American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 46

*|*

Keeping It Real

*|*

W

ith their dim ambience and absence
of natural light, many
color-correction facilities
feel subterranean. The
rooms at Goldcrest in
London's Soho district
actually are underground,
however, and it's here
that AC finds colorist
Rob Pizzey working
with cinematographer
Barry Ackroyd, BSC on
the final grade for Jason
Bourne. Pizzey's credits
alongside Ackroyd and
director Paul Greengrass
include both Green Zone
(AC April '10) and Captain Phillips (AC
Nov. '13).
Pizzey sits at the familiar
hardware console of the DaVinci
Resolve color-correction system. The
image currently under discussion is
projected onto a screen approximately
20' wide by a Barco DP4K-P projector
in 4K resolution, and depicts Matt
Damon, as Bourne, moving down what
looks like a public street, although the
response to that idea is that most of the
people in frame are extras. Pizzey calls
up a vertical ellipse and expands it to
encompass Damon, confirming the
choice with the cinematographer. "Is that
all right, Barry?" asks Pizzey. "I just
darkened the outside so he stands out a
bit more."
The apparent simplicity of the
situation belies a lot of work behind the
scenes. "I had two weeks prep before
Barry came in," the colorist relates. "But
being such a big film, some of that went
out the window." Much of Jason Bourne
was acquired on film, using two different
film stocks, each in two different gauges.
Additionally, specific scenes were shot
digitally, with several types of digital
cameras. For this reason it was decided
to use the film color space as the
common DI color space. The film
material was scanned at 4K resolution on
Goldcrest's two Arriscan film scanners,
which were calibrated and set up to
46

August 2016

capture the extended density range of
the Kodak Vision3 stock. The digitally
originated material is kept in raw format
throughout the DI process to give
Pizzey and Ackroyd the maximum
flexibility during the grade. With the
right color science and grainmanagement tools, the Goldcrest team
notes, the film- and digital-originated
shots match very closely.
During preproduction, Pizzey
recalls, "Barry came in and we did some
extensive tests on the grade, with each of
the different formats, and with de-grain
and re-grain." Given Ackroyd's tendency
to stay away from complex on-set
monitoring strategies, Pizzey offers, "we
set an overall look, trying to keep things
simple. Barry and the team just get on
and shoot it, and they know how much
we can change if we need to later on."
As the edit has been moving at
full speed, the colorist continues, "we'll
grade a scene, and when we go over it
the next day, certain shots will have been
trimmed." At press time, final visualeffects delivery is due on June 17. "That's
going to be a manic 24 hours," Pizzey
admits. "All the background plates
should be tweaked already, but until the
final shots are there, you can't make your
final grade.
"There's one scene toward the
end," the colorist adds. "It was shot quite
warm, and I think when Paul first saw
American Cinematographer

it, he said, 'No, I want it
grittier. Let's have it
cooler.' Obviously, if it's
warm and then they want
it blue, we take all the
warmth out of it and
there's not a lot of light -
it gets very dark. To cut a
long story short, it stayed
dark like that for about
three weeks while we
were doing screenings. It
was too dark. So we
decided, 'Let's go back to
how it was shot, how
Barry intended it.' Paul
saw it today and loved it."
One of the most
challenging sequences in terms of
matching, Pizzey notes, is a chase scene
set at night. "There's smoke and fire, and
there were a number of shots where the
continuity of smoke wasn't as even as it
could have been due to the multiple
cameras," he explains. Rectifying this
situation, Pizzey recalls, required him to
"find a way of using the grading kit to
balance up the shots, to help them feel
as if the smoke's there - a few tricky
little windows and messing around with
contrast. It works pretty well. We might
have a bit of help from visual effects
toward the end, but we ran it this
morning and it looked pretty good."
AC 's visit came "halfway through
the main work of grading," Pizzey says.
"We had Paul in the suite yesterday.
There are a couple of scenes remaining
to change, but the color base is looking
good."
The colorist's approach seems
well matched to that of both Greengrass
and Ackroyd. "I listen to the directors of
photography, what they've exposed, and
how they've shot and lit it," Pizzey says.
"I'll always do my first pass the way they
intended it to look. Then, if anyone
wants it differently, we use all the tools.
I try to be a traditional, old-fashioned
color timer, to keep it real."
- Phil Rhodes



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - August 2016

Contents
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - Intro
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 1
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 2
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - Contents
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 4
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 5
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 6
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 7
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 8
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 9
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 10
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 11
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 12
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 13
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 14
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 15
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 16
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 17
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 18
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 19
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 20
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 21
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 22
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 23
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 24
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 25
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 26
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 27
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 28
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 29
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 30
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 31
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 32
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 33
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 34
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 35
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 36
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 37
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 38
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 39
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 40
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 41
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 42
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 43
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 44
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 45
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 46
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 47
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 48
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 49
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 50
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 51
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 52
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 53
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 54
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 55
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 56
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 57
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 58
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 59
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 60
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 61
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 62
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 63
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 64
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 65
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 66
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 67
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 68
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 69
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 70
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 71
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 72
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 73
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 74
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 75
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 76
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 77
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 78
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 79
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 80
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 81
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 82
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 83
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 84
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 85
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 86
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 87
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 88
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - Cover3
American Cinematographer - August 2016 - Cover4
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