Grading a tv series with Mistika
I got a call from Slik, a Montreal-based post house, when they got their Mistika workstation. After a little training and a couple of friendly gigs we got our first real grading job on a tv series.
MED is a comedy adapted from the French hit SODA. Three teens are presented in various situations that both young and old can relate too. The first show aired in January 2015 on Vrak 2 in Quebec.
SGO, the company behind Mistika, is featuring an article on the grading process used on MED on its website:
http://www.sgo.es/2015/02/slik-creates-the-edgy-urban-look-for-new-tv-series-med/
Web: Samsung Galaxy Note 4
Every time I work on a project with ValléeDuhamel it’s a lot of fun. This time it was to recreate the creative environment enabled by the new Samsung Galaxy Note 4 pen as an artist would see it.
Shot on Epic Dragon by DP JP Bernier, the 45 spot is all real hands, objects and gestures … no 3D models. Il was edited and comped by Josh Sherrett @ Mile End Workshop who used some morph and comp tricks to fuse the take together.
The grading gig consisted of giving the scene a very pictural and analog look while playing on the edge of the cartoon universe. I had to match the various background, match the color of the closely tinted objects and fill mask quite a few flying objects.
That’s when Resolve becomes really handy. I was able to give a node for nearly object and animate them independently. The non-linear nature of the node tree also enabled me to efficiently key some hard-to-get colours.
Samsung – Creativity at work from Vallée Duhamel on Vimeo.
Client : SamsungAgency : Heaven
Directors & Visual Concept : Julien Vallée & Eve Duhamel (Vallée Duhamel)
Art Director : Carolyne De Bellefeuille (Vallée Duhamel)
Graphic Manager : Olivier Charland (Vallée Duhamel)
Set Manager : Jean-Constant Guigue (Vallée Duhamel)
Art Department : Frédéric Bouin, Thomas Salaun, Faye Duhamel
DOP : Jean-Philippe Bernier
Production Manager : Inès Steinmetzer (Vallée Duhamel)
Director Assistant : Karine Lamontagne
Hair and Make-up Artist : Léonie Lévesque
Dresser : Valérie Brousseau
Casting Director : Roxanne Doucet
Location Researcher : Anouck Serra Godard
Chief Electrical Officer : Hugo Roy
Key Grip : Stéphane Klopp
Assistant Cameraman : Anthony Huneault
Sound man : Dominic Heizmann
Editor : Josh Sherett @ The Workshop
Color grading : Mathieu Marano
Music : XS Studio
And here is the making of:
Making-of : Creativity at work from Vallée Duhamel on Vimeo.
TVC: McDonald’s Hockey restaurant
Hockey season is going strong in Montreal ans McDonald’s just opened a new restaurent next to the Bell Center. They hired Cossette to create a tv commercial for the event. Jet Films produced the 15 sec TVC shot on F55 by director and DP Alexis Durand-Brault.
I was called for a day of color grading at Jet Films on their DaVinci Resolve station. This was a pretty straight forward gig. The biggest struggle was to animate mask over the menus to make the light one by one. Otherwise simple masks were used to isolates the team members from the background that had to be remove or hidden as much as possible.
WEB: Ma vie amoureuse de marde
Here a little review of my work on the teaser of a web series I worked on last week. It’s not often I get to post a clip so quickly but we need some likes on it to get the money to actually produce the full season so here it goes.
The original idea comes from the Montreal humorist, Anne-Marie Dupras, who started to use her love life as an inspiration for web sketches. Martin Berardelli them approached her to produce a whole season of these funny clips. So he gathered a team to shoot this teaser.
The shoot
On set, DP Kevin Champagne Lessard was willing to shoot with his Sony FS100. As I knew we wouldn’t have much time to light the set, even though we ha a full set of 6 Dedo lights, I wanted to get the best image I could get from the camera. I borrowed a Sound Devices Pix240i from Sono-technique. This way I was able to record ProRes 422 HQ files instead of the AVCHD files of the FS100. The other nice surprise was that the Pix240i was able to remove the pulldown sequence from the 29.97 HDMI feed of the FS100 and record a native 23.98.
After a week of editing I got the final cut. It was easily conformed in Resolve since the data wrangling was so well done… by me. I usually use the Scene Cut detection tool for foreign projects but with such a short movie and possible changes along the way I thought it was safer this way.
My FSI monitor showing the frame to the director and the DP. You can see the FS100 on the SHAPE rig with the Pix 240i and the Dedo lighting kit.
TVC: François Bellefeuille
Last month I got a call from PMT to grade a TVC for François Bellefeuille, a Quebec humorist. The 30 sec edit shows a popular comedian subbing for Bellefeuille who didn’t want to perform his show that night.
The first was treated lightly to keep the feel of the onstage look with bright blue lights. The last shot that shows Bellefeuille has more contrats and saturation to it. It looks darker on this YouTube video but the skintone was pretty rich.
And the cool grading room at PMT:
Ouisurf web series III
I got asked by the guys at Ouisurf.ca to graded the teaser and following episodes of their third web series. This is good ol’ surfing brought to you in the form of beatifully shot images captures by 5D mkIII and GoPros.
It was graded in Resolve following the guidelines I had for the tv series. The episodes were given a more aggressive look using gradients, heavily tinted shadows and highlights.
To watch the episodes you may follow this link: www.ouisurf.ca
