Grading Temple - Making the future look vintage




Cineground's Simon Allard and Nguyen Anh Nguyen reveal how they used Kowa lenses and an atypical approach to grading to give their new sci-fi cyberpunk thriller, "Temple" a unique vintage look. Created by the same indie team behind "The Akira Project," a viral trailer which garnered more than three million views online in 2014, "Temple" is a new science fiction cyberpunk thriller that many have been very excited about. Set in 2085, the short tells the story of Oz, a health services employee who must find a way to survive in a world where a genetic virus and cybernetic beings are threatening to extinguish the human population. Postproduction supervisor Simon Allard and director Nguyen Anh Nguyen used DaVinci Resolve Studio to grade the final film. Together, they made a surprising choice for the final result: deciding to steer clear of the typical cold blue and green tones found in many science fiction feature films, they opted for a warmer color palette, tungsten lighting and a vintage aesthetic instead. Humanizing Science Fiction "I watched every sci-fi movie out there to prepare myself for this project, and realized that most were very clean, shot with these gorgeous super expensive master anamorphics, which leaves everything looking sterile," begins director Nguyen Anh Nguyen. "I wanted the film we made to buck that trend. I wanted to give science fiction a makeover, combining an old vintage look with a high tech world." One of the main influences for the look came from the decision to shoot "Temple" with anamorphic vintage Kowa lenses from the early seventies, the same Nguyen had used to great effect on the trailer for "Akira". "Anh actually pushed the shoot back twice just to make sure that he could have those lenses," remembers Allard. "They're really highly appreciated because they're not that sharp, and enhance the vintage, seventies look we'd wanted to give the film."

"We set many scenes to have more red and orange tones, enhanced by the use of tungsten lighting," explains Nguyen. "This made all of the characters feel more real, more human, even though the world they inhabited is populated by cyborgs. Then, when the main character, Oz, gets into a fight we subtly shift the hue further towards blue because his state of mind has changed. He's become less human through his acts of violence."

Color Correction To create the final grade for "Temple," Allard began by referencing the look up tables (LUTs) made on set by DIT Sean Sweeney, whose film credits included "X-Men: Days of Future Past". "Those LUTs were the base for the grade," tells Allard. "From there I'd say 80 percent of the final grade was done using only primary corrections. I also almost never touched the mid tones, instead I aimed to keep them at around +/- 10 percent, the level where the BMDFILM initial lookup table put them, and only pulled the highlights to bring everything up to the top end of the curve. This gave us some nice pockets of texture on the skins and the environments. Finally, we added some 4K film grain in at the very end of the process to make the film more uniform, which really helped complete some of the shots where we used noise reduction and lost some image texture as a result." "I've been working with Resolve for years now because it's one of the best intuitive solutions that you can get out there today," Allard concludes. "The fact that aside from our work on noise reduction, we could have easily graded the entirety of 'Temple' on the free version of Resolve is amazing to me. It's the democratization of technology."

Contributing Author Simon Allard

Read this article in the tv-bay digital magazine

Article Copyright tv-bay limited. All trademarks recognised.
Reproduction of the content strictly prohibited without written consent.

