"This Time of Year" and Gear

Not posted anything in a long time, mostly because I have had so much work to do. Have now finished David's Schofield's film, "This Time of Year" so I'll try and post it up soon. Am really happy with how the grade went, I've been quite subtle most of the way through and tried to help the story along more than anything., using the colours to show the progression of the day and indicate the main characters state of mind. I had a little trouble with a few shots that had a dodgy light that was spilling some magenta (my personal grading nemesis) onto the scene. Yet again the wonderful saturation curve tool came to the rescue on that one. I'll post some before and after stills this weekend. The only shot that I am not happy with features a view out of a window which is a bit blown out. I spent over an hour trying to pull that down and bring in some detail but in the end the way the light was wrapping round the character made it impossible. I wouldn't usually let it bother me, but the shot cuts to outside where it is supposed to be dusk. I think in the context of the story, we get away with it, but I would have liked to find a way to solve it.

Other than that I have been in charge of ordering a load of new gear for work. Some of the most exciting objects that will be coming our way include a 24inch FSI Grade 1 Monitor and a Euphonix MC Color control surface, both of which will hopefully improve and speed up my grading work. Honestly can't wait to try them out. Lots of other toys coming too, including some Kinoflo's, a Dolly, a small Jib arm, a few Canon DSLRs (which I've already talked about extensively on here) and a Panasonic HPX500. Think I'm gonna be a bit giddy when all this stuff arrives.

Pics as promised.

This comes from the shot I talked about with the magenta spill from a faulty light. Fleshtones were horrible and you can see the effect it is having on the boys vest and the wallpaper especially. I slightly desaturated the whole image, used a saturation curve to remove the magenta and then pushed the mids back into the bleak brown colours that the wrest of the scene occupies.

This shot comes from a slow motion sequence. The main character is drunk and disorientated and I tried to reflect that with a high contrast blown out look.

 This scene in a cramped toilet was a little underexposed. I lifted the shot up and defined the characters face with some secondaries. It has also been heavily desaturated to give the environment a feeling of sterile hostility.