In order to reflex the hedonistic and flamboyant times of the 1920s and the characters depicted in The Great Gatsby, a super saturated and excessive look for the film was desired. Costume and Production Designer Catherine Martin worked closely with the DI team on the look of the film. Those sessions stand out as a career highlight. She has an incredible eye. She was insistent on more and more colour separation. At the time my thoughts were “there is no more”! But sure enough, with each pass the depth of the image improved. You really felt as if could fall into the picture. Catherine Martin won two Oscars for the film. While grading, I am very focused on the task at hand and prefer to work without distractions. I don’t like to have music playing and I’m not much of a talker in the suite. I’m asking myself, - Is this grade telling the story? How can I make it better? What’s the main focus? What needs to stand out? Can I improve the colour separation/colour contrast etc? Can I enhance the lighting anymore? Simple grade stack It’s easy for a timeline to become unmanageable on a high-end feature due to re-edits and the wait for final VFX; therefore, I stick to a simple grade stack at the start. I believe in keeping the images close to how they are shot and as close to their natural state as possible. All images reach a point at which they look their best. My aim is to find this point. I use edge gradients for shading and simple windows for pushing areas towards and away from the viewer. Later in the grade, I may do extra treatment for example using sharpen with a window to draw attention to certain aspects of the picture such as an actors eyes. Flashback scenes Catherine Martin showed me an amazing book of hand-tinted photographs to reference for the flashback scenes when Daisy and Gatsby first met. I researched early film stocks and worked with Richard Kirk at Filmlight to generate a bespoke LUT which emulated the panchromatic stock of the period. This gave me an interesting base by swinging the density of the colours around, particularly the red. READ: Mitch Bogdanowicz about LUTs After this, I set about making lots of shapes outlining objects and tracking them. I coloured the shapes to look like the kind of colours in the hand-tinted references. A little translucent and pastel. For example, for Daisy, I made the hair more golden, enhanced her blue eyes and tracked little pink kidney shapes onto her cheekbones. I also added some T800 scanned grain and mixed in an old fashioned flashing projector effect which I found online. Moving through the scenes Matching scenes is a fundamental part of grading and the reason I keep moving forward on my timeline. The film will eventually find its place and its natural flow. As our eyes are constantly re-calibrating I prefer to keep moving through the scenes. It’s important to keep comparing scenes and remain on task. I prefer to do global adjustments in the final days of a DI, usually adjusting brightness and contrast between the scenes. Looking at stills sequentially can be useful. Stereo grading The film was shot in 3D on RED Epic cameras using a split beam. One eyes image is captured through a mirror and is softer and less bright. First of all, you grade the 2D version using the hero (higher quality) eye as the base. The images from the second eye are then matched to the first and then the same grade is applied down-stream. Grading in stereo is difficult on the eyes as you are also checking and correcting convergence issues. Technically you have a much lower light level to work with in Stereo projection and also a colour cast offset to correct from the glasses. For creative adjustments, just like in 2D, certain colours reach your eyes quicker. Red, for example, is closer in depth than cooler colours like greens and blues. This actually works well naturally as landscapes tend to have cooler tones so warmer skin tones will sit forward. With Gatsby’s riot of colours some tweaking was needed. Stereo is wonderfully immersive. I think you are more easily able to trigger strong emotional responses from an audience in stereo than in 2D, the catch is the stereo has to be flawless. I’ve only ever seen perfect stereo projected in a professional environment or a well-run cinema. I live in the countryside so by the time it gets to my local picture house the quality is lost along with the magic and it can distract from the story. However, good colour control will help transcend projection issues. Vanessa Taylor IMDB All images and clips copyright © Warner Bros. Pictures / SF Norge AS
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