Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/40055
DPs & Colorists "willingness to stay open minded and to try something unconven- tional, even if it occasionally means having to track back." Although Ettlin initially wanted to shoot film, he ultimately lensed The Lincoln Lawyer with a Red Digi- tal Cinema Red One MX camera. Nonetheless, he "wanted a tradi- tional film look, so we talked about how to shoot Red to accomplish that," Ferstl recalls."Lukas was new to Red so we shot lots of tests, put them up in the theater and worked through them as I pointed out the pros and cons in terms of what he wanted to achieve." MPI's Jan Yarbrough (pictured) and Andrew Dunn, ASC, collaborated on . neutral kind of look to very stylized," Yarbrough recalls."We showed the directors, and they decided to keep the look slightly stylized throughout but nothing overboard that would distract from the storyline." Yarbrough also found himself adding light to several night scenes shot on location. "The room light didn't work the way An- drew wished it had, so we added some light in post to separate the actors from the backgrounds," he explains. The colorist calls his Baselight system "ab- solutely the best tool out there, and we've had them all." He has worked on Baselight for about six years and says it's "flexible, fast, stable and does 4K realtime" although Crazy Stupid Love was finished in 2K. He believes that his experience with Dunn showed the cinematographer how positive the final color process can be."We put out the welcome mat and established a comfort factor that made Andrew feel at home," he says. "He used any manner he chose to describe what he wanted from the color, and I interpreted it." THE LINCOLN LAWYER Siggy Ferstl, director of telecine at Santa Monica's Company 3 (www.company3.com), met cinematographer Lukas Ettlin for the first time when he performed the final color correction for The Lincoln Lawyer, but they got together early and found themselves meshing well throughout the process. "Lukas outlined exactly what he was looking for," says Ferstl, a firm believer that "the colorist's relationship with the DP is a very important part of the process." Ettlin likes to work with a colorist who "looks at the image first and the scope sec- ond. I respect the need to ensure high qual- ity standards throughout but not at the ex- pense of creative freedom," he says.The cin- ematographer also appreciates a colorist's 22 Post • August 2011 Ettlin says,"We were going for the classic film look of movies like Dog Day Afternoon and The Verdict. By using specific filters, lenses and lighting, as well as color timing, we tried to achieve this look even though [the movie] was shot digitally." Ferstl notes that some post facilities choose not to use any film emulation LUTs in DIs for digitally acquired motion pic- tures."I'm open to both paths; what you choose goes hand-in-hand with the look or style of the film that the director and DP want to achieve," he says. "For The Lincoln Lawyer, Lukas wanted a traditional film look so it was a no-brainer to use film emulation LUTs even though he was shooting on Red." Working in log space, through film emulation LUTs, has both the technical advantage of ensuring that every look achieved during color grading can be translated to film and the aesthetic advantage of retaining the log-like attributes that our eyes associate with film, Ferstl explains. The colorist and DP worked closely to is the Da Vinci Resolve from Blackmagic. "It's fast — I can dial up lots of looks really quickly, and in the color suite it's all about doing up multiple looks and seeing what will and won't work, how things look and blend together. Having a tool that can do that quickly is really helpful." He points out that because Resolve is node-based "it's easy to turn off and un- layer color correction if I've done an entire scene and now it needs to be slightly less warm. I can hit a few buttons and offset the scene a certain amount; I don't have to go back and manipulate each scene manually." Having completed their first film together, Ettlin has kudos for Ferstl, whom he says "has that great mix of technical proficiency and a creative eye. And he has a very re- laxed, open temperament which allowed me to push the envelope." Ferstl believes "you learn a lot working with someone for the first time, and by the end of the film you feel a connection to that person. I'm really happy with how The Lin- coln Lawyer turned out and feel that Lukas Co3's Siggy Ferstl was colorist on the Red One MX-shot ,working with DP Lukas Ettlin. develop "a nice stylized look for the flash- backs that maintained the colors and palette that look like the sequences were shot on film," Ferstl adds."There are multiple flash- backs that revisit the crime and look at how it could have happened from different an- gles. So we created a palette that's a little different for each one.We had a lot of lati- tude to play in those sequences, to give them a more edgy feel." Ferstl and Ettlin decided that the flash- backs should be a bit more contrasty and the colors should have a little more satura- tion than the rest of the film to give them a different feel and make them stand out from the present-tense scenes. Ferstl's color correction system of choice www.postmagazine.com and I established a good relationship. I'm sure that both of us would feel confident going into the next project together." The film, which hit theaters in March, is now on DVD and Blu-ray. RED STATE Dave Cole, senior digital colorist at Holly- wood's LaserPacific (www.laserpacific.com), has worked on at least half a dozen features with cinematographer David Klein,ASC, in- cluding four films from director Kevin Smith. The latest, Smith's fundamentalist-themed Red State, premiered at Sundance 2011. The new movie "is Kevin going outside the realm of a typical Kevin Smith film," says Cole. "He told Dave to have fun, make it look good and play off the emotions on the screen," some of which are designed to make audiences feel distinctly uneasy. Al- though the director is often part of the DI The Lincoln Lawy er Cr azy , Stupid Lo ve