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MEAN GIRLS www.postmagazine.com 11 POST JAN/FEB 2024 The color grade Damien Vandercruyssen is senior colorist at Harbor (https:// harborpicture- company.com) in New York City and says direc- tors Arturo Perez Jr. and Samantha Jayne, along with director of photography Bill Kirstein, called on him to make Mean Girls look as rich and filmic as possible,™while still maintain- ing the realism and rawness the story ošers.™ "During the musical numbers, we pushed the look to new heights of pop and saturation, and the dišerent aspect ratios and lenses, combined with the grade, added a sense of magical realism," Vandercruyssen explains. During pre-production, camera tests were shot in order to build a few custom look-up tables™that proved successful for the shoot. "For the DI, I used the (FilmLight) Baselight 6 system, with some new tools that I was excited to experiment with on this project," adds the colorist. "Because of the nature of the work, I enlisted the help of colorist Oisín O'Driscoll for his expertise in commercial and beauty (work) to nail some of those beauty sequences. We used the new Halation tool ex- tensively, varying it depending on the location and scenes, and the new face tracker for the beauty moments that we wished to control in the DI. It was helpful to have access to the beauty™tools™in Baselight to dial in those shots and ride with the story, as Cady becomes more 'Plastic' during the movie." really like always a push/pull between what's our grounded reality and what is this heightened world like. What space do these songs live in? We only had two rules for ourselves, which were: What is the feeling and what perspective are we in?" Arturo Perez Jr.: "In whose perspective." Many of the musical sequences come across as one long shot. Can you talk about those? Samantha Jayne: "There were many sequences that were entirely one shot. For instance, Karen's 'Sexy' (part 2) is entirely one shot." Arturo Perez Jr.: "It was never really about trying to make you feel like you're in one shot. We just wanted to keep you engaged. For example, 'I'd Rather Be Me' — it's like, okay, what's the feeling? The feeling is: I've had enough! Whose perspective are you in? It's Janice. The feeling is so Janice — cool-ish. Janice is like rock & roll." Samantha Jayne: "She's raw." Arturo Perez Jr.: "She's like, 'Follow me. Don't cut.' So that makes sense. But for Karen, at the beginning, with the YouTube/TikTok stu©, we wanted that to feel like a makeup tutorial." Samantha Jayne: "A 'get ready with me' kind of video. And she would do all these fun transitions, and try on all kinds of things." Arturo Perez Jr.: "We never tried to just push the one-take agenda. We never really had a one-take agenda. Also, practically, we had a lot to shoot and we had 39 days." Samantha Jayne: "We baked-in temp rehearsals to our schedule. So first, we would shoot it on our iPhone. We essentially shot the entire movie on our phone — us and other people acting it out. So that exists somewhere. Then, we would bring it to our Steadicam operator, and fold him into the process. Ari Robbins, our DP of course." Arturo Perez Jr.: "I've just got to talk about him for a second. Ari Robbins is, I think, hands down, the best camera operator on the planet. We worked together with Justin Timberlake. We have a strong friendship and a bond. A lot of these one takes would not have been possible with the amount of time that we had, the number of them, the complexity and the technology that he used." How about Bill Kirstein, who was also a cinematographer on this film? Arturo Perez Jr.: "The whole thing is a collaboration. It's the project. Bill listens so, so well. And we had worked on music videos before. We had a strong, connection." Samantha Jayne: "Like a shorthand." Arturo Perez Jr. "A shorthand. Yeah. He's also just the nicest guy, but he also is not afraid to go against you. He came in late in the game. But because of how everything worked out, it was like having a family member there that you could trust. "Check out, (Justin Timberlake's) 'Say Something.' That's something that we did together with Ari too." Samantha Jayne: "Again, live, one take, in the Bradbury Building." Can you talk about the film's visual e¡ects needs? Samantha Jayne: "The visual e©ects were really to make those social media sequences feel real, I would say. My brother, Zack Siegel, edited those social media sequences and helped with those." Arturo Perez Jr.: "They put an overlay (on it)." Samantha Jayne: "We like to do in-camera work, so in terms of visual e©ects, obviously we need a designer." Arturo Perez Jr.: "We tried to make it feel as real as possible. We shot in a lot of locations — a lot of real locations, so it was just to enhance and to clean up where it wasn't exactly how we like. For example, Africa. Um, how do you shoot Africa in the middle of winter?" I heard you shot that in New Jersey? Samantha Jayne: "Yeah, in a landfill in New Jersey!" Arturo Perez Jr.: "We made a mobile garage set, and we put it in a landfill in New Jersey. And then we had the open sky, but you could see New York City, so tiny in the background. So they cleaned up the sky, but we tried to make it feel as real as possible. We don't personally like the CGI look very much." I was going to ask you about that transition at the beginning between the garage and Africa? Samantha Jayne: "The garage was physically at the location. At the other end of Katie's tent, of course, when she goes from that location to the school, there's a (blue) screen there." The shoot spanned 39 days. Perez and Jayne during production.