Revisiting SALT AND SILICONE Color Grading with EFILM in DAVINCI 2K and DIGITAL INTERMEDIATE

I am revisiting the color grading in "Salt and Silicone" before I consider this project done. My desire for a particular "look" has become more serious, complex, and thankfully more articulate in the past few months.

Specifically, I have learned more about color grading and want to try some linear to logarithmic gamma shifts (to create that "cinema" look) and red abatement in the pass, complicate the color palette and make sure it is FILM OUT ready, still have disparate looks for "Vex's" disparate perspectives all while maintaining naturalistic skin tones and work in an uncompressed environment with a post-house that specializes in this process with proprietary techniques, software and hardware: enter Academy Award Winning Color Correction post-house EFILM who I have a pre-established relationship with.

Friday, Sept 25, 2009: EFILM Davinci Colorist Brian George set up my PreColor HDCAMSR Master on an EFILM tricked out DAVINCI 2K and in a few short hours wowed me with his color correction skills, aesthetic and rapidity. He is a technician and an artist and we had some stimulating back and forth as he educated me on why he was making the shifts in color he was making. DI Producer Hal Cohen of EFILM and SALT AND SILICONE Film Editor Shane Sattler who sat in on the session were similarly impressed. Frankly I did not fully agree with Brian's approach in the beginning but soon realized that his eye for color and clearly his experience are at a level that I had to step up to and appreciate which I did. By the end of the session I was more than sold, I was impressed.

EFILM has given the film a complex, cinematic "look", gorgeous skin tones, and still satisfied my need to separate each "episode" to show "Vex's" conflict over breast implants. He stayed away from washing the frame with one strong color for disparation in color grade from episode to episode but rather used color relationships to generate a distinct, strong, complex look for each episode. He focused more on a mood change through color rather than a virtual location change in color -- we are in the same lighting store but we are here in a different mood as per "Vex". I could say more but seeing the new color pass is the best experience which audiences will see when SALT AND SILICONE festivals in 2010.

The only area that I am still not fully satisfied with is some underexposed portions of the INT. CAR scenes -- specifically characters "Vex" (myself--Warren Pereira) and "Keira" (Katie O' Grady) are underexposed in camera. Any global raising in exposure on the DAVINCI even with vignette Power Windows shows a video noise that must be avoided. So, this will be dealt with in EFILM'S DI (DIGITAL INTERMEDIATE) proprietary Suite next week where we can Rotoscope my face and Katie's face and bring up exposure as needed.