American Cinematographer - January 2020 - 34

Wages of Sin

white development bath helps retain
silver, resulting in sharper contrast and
reduced color saturation.
"We did research into the characteristics of this process and created a
LUT to use in two [of the film's]
phases," Prieto notes. "For the first part
of the '70s, I used a 'light ENR,' making
for just a little bit of desaturation and a
little extra contrast. But then, right after
Hoffa's murder in 1975, the LUT shifts
to a deeper version of ENR, so you'll
notice [during] the end of the movie
that the color is further drained from
the image. For me, this was a way to
represent the loss of meaning in
Sheeran's life in the years after his
friend's death."
Prepping these exacting hues

To provide, from the very beginning of
production, the subtle visual cues that
director Martin Scorsese desired for The
Irishman's various historical periods,
Harbor Picture Co. and Rodrigo Prieto,
ASC, AMC undertook a much deeper
process than is typical for the creation of
LUTs and dailies - which yielded
imagery from the outset that was very
close to the movie's final look. AC spoke
with Harbor's Matt Tomlinson, a color
scientist and ASC associate, and colorists
Yvan Lucas and Elodie Ichter, who also
worked with Prieto on the final grade.

Matt Tomlinson: This kind of
attention to detail [in the LUT-creation
process], and the effort and time that
was put into it, is something that's not all
that common. The Kodachrome and
Ektachrome LUTs we developed with
Rodrigo are part of the storytelling, and
Rodrigo made decisions as to their
specific time periods, and how these
time periods should be represented by
each look, by these color palettes.
There were multiple sessions
where we created LUTs using test
footage from Rodrigo. He came in with
images - books with photographic
references and distinct ideas of what he
January 2020

was no quick process. "We had to do
very complex color science," the cinematographer says. "The early stages of
creating the LUTs was done by
Philippe Panzini from Codex in
London. He is a fanatic about film
emulsions; he has interviewed the
Kodak scientists who created
Kodachrome and Ektachrome, and
carefully researched how these emulsions reproduce the different colors."
This information was then given
to color scientist and ASC associate
member Matthew Tomlinson at
Harbor Picture Co., where he worked
with colorists Yvan Lucas and Elodie
Ichter to perform the LUT-creation for
the movie, "reproducing [the looks] for
the digital and film [footage] and

Evoking The Irishman's Eras

wanted certain aspects of the movie to
look like. He would point to elements of
specific images that he liked. For each
one, we would take the imagery that he
shot and introduce that look. Then
Rodrigo would say, 'More of this, less of
that,' and it was created on the fly [as a
collaboration between] us.
It was really a surgical creation,
where minor shifts were going on in
different areas of the gray scale on the
hue palette. The work was done very
specifically, based on Yvan, Elodie and
Rodrigo's thought process in terms of
what this movie should look like.
There are actually about four LUTs
total. Philippe Panzini of Codex was part
of the creation process for the
Kodachrome and Ektachrome looks; the
ENR looks were based on work by
Harbor; and the final creation was a
combination of [all our efforts]. A
Kodachrome look was used for the '50s,
Ektachrome for the '60s, light ENR for
the early '70s, and heavier ENR after
Hoffa's death.
Yvan Lucas: Via the ENR process,
there's more contrast and less saturation. It's a process we use in the lab. I
was a color timer for 20 years before I
moved to digital, and this is how we did
American Cinematographer - 100 Years

matching them," Tomlinson says. (See
sidebar, below.) Lucas and Ichter also
worked with Prieto on the final color
grade, which was performed with
FilmLight's Baselight system.
"I found that the digital camera
that best reproduced the color characteristics of the LUTs on the film negative was the Red Helium," Prieto says.
"We mapped the LUT colors to match
the film negative and the Red sensor.
Industrial Light & Magic took care of
matching the grain structure of the film
negatives I used on all the visual-effects
shots captured with the digital
cameras."
Once Scorsese had given his
blessing to the looks, Prieto visited the
Harbor Picture facility in Santa Monica

it at that time for [films like] Seven and
Delicatessen. When you see the print,
the blacks look much deeper; you see
details in the blacks and the faces, and
the colors [in general] are desaturated.
Elodie Ichter: [Rodrigo] has a
history of doing this kind of thing with us.
There are a few DPs in the world who
really want the dailies to be very close to
the final look. [ASC members] Rodrigo,
Chivo [Lubezki] or [Roger] Deakins, for
example, really want to have the final
look in the dailies - so it's really important to work on that [for them].
Tomlinson: When we're working
on a movie, it's our movie, too. We
consider ourselves artists; we're [craftspeople, and we] embrace that. [We put]
our soul into it, and it really is about the
collaboration and creating something
that is unique. The Irishman is a great
example. The film-derived footage was
the hero for the show. After rigorous
testing that matched the pipeline of how
the film and digital material would be
handled during the shoot and beyond,
Harbor was able to create transforms so
the digital would match the film.
- Fred Schruers

American Cinematographer - January 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2020