TREE

The Grade

On Wednesday, Pete, Liz and myself spend the day in the company of the fantastic Rob Pizzey, who can be found at Soho Images.

As a Digital Colourist, Rob is responsible for grading the film; that is playing with the colours, hues, contrast, and tones that give the film its final look.  Rob has graded such recent films as Tideland,  Black Book, and Red Road amongst many others, and we were very fortunate they were able to squeeze us in between work on two features.

Before our Grading session Peter and myself had spent an evening in front of Photoshop playing with some images to rough out the look we were after.  This proved really useful, as Rob was able to quickly translate that look to our footage with stunning results. (see image above)  We where then able to spend the rest of the time being creative with masks, grads, and vignettes.

Being able to grade the film this way means that we now have a very unified look and feel that adds tremendously to the fairy tale theme that has guided us through production.
The film now looks even more gorgeous than it did!

What's Been Happening?

I'll tell you. 

A few weeks ago we did an ADR session with Beth and Clive at Fonic.  We were there to recapture the vocal performances we had lost to faulty equipment during the shoot.  It was a strange afternoon spent recording all manner of heavy breathing, gasps, squeals, and gurgles.
Previous to that Fonic had got Foley Artist Sue Harding to recreate all the countless physical sounds that the characters make as they interact with their environment.  These ranged from foot falls on the ground, to the creeky sounds of someone wearing leather jacket.
As well as all that, Simon Allen has been writing the musical score which we got to hear.  It never fails to amaze me how much music can lift the visuals to a new level.  In the next couple of weeks the music and sound will be given a final mix.

Liz and myself have been collating the names of all the wonderful people who have helped us this past year, and adding them to the credit list which I will post here soon for all to see.

One of the things I have been looking forward to most happens tomorrow; the grade! 

More about that soon.