Colored by Roger Doran

I began working on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” in March 2014, during “pilot season”, but I knew ahead of time that the series was green-lighted by NBC, and that Tina Fey and Robert Carlock were the Creators/Executives, late of “30 Rock.” I was chosen to work on the series through my prior involvement with Producer Dara Schnapper and D.P. John Inwood. We had just worked together on “The Michael J. Fox Show”, and it was a good fit. For the pilot, I actually did my own dailies on OSD, using very specific CDL’s supplied by our DIT, Eric Camp. The look of the show could be described as “hyper-real”. It is definitely on the warm colorful side compared to many other dramas and comedies, and this works quite well for the innocent “world of Kimmy Schmidt”. The show employs the talents of several Directors, and like many sitcoms, the “look” of the series is more of a collaboration between myself, D.P. John Inwood, Producer in charge of Post Dara Schnapper and DIT Eric Camp. Of course, we also got very specific notes from our Executives and Directors from time to time. Netflix’s UHD Arri Alexa was the camera system of choice for the first season and until shooting was wrapped, the delivery was 1080P, with ProRes 4444 being used through and through. This all had to change eventually when the deal was struck to sell the series to Netflix. The first season’s shoot had wrapped and was well into post when this occurred, so an allowance was made for HD delivery with the understanding that future episodes must meet Netflix’s UHD specs. This led to some testing over the summer of 2015 and eventually the Red Dragon was selected as a replacement for the Alexa. Monitoring for UHD A new Linux-based Resolve (Version 11) was created at Technicolor/Postworks specifically for handling UHD in real time. One of the big changes moving up to UHD from HD was what to do about monitoring for episodic work like this. In the end, engineers at Technicolor/Postworks decided on continuing to use Panasonic 300 series plasma displays as a “down convert” (1080P) for final color decisions, while also sending the same UHD signal to a Samsung 9500 series curved LED. In this way, the project and signal is always UHD with the advantage of color decisions seen in both formats. I also have a Sony OLED UHD in the studio but generally don’t fire this up too often. The engineers got the two main monitors set up surprisingly close, given the vast difference in display technologies, formats, etc., and the fact that there really wasn’t a “standard” for UHD displays when we started out in August 2015. I generally work with the HD plasma all of the time and keep the UHD right next to me to check on the effects of complex keys, mattes, efx shots and any other aspects of UHD that might escape detection in an HD display. This is a very important step in the UHD workflow; you literally have a lot more to pay attention to with four times the pixel display and possible noise, as one example, can be hiding out in HD land. The first pass I use the CDLs that Eric creates on set which get carried through OSD dailies after initial processing of the 5K files. I place the CDL with any OSD balances in the first Resolve node on a clip per clip basis with the same Red LUT hanging off of the end in the last node. This allows me to work with the full range of the Log files from the Dragon and I always have the option to modify the CDL or LUT or simply ignore them. In this way, I’m starting with exactly the same ”looks” that everyone else up and down in the production is accustomed to seeing. The balancing that I do is fairly straightforward at the outset. I’ve been doing episodic final color work for more years than I care to admit but the new challenges are actually enjoyable. I find that I use the primaries for the most part but will occasionally use the Log controls to do minute black adjustments due to the fine specific control that they have over the normal primary slider controls. Curves and HSL controls When I first started using DaVinci Resolve, I relied very heavily on using the HSL qualifier for secondaries. Over time, I have found the curve controls much more useful and faster, once you understand the nuances and tools: very powerful! I do use the HSL constantly to pull luma keys and softening in combination with power windows. When I use HSL for secondary isolation, I'll use the full arsenal of qualifiers and key softening to ensure that the UHD image stays “clean”. Tracker and monochrome controls And, of course, the auto tracking now works wonderfully, so I use that to track everything from faces to hands, to objects, skylines, etc. I most often will start with a circular power window even to do vertical splits. I’ve always found this shape to be a great organic starting point; highly useful. The other power window tool most often used is the “power curve”. I love the freeform nature of drawing with this tool; its uses are endless. Of course, the “square” power window is great and fast for windows,doorways, and hard edges as well. I also liked using the mono controls for a black and white “old time” sequence to give it a silvery look, and these controls worked beautifully. Technical challenges with UHD Moving into UHD production this season on UKS presented some new challenges, many of which were happening upstream from my color work. My editorial partner, Pat Kelleher, had a vast change in the way he performed finishing and efx work on Flame Premium but that would be the subject of a whole other article. Matching shots in UHD was, for the most part, the same as in HD. I primarily use the timeline scratch stills for matching and speed, while only occasionally using the full stills tools/matchbox. I will use the lightbox view of timeline stills to quickly scan from time to time as well. Some of the bigger challenges involved using layers to make skies and exteriors more interesting, and again, in UHD care must be taken to keep things clean. Sometimes, having a mixture of Log and Linear files can also be challenging, particularly when being comped into the same shot. Another challenge was being kind to our actors with a very wide range of skin tones and the increased amount of detail on facial close-ups. Our D.P. John uses a bit of diffusion in camera and this helps tremendously but there are times when Pat would need to address specific concerns that Resolve just can’t handle as effectively around eyes, mouths, etc. Highlights and hard back lights are no less challenging in UHD. Sometimes it would prove useful to go back to the raw footage and scale levels down a bit to give me more range in harsh highlights. Again, using the luma qualifiers and softening image and key takes some of the edge off of this. Care must be taken with any sharpening as expected in UHD land. I think the trick is to use less than what would be normal for HD. At this point, near the season’s end, I feel very encouraged moving forward to the next chapter of posting in UHD and beyond. Roger Doran All images and clips copyright © 2016 Netflix Unit Still Photography

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