American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 90

◗

Endgame
The crew keeps
pace with
Lawrence. "It's
not like we
were shaking
the camera for
handheld
effect," Willems
says of
the film's
camerawork.
"These movies
are very big in
scale, but the
way they were
conceived and
shot on set was
actually fairly
simple."

more efficiency in the filmmaking
process. You can only really do that with
on-set color."
EFilm provided a basic show
LUT, and beyond that Willems and
Jebef colored each shot on the fly using
Technicolor's DP Lights system. Jebef
evaluated images on Sony BVME250A
25" OLED monitors, while a Panasonic
60" plasma was used for select dailies
viewing and additional color correction.
Dailies were screened at lunchtime for
anyone who wanted to watch.
Every grade was saved as a CDL
file, which Jebef would deliver with the
day's master footage. Media manager
Kyle Spicer handled the hand-off of
camera original masters and metadata to
the Technicolor dailies lab at the Atlanta
production offices. When the production moved to Europe, Technicolor's
mobile lab went right along. DNxHD
36 files were created by Technicolor
with Colorfront software for the editorial staff, led by Alan Edward Bell and
Mark Yoshikawa, who cut the picture
on Avid Media Composer.
Supervising digital colorist Mitch
Paulson performed the DI at EFilm in
Hollywood using Autodesk Lustre,
90

December 2015

working with 2880x2160 DPX files.
Paulson estimates that the grading,
which began in April, took 140 hours.
Because of all the visual effects, he
would only color after batches of shots
were delivered. Willems spent about
four weeks with him, and Lawrence
popped in to provide notes.
In the DI, the cinematographer
emphasized a desaturated, cool, monochromatic look aboveground in the
districts, while pushing a "dirty, desaturated, industrial sodium-vapor" look in
the underground settings.
"We had to pull out colors that
popped out too much when the characters are going through the destroyed
districts," Paulson says. "The movie
starts right where Part 1 left off, so we
had to keep the ending of that movie in
mind; we wanted to make it a smooth
transition. After that, we focused on
keeping things feeling real and not
too glossy." (DI passes were also done
for versions in 2D, 3D and Dolby
Vision.)
The Hunger Games series has been
a filmmaking marathon for performers
and crew alike, including the director
and cinematographer, who have dediAmerican Cinematographer

cated more than two years of their lives
to it. "It was a great experience - and a
good learning experience, as well,"
Willems says. "I'm not saying there
wasn't stress at any time, but I enjoyed
the journey and I am really happy with
the end result. I hope I can work with all
these people again."
●

TECHNICAL SPECS
Digital Capture
2.39:1
Arri Alexa XT, Red Epic Dragon,
GoPro Hero3
Panavision C Series, E Series,
G Series, AWZ2, ATZ, Primo
American Cinematographer - December 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 2015
