Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/680196
www.postmagazine.com 33 POST MAY 2016 and a young member musters the nerve to tell him he's leaving the club because he's switching to Panoptix sonar. When he gets up to leave, an older member joins him — viewers are surprised to see that it's Bill Dance, "America's favorite fisherman" from myriad popular angling shows. "When Bill stands up and says, 'I'm with him,' this endorsement immediately legiti- mizes the departing club member and the new sonar," Bosworth says. The DP strove for a "menacing but comedic" tone to the commercial: The dark establishing shot, the leather jackets with customized club logos, the young protag- onist who looks "fearful and diminutive" speaking up to the beefy club leader. Bosworth shot with Red's Epic Dragon, recording 6K Red Raw files. One day was devoted to shooting interiors at a real BBQ joint that doubled as the clubhouse; another evening was required to capture the exterior of a waterside bar. Bosworth tried to create as much of the "ominous look" he wanted on the set and in-camera. He covered the windows of his day shoot to give a moonlit feel to the room while adding haze for "an ambiance of smoke and dust." Gaffer Troy Paddock constructed a light box for the central light source over the clubhouse table. To counteract raccoon eyes and capture the expressions of the nervous young club member, Bosworth added subtle fill light. "Raw images can look really flat, but if you put a curve on them they can quickly become contrasty and hot," says Bosworth. "So I had Steve bring up the faces; we needed to see the subtlety of their quirky expressions or the comedy wouldn't come through. The protago- nist's face was very kinetic, and we didn't want to lose him to the harsh lighting. So Steve motion tracked him to keep him lit on the tight shots." Franko says he did "a bit of cornering to make the scene look dark at the top and give a pool-table feel to the top-lit clubhouse table. I used windows on the faces, some with sunglasses and hats, so you could see the eyes. It was a challenge to balance enough light on the faces to see their expressions while keeping things dark and mysterious." Franko was also tasked with showcasing Bill Dance for his key cameo. "I had to open up his face where the bill of his cap was covering it — you wouldn't have wanted to bounce light in the face of a non-pro- fessional," Franko says. Bosworth says he "pulled a lot of color out of Bill's cap early on" in the scene, then Franko pumped up the "University of Tennessee orange" so Dance's signature cap popped as he's revealed to viewers. It was equally challenging for Franko to keep the clubhouse "very contrasty while lifting it up enough to get the essence of the place and the people — the texture of the room, what's on the walls, the clothes that say 'gang,'" Bosworth explains. "We wanted the viewer to be part of the scene, to feel the club member's angst when he says he's leaving." The opening shot was created from a series of 6K 3D stills the DP captured on location. "We got a boom shot of the bar at dusk that looked great, but all the signage was visible so we had 3D artist Gavin Angel recreate the scene based on stills we took on-set," Bosworth explains. "We took out the house next to the bar to make it look more desolate and tracked in the silhouette of a big tree." For the first time, Bosworth and Franko used Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve Studio to layer and synchronize the stills. "Steve manipulated every layer individually so the shot looked organic, like it had been actually shot," says Bosworth. "There were nine layers of stills," Franko recalls. "I was able to color grade the build- ing, the sky, the tree, add silvery moonlight and, at the last minute, shape the cone of light on the front porch." Franko calls his Resolve Studio with panels "an extremely robust toolset. Its keying and tracking abilities are its strong suits, but it's very flexible, intuitive and easy to operate. Although I'm not an editor, I appreciate having an editing tool at my disposal. It's easy to grab another take and drop it into the timeline if we need to." Even though the color suite offers so many capabilities today, Bosworth empha- sizes that DPs "shouldn't shoot without [having] the end result in mind. It's about doing everything in your power to get the image you want then working with the colorist to make it better." DP MICHAEL GRADY & COLORIST TODD BOCHNER "When I go back to AFI to give classes, I tell students to consider being colorists if they're into image creation," says DP Michael Grady. "More and more, color- ists are the rock stars. Their eyes are as developed as any cinematographer's, and I respect them greatly." Grady joined HBO's The Leftovers original series mid-way through Season 1. The show, created by Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta, based on Perrotta's novel, takes place after the "Sudden Departure." During that mysterious event, two percent of the world's population simultaneous- ly disappeared, mainstream religions declined and many cults emerged. The show follows the Garvey family in these post-Rapturesque days, first in the fic- tional town of Mapleton, NY, and then in the equally fictional town of Jarden, TX, where they moved in Season 2. Todd Bochner, supervising senior colorist at Hollywood's Chainsaw (www. chainsawedit.com), has been the colorist (L-R) DP Bosworth and colorist Franko have partnered numerous times over the years and most recently on Garmin's Sons of Fishes. Fisherman Bill Dance