a smaller sensor, the deeper depth of field tending to keep backgrounds in focus.
Varied film print emulation between Kodak and Fuji f the 4:3 and widescreen formats.
PRESENCE / Director: Steven Soderbergh / DP: Peter Andrews
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Shot on a consumer Sony A7S3 in a gimbal as a series of just 36 one-ers, PRESENCE was shot almost entirely with available light at 12800 ISO.
As the images were concieved as the POV of the ghost it made sense for them to be naturalistic and clean. Letting brights go bright and darks be dark, with a very neutral and clean (in this case a pure unmodified ACES tone curve). Likewise our hero grade for this film was HDR for video and EDR for theatrical, the images shine when given extra dynamic range.Because the camera was always moving and these were incredibly long takes, we had to lean into stabilization to take the smoothness of the gimbal even smoother. However we didn’t want to zoom in on the image to achieve the stabilization so we utilized Machine Learning stabilization which gave us extra smooth motion and outfilled the image so no zoom was required.
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED / Director: Laura Poitras
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This project had the task of presenting the current day documentary footage and extensive video, film and archival footage from the past, but also very importantly presenting the still photography of Nan Goldin’s work. In addition to working with Laura to refine the look of the film and make sure the archival was the best it could possibly be, I worked with Nan to color grade her photography.
MAGIC MIKE’S LAST DANCE / Director: Steven Soderbergh / DP: Peter Andrews
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Graded with HDR as the hero grade and an EDR Dolby Theatrical grade for theatrical, With a nod to the naturalism of the first magic mike, MMLD is also a little more refined and polished, perhaps like Mike himself.
SHARP STICK / Director: Lena Dunham / DP: Ashley Connor
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Worked with Ashley Connor in pre-production to build show LUTs based on Vision2 which could be used in camera and for dailies.
Subtle split toning and clean skin tone.
THE BLACK PHONE / Director: Scott Derrickson / DP: Brett Jutkiewicz
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Worked extensively with Brett Jutkiewicz in pre-production to create a very strong vintage leaning show LUT based around a modified 2-strip process which skews primary Blue and Reds and pushes the image strongly towards secondaries.
Also worked to develop a look and pipeline for the 8mm film which would be used to build the dream world.
THE INSPECTION / Director: Elegance Bratton / DP: Lachlan Milne
NO SUDDEN MOVE / Director: Steven Soderbergh / DP: Peter Andrews
TED K / Director: Tony Stone / DP: Nathan Corbin & Ethan Palmer
TOPSIDE / Directors: Celine Held & Logan George / DP: Lowell Meyer
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Worked with Lowell Meyer in pre-production to dial in our look which could be applied in camera, and also tested low light strategies and how that impacted our LUT build.
Worked towards a clean filmic look, no print emulation, clean blacks, bold colors.
SHIRLEY / Director: Josephine Decker / DP: Sturla Brandth Grøvlen
DRIVEWAYS / Director: Andrew Ahn Raiff / DP: Ki Jin Kim
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Tone and mood play a central part of this film and the visual dimension of that is a key part.
Understated beauty in the everyday.
Fuji FPE with gentle split-toning.
SHE DIES TOMORROW / Director: Amy Seimetz / DP: Jay Keitel
THE FORTY YEAR OLD VERSION / Director: Rhada Blank / DP: Eric Branco
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Shot on Double-X 5222 (Black and White) Kodak film. Experimented with DP Eric Branco testing black and white print emulation, but ultimately landed on using a zone system approach without a traditional print emulation.
We spend a lot of time looking at skin tone and softness and reflectivity.
We also did a lot of work exploring and working with the grain of the film, managing it and keeping it in the sweet spot as we worked.
HIGH FLYING BIRD / Director: Steven Soderbergh / DP: Peter Andrews
RUSSIAN DOLL / Director: Leslye Headland / DP: Chris Teague
THE DEATH OF DICK LONG / Director: Daniel Scheinert / DP: Ashley Connor
BLACK MOTHER / Director&DP: Khalik Allah
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Shot on a variety of film sources from 16mm to 8mm as well as video. These images reflect some aspects of Khalik Allah’s still photography, but are also something entirely new and different.
LUMINEERS III / Director: Kevin Phillips / DP: Wyatt Garfield
MADELINE’S MADELINE / Director: Josephine Decker / DP: Ashley Connor
THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST / Director: Desiree Akhavan / DP: Ashley Connor
NINE DAYS / Director: Edson Oda / DP: Wyatt Garfield
UNSANE / Director: Steven Soderbergh / DP: Peter Andrews
LOVE AFTER LOVE / Director: Russ Harbaugh / DP: Chris Teague
BEACH RATS / Director: Eliza Hittman / DP: Helene Louvert
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Shot on 16mm, the look embraces the imperfections and messiness of film. Mixed lighting setups, lettings fluorescent go green, tungsten go orange, etc. with great attention paid to texture, skin, naturalism.
Scanned on Lasergraphics scanner, no print emulation.
SUPER DARK TIMES / Director: Kevin Phillips / DP: Eli Born
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Shot on RED camera these images are a mashup of digital and analog aesthetic. Clean and dirty at the same time.
Custom show LUT that blends some of the best attributes of Red’s color science (Red Gamma) and blends with fuji film stock.
TRAMPS / Director: Adam Leon / DP: Ashley Connor
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Worked with Adam Leon and Ashley Connor in pre-production to create a unique look for the film. References included vintage Playboy photoshoots as well as photography of William Eggleston and more. Rich thick color and bold contrast.
MEN GO TO BATTLE / Director: Zach Treitz / DP: Brett Jutkiewicz
I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS / Director: Leah Meyerhoff / DP: Jarin Blaschke
OUT OF MY HAND / Director: Takeshi Fukunaga / DP: Ryo Murakami
PEOPLE PLACES THINGS / Director: Jim Strouse / DP: Chris Teague
THE BIRTH OF SAKE / Director & DP: Eric Shirai
THE MEND / Director: John Magary / DP: Chris Teague
THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY / Director: Josephine Decker / DP: Ashley Connor
HI CUSTODIAN / Director: Dave Longstreth / DP: Bobby Bukowski
BOB AND THE TREES / Director: Diego Ongaro / DP: Chris Teague
STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS
Director: Sam Fleishner / DP: Ethan Palmer & Adam Jandrup