Related Interviews

Davinci Resolve 14 with Fairlight from Blackmagic Design at NAB 2017
Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 16 at NAB 2019
Blackmagic Davinci Resolve 15 at NAB 2018
Blackmagic Design Resolve 14, ATEM, URSA Mini PRo and more from IBC 2017
Blackmagic Design: Products at NAB 2013
Blackmagic Design at NAB 2012
Blackmagic at IBC2011
Blackmagic ATEM Constellation 8k at NAB 2019
Blackmagic introduces Blackmagic RAW (BRAW) at IBC 2018
Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera BMPCC 4K at IBC 2018
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K at NAB 2018
Blackmagic ATEM Television Studio Pro 4K at NAB 2018
Blackmagic Design Ultimatte at IBC 2017
ATEM TV Studio Pro HD from Blackmagic Design at NAB 2017
Blackmagic Design at IBC 2016
Blackmagic MultiView at IBC 2014
Blackmagic and Fusion at IBC 2014
Blackmagic URSA at NAB 2014
Blackmagic Studio Camera at NAB 2014
Cintel Film Scanner: Blackmagic Design at NAB 2014
Blackmagic Design on BroadcastShow LIVE at IBC 2013
Blackmagic Design with the new ATEM Production Suite at IBC 2013
Holdan and DaVinci at BVE North 2011
Den Lennie considers what kit and cameras to buy for 2015
BeSteady on the Production Gear stand at BVE 2014
Hireacamera at BVE 2014
The tv-bay Tour in Manchester June 2014
The tv-bay Tour in London June 2014
Behind the scenes of the Teradek booth on BroadcastShow LIVE at IBC 2013
Holdan on BroadcastShow Tour May 2013
Official TOUR Video 2013
Autodesk at NAB 2013
Featured Clip: Geoff Boyle comments on NAB 2012
AMD at IBC2011
Digital Vision on BroadcastShow LIVE at IBC 2013
Cintel at IBC2011
Image Systems at IBC2011
Mac Mini support from Sonnet Technologies at NAB 2019
GPU acceleration from Sonnet Technologies with Adobe support at NAB 2019
Polecam Antelope Pico at IBC 2014
Polecam Toshiba Minicams at BVE 2014
Polecam Slow Motion Minicams at BVE 2014
Polecams range of accessories and minicams at IBC 2013
Polecam: Z10 zoom lens at NAB 2013
Polecam at BVE 2013

Related Shows

BroadcastShow Christmas Special

Articles

News Out Of The Cloud - Technology At The Front Line Of Journalism

Throughout history, journalists have always had to seek and adapt to new technologies to deliver news in a format and at a speed that consumers demanded. Today, recent technological changes in the media environment have led to another inflection point. If modern media outlets want to empower journalists to remain agile and turn news stories around quickly and efficiently, they have to start embracing new, innovative technologies, like cloud-based media solutions.

Contributing Author Stuart Almond

Click to read or download PDF

TVFutures. No More Comfort Zone - Get a Placement

I have often heard that any chance of getting work in the television industry is based quite heavily on who you know, and whilst that might indeed be true, I’ve also come to the realisation that it may also depends on what opportunities you seize and how far out of your comfort zone you might be prepared to push yourself.

Tags: iss138 | portsmouth uni | creative careers | placement | Michelle Brown

Contributing Author Michelle Brown

Click to read or download PDF

Making a Difference in Wireless Transmission

We are very proud to say that we are the only company that provides a highly specific service, and that is the hire of wireless video transmission solutions operating in the licence exempt spectrum.

There are other companies that provide licensed equipment and offer a diverse range of wireless solutions based on different modulations, but our products, coupled with the offerings of others rather than competing with them produce a wireless workflow that is greater than their separate capabilities.

Contributing Author Lukasz Malankowski

Click to read or download PDF

How LiveU Has Changed The Way We Work At ITV Daytime

As my job title suggests, I’m responsible for planning and executing technology projects across ITV’s Daytime, including outside broadcasts, which are central to what we do. We broadcast live for more than six hours every weekday with four shows: Good Morning Britain, This Morning, Lorraine and Loose Women. With a history as one of the main UK terrestrial broadcasters – of course, we have also evolved alongside the industry in terms of viewing options – we have high standards. We constantly generate new ideas to keep audiences engaged and we also need to be responsive to the latest breaking news.

Contributing Author Tim Guilder

Click to read or download PDF

State of the Nation: Wings, Fine Coffee and Fake Nudes

One of the many attractions of this time of year is that I get to meet with my fellow judges for the IBC Innovation Awards, and see what the industry sees as the most important, most forward-looking projects of the day. For me, this says what the key talking points are going to be in September, far more eloquently than the endless press releases from vendors which are already tumbling into my inbox.